Likelihood of 20nm die shrinks for Xbox one/PS4

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With strong rumours of an Xbox one slim supposedly being 40% smaller, it seems likely that the new xbox one apu will be built on a smaller node process. The problem is the 14nm requires a complete redesign on finfet transistors which AMD costed up at over a hundred million $'s so I think the only logical step down from 28nm is to 20nm which would not require a redesign. I know Nvidia / Amd skipped this node and went straight from 28m-> 14nm so there is that, and I think yields on 20nm were cited as one of the reasons yet I think this is the most likely candidate.
 
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So you think MS stumped up the cash for a finfet redesign of their APU? That in theory should run a LOT quieter and cooler.
 
So you think MS stumped up the cash for a finfet redesign of their APU? That in theory should run a LOT quieter and cooler.
Well literally know in 24 hours. I imagine they did whatever they could to bring the unit cost down.


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20nm is a new node, not just an optical shrink of 28nm. So it wouldn't be so simple. Anyway, tsmc probably doesn't want to keep 20nm production lines running anyhow; the process wasn't popular, so it's possible they may be looking to convert the fabspace used for it to finfet production when their current contracts run out...
 
Yeah, 14/16 nm FF at Samsung, TSMC, or GlobalFoundries is far more likely than 20 nm. 20 nm offers very little benefit over 28 nm and would have a similar design cost to 14/16 nm associated with it. As well over the life of the device, 20 nm production will end up being more costly than 14/16 nm production due to 20 nm being an unpopular and relatively unused node (compared to 28 nm and in the future 14/16 nm FF).

Regards,
SB
 
Well literally know in 24 hours. I imagine they did whatever they could to bring the unit cost down.


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Down to 12.5 to 13.5 hours now.
 
There's another possibility, of course. There was no die shrink. It just features a redesigned cooling solution and slightly higher average operating acoustics.

Unlikely though.

Also, assuming Kinect isn't making a comeback. There is savings to be had by removing or reducing any functional blocks on the SOC related to Kinect. That would have potential benefits both on 28 nm as well as lower nodes.

If they plan on getting rid of ESRAM with Scorpio, it's possible albeit highly unlikely that the XBO-S could feature something experimenting with a transparent replacement in order to support games and applications that were made while ESRAM was guaranteed to be part of the machine. Again, extremely improbable, but would be interesting.

Regards,
SB
 
Look at PS4 CUH-1200 motherboard. It's much smaller than case. And could be even smaller given new case.
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Also, assuming Kinect isn't making a comeback. There is savings to be had by removing or reducing any functional blocks on the SOC related to Kinect. That would have potential benefits both on 28 nm as well as lower nodes.
I doubt there is anything they can easily get rid of. AFAIK Kinect doesn't have dedicated hardware on the APU, instead mostly relying on GPU and CPU time-slices. The SHAPE audio block is used by Kinect, but non-Kinect games probably use it through the APIs for DSP functionality as well.

Integrating the South Bridge into the APU should free up some board space, and it has been AMD's trend recently.
 
Sometime back at Semiaccurate forums a fellow talked about the hypothesis of consoles being initially 20nm, but the performance gain over 28nm of such big APU would not make worth baking the consoles on it.
 
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