Actually it stays making sense thanks, considering that Polaris desktop and laptop parts are coming July to September it's entirely logical that Nintendo could have a SOC with those parts in it's system at the end of 2016.

Cost wise the actual chips used in a GPU usually account for about 1/3rd of the price of a retail Card's RRP, considering AMD plans to release a 40 CU model, which has performance of an R9 290x at under $349 thise would be entirely feasible for a dedicated gaming handheld device.

Costs are based on how many chips you can get off of one wafer, 14nm makes it possible to get many APUs off of one wafer and that basically improves the cost per unit considerably. New doesn't necessarily mean expensive, actually output being high makes costs cheap.

Please don't insult people by making out that this isn't sensible, when it actually is. I provided the source for a rumor and actually explained how it could be feasible for a handheld device. The tech exists, is launching to the mass market this year (the fabs are high performance, not low output), within the desktop and laptop markets, which are usually later to get newer parts than the server market is.

AMD wouldn't be releasing to the consumer market if volumes weren't high enough and the potential for handheld sales is high, so it makes perfect sense for this to be used in such a device.

The only real question is whether Nintendo would want handheld with that level of performance. Maybe they are going to bring a dedicated console, which would still need Polaris and Zen to be small form factor like Nintendo have shown themselves to be interested in using for their consoles since the Wii.

It's not as easy or simple as you think.

AMD has only stated that they'll start shipping thir Polaris GPUs between June and September for the important "Back to School" season, and portable GPU are expected to come first. We still don't know when desktop parts will come.

The 14nm manufacturing process (I'll leave the competing 16nm from TSMC aside as AMD won't use it for Polaris) is still fairly new to the point that AMD has split supplier between Global Foundries and Samsung. That's because the production volume is still not high enough to guarantee a good supply with only one source and also because while the process efficiency is acceptable enough to start mass producing them, that doesn't mean that it's as good as they would want it to be.

You are also forgetting that while NX could launch in November (that's when Nintendo usually launches its consoles), they will have to start producing them weeks before to have at least a certain amount to meet the demand at launch. Let's not forget the Digitimes report where they stated that Nintendo was targeting shipping 20 million NX in 2016. Even if they only reach half that production, that means months of production, not weeks.

Lastly, while you are completely correct saying that costs are based on how many chips you can get off of one wafer and that with 14nm you'll get more chips per waffer, you are forgetting two important things. 1- right now the process is not efficient enough and that the percentage of faulty chips is a lot higher than the 28nm counterpart; and 2-You are assuming that the 14 and 28nm cost of producing a waffer is the same, but it's not. 14nm demands better equipment and is considerably more expensive than 28nm, so even with the extra chips that they can get from it, the cost per chip is higher than a similar size chip at 28nm.

Oh, and that 40 CU chip from AMD is just speculation. We know from a leak that there will be a Polaris 10 chip with 36 CUs, and some are guessing that there will also be a higher version with 40, but nothing has been confirmed (or denied). And we don't know if that chip will replace the 290/390 series or if it will improve their performance.

There was a rumor about an NX handheld, that had performance closest to XB1, but that it could stream gameplay or act as a source that streams footage to your TV through a wireless HDMI dongle.

Sounds pretty legit since Polaris would allow a 20 watt GPU to produce 1.3TFlops and considering AMD's Puma CPU was already able to hit 1.6Ghz, with the same core performance and core count as PS4 on 20 watts to it makes logical sense, if Zen is a 14nm part, with a redesigned architecture then it could potentially use less than half the power of Puma.
Costs would likely be really cheap too considering how many dies Nintendo could get from each wafer.

Notebook batteries have to contend with more energy demand than that would need once you take the full specs of a system into consideration. Even the possibility of putting something more energy hungry than Wii U in a handheld isn't unbelievable.

Here's the link to the rumor:

http://wccftech.com/rumor-nintendo-nx-power-closest-xbox-run-ps4xo-games-modification/

The whole closest to XB1 thing could either mean it's just over half the power of XB1, half way between PS4 and XB1 or somewhere inbetween. Technically a handheld with even PS4 levels of power could exist, it just needs a decent enough battery to power it, but laptops have those, so there's no reason why Nintendo couldn't one in a mobile console/handheld device, besides form factor issues.

I don't know if this whole wccftech rumor has been proven false or whether it's among the unknowns, but it's technically possible and worth a mention.

I can only load this link on my phone for some reason...

I can only load this link on my phone for some reason...

Actually it is that simple, for one thing Polaris 10 is confirmed as the line for the high end desktop market, 11 is the mobile and smaller desktop line, but all use the same Polaris architecture.

Just because Nintendo are targeting 20 million units shipped by the end of Fiscal Year 2016 that doesn't mean they need all of those units at launch or even for this year. A few million units is plenty for launch, plus you have to remember that a wafer could produce way more SOCs at that level of performance for a Handheld than if they were used for high-end GPU chips.

Supply targets are only targets, tbh it's not reasonable that Nintendo would think they could sell 20 million units by even June 2017, not if they plan to release this Holiday. 20 million could maybe be sold before the Fall of 2017, if the NX handheld or whatever it is, was attractively priced to the point where they're flying off of shelves like Wii or PS2 did.

When Nintendo says they're targeting to ship by the end of 2016, they mean Fiscal year end, which is March 2016. If Polaris is available between July and September of this year, then Nintendo could start production when that begins. If Foxconn makes and ships 1 million NX devices a month from August through to November that's 3 million units available to sell by November.

Foundaries can provide higher chip volumes and Nintendo can ramp up volumes of consoles as we enter 2017 (calendar year), to increase shipped units to their target by the end of the fiscal year. Monthly quantities don't have to be the same, they can increase in output each month.

It's possible that AMD split between two foundaries, one for their own chips that they will sell to the consumer market for GPUs and the other for semi-custom parts (admitedly speculation, but logical, since these are different kinds of chips, with one incorporating CPU and GPU on one die).

My point about the use of Polaris for a handheld is that it fits the bill, so would a 14nm CPU with better architecture than AMD's Puma, it works with the power consumption necessary to fit in a handheld device like the one mentioned in that rumor, though it should of course still be taken with a grain of salt because it's a rumor.

As far as costs go, I was going by AMD's own target costs for the part they said they're aiming to be on par with their own R9 290x, they said they want this come under $349, releasing this back to school period. A 1.3TFlop part would need way less space than an 4TFlop one. I said 40 CU because AMD said themselves that they wanted to release a Card with the same performance as the 290X, which has 40CUs, unless with the newer core tech they've also improved performance per CU, without having to increase clock speed (which is possible, since there are a lot of changes to each GPU Core).

Wafer costs don't have to be the same if the volume of dies produced is greater than the 28nm die, with defects taken into consideration. AMD can still make more per 14nm wafer than on 28nm and produce cost competitive chips, but that would depend on the real production figures, which I don't think are public.