Estimate a BOM delta for PS5 and XBSX

Shifty Geezer

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XBSX is 52 CUs and 360 mm². RAM is 16 GBs GDDR6 on a 320 bit bus. XBSX uses standard NMVe SSD.

PS5 is 36 CUs (70% of XBSX). RAM is 16 GBs on a 256 bit bus. SSD is 'proprietary', but looks to be based on upcoming higher spec NVMe drives which will be usable for upgrades.

Assuming the SOC architectures* and manufacturing are identical, what do you think the BOM difference is? How much can you wild-guess the cooling to be?

* eg. Let's assume both have the same amount of audio silicon.
 
Just BOM or also price? Price is a business decision.
 
If we assume, the old SOC leaks are right, the PS5 SOC would be about 50mm^2 smaller. The difference there would be minimum in terms of silicon cost. Everything else is very close. A faster SSD would require better NAND which would probably cost more so the difference at the end is <$50 is my guess.

I would guess both to be about $500 BOM with the sxs probably slightly more. $500 PS5 vs $530 SXS would be my guess.
 
I think it's hard to establish a BoM delta without looking at an ifixit breakdown IMO.
The SeriesX is spending more money on a larger SoC and a PCB with more memory channels, but it seems they're using a cheaper NVMe PCIe 3.0 4x (or PCIe 4.0 2x) SSD whereas Sony is using a much faster PCIe 4.0 4x one, with a more expensive dedicated IC for storage handling.

Then Sony is supporting regular M.2 SSDs that pass a certification test as expansion. The external PCIe 4.0 4x (in contrast to SeriesX's solution at half the bandwidth) might also be a bit more expensive to implement.
The ridiculously high clocks on the PS5's GPU may result in a more demanding cooling solution and perhaps a more expensive PSU.

In the end, the SeriesX should indeed be more expensive, but I wouldn't be surprised if it isn't.

What I do think is people expecting a $400 end-user price for the PS5 are going disappointed.
 
Id say XSX shouldnt be more then $20 expensive, if that. 50mm² larger SOC is probably something like that, but Sony is pushing their SOC much harder so I assume ~$20 is best case scenario for Sony, likely its smaller.

Which is to say - they will both be $499.
 
There were some articles saying sony is having a hard time getting under $460 ? I'd say that's about accurate and I would peg the xsx as slightly cheaper at $440
 
MS talked ML stuff where Sony didn't. Is that additional silicon for XBSX, or a standard RDNA2 feature Cerny didn't mention this time around? I imagine the latter (would suck for game progress if both platforms didn't have similar ML features).

Unless Cerny had it removed in order to have more transistor budget for other things, then the PS5 SOC should have support for Int8 and Int4.

The question is whether base RDNA 2 has support for 4x rate Int8 and 8x rate for Int4. I suspect those are MS specific customizations due to Andrew Goossens wording, but it's possible it might not be.

I suspect ML isn't high on the list Sony's priorities, but I'd love to be wrong on this.

Since the XBSX SOC will be used for Azure as well, the inclusion of features specific to ML isn't as much of a gamble as it would be if the SOC was only going to be used for gaming.

Regards,
SB
 
We could have a poll on final pricing. Also maybe some people would like to bet on $399 PS5 which I find highly unlikely.
 
A 50mm^2 difference in die size is fairly significant especially with 7nm since twice as many masks are needed for multiple patterning compared to the 16nm process.
 
I predict an identical 470 BOM for each.

X have a bigger SoC at 360mm2.

Ps5 have much better storage and lots of custom addition making the SoC size not as small as people expect (probably 310 to 320mm2), and it will have lower yield from the 2.23ghz clocking. There's custom sdd controller, 12ch (more smaller flash chips might cost more), custom kraken codec dwarfing the xbsx, and custom hrtf audio. The silicon size isn't just about rdna2/zen2.

Power probably around 200W for each.

Since performance will be a wash on average (each having some advantages/disadvantages), so will BOM, so will retail at 499.

Sony will later gain an advantage in BOM with the slim revision however. The power "knee" in the efficiency curve will shift below 2.23 at future nodes, and they will have a much better yield and efficiency at low power than they probably have right now at 7nm. So it will be back to silicon size as cost, I doubt it will be dramatic. Maybe $20 or something over a $200 cost. And at this point no more fancy cooling system (which they haven't unveiled yet).
 
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BOM = Bill of Materials

It's a manifest of the items used for a product. The difference between BOM and Price is there can be business decisions to sell a product for less than it costs to make to get consumers coming back for other related items.

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Refill Razor Blades for $8
 
Note that the BOM cost of the PS5 SOC can be higher than it seems.

If PS5 was originally intended to ship with 2GHz GPU clocks, but they panic-increased the peak clock to 2.23 when they found out about 12TF, they have to pay the cost of that not just in higher power draw and heat, but also in the form of lower parametric yields. This means more expensive SOCs. Assuming it's 50mm^2 smaller, but high clocks cause the loss of 5% of otherwise functional chips, the PS5 SOC would be only ~10% cheaper than the XSX one. If it makes yields 10% worse, the SOC is only ~5% cheaper.

In general, I don't really see where to get a $100 or really even a $50 difference in cost here. If MS is aggressive and wants to go for market share, I can totally see them price-matching PS5 with XSX.
 
I don't see in any universe where Sony or Microsoft panics and makes changes that will effect cost.

Yet we have one of them announcing the first ever console with boost clocks 2 days after the other announced the "Fastest. Most Powerful." But then again that could be just a coincidence & it was the plan all along? :/ I'll take "Occam's Razor" for $500 Alex.

Tommy McClain
 
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