It is an industry wide thing.
Intel is not the only company to use nm as a marketing term, everyone does.

Kinda like 4k.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/11/intel-will-ship-processors-with-integrated-amd-graphics-and-memory/

The longer the gen goes on, the more future proof the tech has to be, or the shorter next gen needs to be. If PS5 launched in 2020, and PS could use a 4TB HDD, that only cost them $30 per unit, would they use it? No, because that HDD would be so slow it's not funny, not to mention 5 or 6 years down the road. Waiting until some of the newer tech has come down into console price range, is what would be necessary, so you either launch PS5 sooner, or you launch another PS4 with the same old tech on a smaller node, and wait a little longer.

Depends on your point of view. To me, holding back new tech, so you can make lots of money off your old tech, for an extended period of time, is greedy. 6 years would be more than enough as far as I'm concerened. 7 years is really pushing it. 8 or 9 years would be corporate greed at it's finest.

Keeping a successful system going does make sense on one hand, in terms of familiarity and profits, but the longer it goes on, the harder it is to transfer over to the next gen. Is it better to have record breaking PS4 sales and just ok PS5 sales, or 100M PS4 sales then 100M PS5 sales? Constantly launching new hardware every 3 years makes more sense, even if it means a PS4 Premium in 2019, then PS5 in 2022. I wouldn't be surprised if they pulled the next gen trigger late 2019 though, but that's just me.

I meant that all of these fabs are using "nm" as a marketing gimmick.

Intel is actually ahead by TSMC, Global Foundries, Samsung and IBM and all other fabs... And by a significant margin at the same "nm" fabrication size.


I think it's really a testament to AMD though that Ryzen is able to compete as well as it does despite that manufacturing disadvantage they have, which is likely the main reason why they aren't able to crack that 4Ghz barrier.

A 4 Terabyte Hard Drive doing 200MB/s+ sustained with a small 500MB/s cache drive isn't what I would consider slow for next gen consoles.

Fact is... Mechanical disks are here to stay, they are economical for the short and long term.

I wouldn't mind the next gen using internal nvme in a small size (128gb) serving as firmware storage and the rest simply as cache to speed up loading data and the games data in a small 500gb internal mechanical drive and the rest has we use today in external drives... The switch don't have enough internal storage to hold some games and people are responsible to acquire storage on their own in the form of SD cards so this could also work for home next gen consoles... if the system is smart and pre load data into that cache, same as a SSHD works, the loadings would improve significantly and keep cost down. I would love a full nvme version and i would probably buy that.

Depends on what that next gen tech and price is exactly in 2020. If you take into account that all we got at the PS4 launch was 500GB of mass storage, there is no reason to assume that PS or XB will shoot for 4TB-8TB of mass storage next gen. XB1X is supposed to be a 4k machine and they went for HDD speed not storage space.

If a 1TB or 2TB SSD was available in time for that 2020 launch, at a reasonable price that fit the budget, do to a mass manufacturing contract with PS (and/or XB), I see no reason why PS/XB wouldn't use it. Being able to slap SSD on the specs is easy and gives the console more street cred right off the bat. If PS really cared about storage space, they would have used a 3.5" 1TB HDD at launch, which would have cost less per HDD than the 2.5" they used, but it didn't fit the console shell form factor. Personally I think 1TB or 2TB would be skimping on the storage space next gen, but I can see PS doing it.

Just another reason why I initially said guessing what the mass storage solution is going to be next gen, is a really tricky one right now. It makes for good discussion because the possiblities are many, but we know so little right now that coming up with a reasonable guess is quite unlikely.

Well. When the Playstation 4 launched, 500GB mechanical disks were some of the cheapest storage solutions available.
Shift from 2013 to 2017, where have hard drives gone? 1 Terabyte seems to have repalced the 500GB drives as the sweet spot in terms of cost efficiency.
By 2020? At this rate we might be looking at 2 Terabytes of mechanical storage, provided there are no component shortages/disasters that blow that out.

SSD's though, still aren't cheap enough. An SSD fitting in the same cost-range as a 1 Terabyte drive of $79 AUD would net you 120/128GB today.
Of course we can still add more stacked layers to NAND chips and fabricate them at smaller geometry sizes, but that is still asking for a 5x - 10x fold increase in capacities for the same price in just a few years. - I just don't see it happening.

And that is provided there are no NAND shortages... Which happens all the time, especially prior to big product launches like the iPhone.

Intel apparently uses a mixture of 14 and 22nm on their chips (Processing parts in 22nm, everything else in 14nm), if they used all in 14nm their chips would be smaller, but also denser and thus not able to reach such high clock speeds

And I agree with you on the HDDs. Unless SSDs get drastically cheaper then the next gen will still use HDD

A 500GB 3.5" would have been cheaper though, and they didn't go that route. The size of the console shell and size of the HDD itself, clearly was more important than saving money on the HDD itself. Another factor that could lead to a better or worse storage option next gen.

SSD's are expensive still and the tech isn't quite there just yet, your right, but in 3 years time, 1TB could be within reason. 2TB might be a bit of a stretch. I would think PS would rather use the SSD, and let you buy an external HDD if you want more storage space. When I look at PS4 hardware decisions like the 8GB of GDDR5, it says to me, PS can really make it happen if the possiblitiy is in the ballpark, to make sure the console is as future proof as possible.

Shortages are a possibility, but I remember reading about GDDR5 being unlikely in the PS4 due to availability and price, yet it ended up happening, and 8GB worth at that. When someone like PS comes along and you know your basically guaranteed around a steady 100M units worth of sales, that's worth the hassle of making it happen most of the time.

I'm hoping for a hybrid solution:  128 GB M2 on the motherboard as a cache and SATA3 1TB mechanical drive, or an SSHD. IMO, next gen needs at least 32GB of RAM to not be outdated on day 1. 64 GB would be preferred, if it's a viable option. Keep recently played games on the M2 drive and load the rest from the mechanical drive. If they don't, load times will be even worse next gen, with 4K textures (a 4x increase) and higher polycount models. 

TSMC's 16nm Finfet uses a 20nm BEOL.
It's actually a common occurance in the semiconductor industry.

Still, Intel has the manufacturing edge, even when everyone is throwing around "14nm" claims.

For consumers, sure. However Microsoft and Sony are buying in bulk and might have negotiated a price that consumers wouldn't typically see.

In Microsoft's case though, they opted for a 2.5" drive because they are less noisy (Xbox One had a big focus on noise remember), they do use less power, they do take up less space and... They generate less heat. (Xbox One had a big focus on cooling remember.)

So it made sense to opt for a 2.5" drive. And they might do so again next gen.

Well. Microsoft wasn't willing to take the gamble... But if they did. There would have likely been GDDR5 shortages... Which would have resulted in a higher price.