| haxxiy said: The use of multigate devices to come close to physical limits was a thing expected all along. None of these manufacturing nodes are what the ITRS used to consider 7 nm or 5 nm, though. TSMC's 3.5 nm (and presumably Samsung's equivalent 4 - 2 nm GAAFET nodes) are what it should have been called the 7 nm node, if foundries hadn't transformed technical node names into marketing names. That's why Intel's 10 nm (which is actually a 11 nm node according to ITRS's standards) is more complex and efficient (though slightly bigger) than Samsung and TSMC's 7 nm nodes. The next step for more demanding applications, mid to long term will likely be 3D circuitry (bonus points if CNT or copper-CNT connections are viable) but price and heat might pose a problem to apply it in future generations of consoles. |
Long term.... maybe. Mid term is a no. As far as consoles go.
Lets say it cost sony/MS $150 for a 370mm2 APU using 7nm FinFet fabrication in 2020, to get double the performance in 2023/2024 they would need to either massively upclock the existing APU (not possible) or go with a node shrink which will allow them put in more transistors and up the clock a little in the same 370mm2 die size.
The reason that 370mm2 die size is important (and a barrier) is that they pay for these chips by the wafer. So from one wafer they may get like 100 chips at that 370mm2 size putting it at $15,000/wafer. This means that in regardless of the time, they are paying about the same cost for a wafer.
Now if in 2024 the foundry develops a vastly different way (aka more complex) to make chips then what happens is that the overall cost of that wafer goes up. Those 100 chips won,t cost $15,000 anymore. But could instead cost $25,000. Same die size, more complex manufacturing process. This becomes a problem when you are ordering millions of said chip.
And this isn't even considering the yields on said new manufacturing process.
I want mid gen upgrades as much as the next guy, but like i always said that next gen (PS5/XB2) comes whenever 7nm fabrication comes: then PS5pro/XB2X will come whenever we have 3/4nm. Any other thing will be prohibitively expensive.
