haxxiy said:
There is, if you're taking power consumption into account. It scales linearly with frequency but quadratically with voltage, which needs to be higher at higher clocks. A smaller chip at higher clocks would consume more power even if it performs the same. Also, mind that 5 nm is significantly more expensive than 8 nm. You'll get more dies per wafer in the former, yes, but said wafers are significantly more expensive (I couldn't find the exact figures for Samsung, but TSMC's 10FF process, which is comparable in complexity and size feature to Samsung's 8nm, was ~2.6 times cheaper than N5). That being said, obviously the bigger node comes with significantly higher power consumption, so lower battery life, more heat, etc. So while I agree it should go for N5, I'm just pointing out that the smaller node would be chosen because of these other considerations, not necessarily SoC cost. |
5nm should be significantly cheaper itself in 2024 too ... Apple is moving off 5nm that's a huge reduction in 5nm business on the Pro line of phones and M3 chips right there, and 5nm TSMC business is already down 26% from its peak apparently, that number will probably go north of 40 or 50% next year. 50 series Nvidia cards are going to be on 3nm also so there's another chunk of 5nm business out the door. So there should be open availability. 5N will be 4 years old by the time Switch 2 launches most likely (2nd half 2024), the 20nm process for the Tegra X1 was only 3 years old when the Switch 1 launched.
I think Nintendo also has to account for what is the overall pricing going to be for a product cycle of 8 years, at least the first 2-3 years in total not just what is cheaper on week 1 as well, over 3-4 years, 5nm could very well over the long term be a most cost efficient choice.
There are also yield issues with larger chips, a smaller chip is likely (if on a mature node) to have fewer defects than a larger chip, it's simply more mm of space for something to go wrong and you end with an unusable chip that has be binned or thrown out. There's also the issue of Samsung's nodes (especially 8nm) sucking ass and not being able to hit yield/performance targets ... Nvidia did use Samsung 8nm very briefly with the 30 series and then quickly ditched them to move everything to TSMC 7nm ... I'm guessing that Samsung sale's pitch didn't translate in reality to what Nvidia was hoping for.
A chip way bigger than the Steam Deck APU almost the size of a PS5 SoC inside of a console that's supposed to be smaller than a Steam Deck it's just a really weird idea and I can't recall any console really doing something like that. Certainly not from Nintendo.
If anything I think the timing actually matches up with a lot of things ... remember when Furukawa in 2020 started making statements that the Switch was only entering the beginning of its middle life cycle? If it is 5nm/4N, they likely knew back then that they were going to wait until the process became more mature and cheaper and Switch 2 was never gonna come out any time soon. It seems awfully convenient the Switch 2 looks to be getting ready to launch in 2024 right as 5nm is getting more open capacity and probably going to be cheaper as it's no longer the cutting edge.
As an aside (not saying Nintendo planned for this) but TSMC is hurting for business right now, they're experiencing negative growth for the first time in 14 years:
https://english.cw.com.tw/article/article.action?id=3417
If Nintendo has a deal with them, they likely have quite a bit of leverage right now because TSMC really needs their business especially with Apple moving off 5nm (which was projected years ago, everyone knew that Apple would move to 3nm in either 2023 or 2024), that's a lot of open 5nm business that some one has to fill in and generally that's good for a Nintendo/Nvidia.
The other can of worms is even if it's Samsung, Samsung has 5nm too.
Last edited by Soundwave - on 21 September 2023
