Estimate a BOM delta for PS5 and XBSX

[arhra]

But MS talked about the audio solution. Read or maybe you don't know how to read. The XSX uses project Acoustics and a DSP to replay the prebaked 3d sound.

No. Project Acoustics isn't a spatial audio solution (at least, not on its own).

They have a separate part of their software stack for spatial audio (see their 2019 GDC talk), which already supports much of what Sony are promising (albeit with a lower object count) on an Xbox One from 2013.

Project Acoustics just provides a highly detailed data set that can be used to drive reverb/etc in a way that's much more detailed and accurate than artist-placed reverb volumes, or anything that could be approximated in realtime (even using raytracing hardware). I highly recommend watching the first Project Triton presentation from GDC 2017, which covers the research that lead to it (Project Triton was the initial research project, Project Acoustics is the final product version) and its initial implementation into Gears of War 4.

Also, Project Acoustics is actually multi-platform, available through MS's Gamestack middleware on Windows, Mac OS, Xbox One, and Android currently, with the presentation from last year promising support for Sony and Nintendo platforms in the future, via plugins for Unity, Unreal, and Wwise (with custom engines possible with additional work).

When MS talk about dedicated hardware to support it, I'd assume that just means some dedicated processing cores (whether that's off-the-shelf DSP cores from someone like Tensilica, customised AMD CUs, or something completely different) that can handle a ton of DSP work for doing reverb, etc, although given that this is MS, I'd expect that to be exposed via an API, rather than the direct programmability that Sony are providing (the same chunk of hardware will likely also be handling HRTFs and other psychoacouatic effects).

I'd expect that Sony will have a definite advantage in flexibility (which they may pay for in future generations when they want to provide backwards compatibility...), but there's not enough data to say who has the more powerful audio processing hardware, since MS haven't talked about that at all (for previous consoles, they've done presentations at HotChips that would include some of that information, but this year who knows how or if they'll present that info).

 

[chris1515]

If there are virtual channels in nand...

Launch:
Internal: 12x 667MT downclocked at 600MT (5.6GB/s)
External: 8x 1033MT minimum (6.5GB/s for equivalent perf without priority queues)

Later models:
Internal 6x 1200MT (heh, that downclock was a delayed gratification, 1333 is not a valid onfi protocol)
External: 8x 1033MT or 4x 2133MT minimum

Super slim:
3x 2400MT

Those should allow 7-8 years of cost reduction and third party devices compatibility.

Sony will need to make sure the ONFI specs are matching what they need in the future to get a reduction of nand chips as soon as possible, but they are co-writing the specs so they got this covered. I wouldn't be surprised to see 667 chips downclocked to 600 at launch, if they know what's cooking in the oven already.

http://www.onfi.org/-/media/client/onfi/specs/onfi_4_2-gold.pdf

https://www.researchgate.net/public...r_Cost-Efficient_NAND_Usage_in_Mobile_Devices

It seems it exist

 

[Shifty Geezer]

If it was comparable they would have spoken more about it.

I think that's very unsafe thinking. These companies are releasing more info over time and not dropping it all at our feet in one instance. MS haven't really talked about their audio yes because they've had a lot of other things to talk about. That doesn't mean their audio isn't also awesome.

Or rather, you're right, they'll tell us about it, but the deadline for telling us about their system hasn't passed. Maybe in July, MS will release a video from the top floor shouting about their audio?

For this Techinical Discussion, can we keep to the known facts and sensible assumptions and not try and fathom the mysteries of marketing to guess at the box designs. We have enough info to draw up some sort of BOM guesses and can put in margins of error to account for the unknowns.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Yea, I sort of dislike how Cerny's presentation is being described as 'for developers' when it seems very trivial to developers. I feel like it's actually targeted towards enthusiast gamer.

I think you're assuming all GDC presentations are aimed at code monkeys but only a few are. This talk was not aimed at AAA, AA or prominent indie developers, all of those folks will have had more information about PS5 than was revealed here, much sooner. This was a PS5 pitch to folks Sony have not yet reached on what PS5 can do and how easily it can do it, with clearly also some pride on tech technical advances made on solid state storage and the audio system. There are plenty of non-technical GDC conferences focussed on design, publishing, marketing, operational challenges, culture and more. The deep dive tech presentations; EA showcasing Frostbite, Naughty Dog talking animation, Insomniac on creating Spider-Man's New York - they are the exceptions to the typical conference content.

It's my comprehension of what Cerny was trying to do. When someone says their targeting at least something, their aiming at their potential maxima number.

Any engineer worth their salt, without a specific goal, will slightly lowball their technical target. The people who don't are either rare geniuses or lack the experience to know that having a high target is unrealistic for many reasons their inexperience has not prepared them for. Your target is what you're reasonably confident you can do. Like how PS4 targeted 4Gb GDDR5 but shipped with 8Gb.

I'm just on the inquisitive side of things. Sony's SSD solution sounds significantly too good to have 0 drawbacks. Sony's clocking solution also sounds too good to be true too, they got all of the super high clocking power with none of the down sides. All of it was presented with no drawbacks. And we know there are draw backs that are often related to heat, yields, form factors, TDP etc. And i"m looking for it, and it won't dissuade me from buying the console, but perhaps I may wait for a second revision/slim model just in case I'm not fully sold on version 1.

Who says their are no drawbacks? Cost, reliability, thermal considerations. I can't help feel you misunderstand the target audience of the 'The Road to PS5' presentation. In the presentation Mark Cerny said more details come in "our teardown", that may yield some of the information your crave.

 

[BRiT]

Can we focus more on the topic of Bill of Materials and less on items that should be in the other threads?

https://forum.beyond3d.com/threads/...n-rumors-and-discussions-post-gdc-2020.61645/
https://forum.beyond3d.com/threads/...-technical-spin-post-gdc-2020-xbsx-ps5.61641/​

 

[MrFox]

https://www.researchgate.net/public...r_Cost-Efficient_NAND_Usage_in_Mobile_Devices

It seems it exist

Ok I checked the onfi specs and the chips nowadays are dual 8bit interfaces, so we can definitely expect only 6 chips at 667 (downclocked at 600MT), and later revisions 3 chips at 1200MT with each channel split in two virtual ones.

All Phison controllers are essentially giving 32/41 of the raw nand bus speed, I would assume this is the ballpark ratio for calculating any controller.

MS 2 chips:
32/41 x 800MT x 2ch x 8bits x 2chips = 2.5GB/s

Sony 6 chips:
32/41 x 600MT x 2ch x 8bits x 6chips = 5.6GB/s

Sony 3 chips with VC:
32/41 x 1200MT x 2ch x 8bits x 3chips = 5.6GB/s

EDIT: The larger packages (bga-252) are quad 8bit channels. So they can have only 3 chips at launch even with 667MT parts.

Sony 3 chips bga-252:
32/41 x 600MT x 4ch x 8bits x 3chips = 5.6GB/s

 

[chris1515]

Ok I checked the onfi specs and the chips nowadays are dual 8bit interfaces, so we can definitely expect only 6 chips at 667 (downclocked at 600MT), and later revisions 3 chips at 1200MT with each channel split in two virtual ones.

All Phison controllers are essentially giving 32/41 of the raw nand bus speed, I would assume this is the ballpark ratio for calculating any controller.

MS 2 chips:
32/41 x 800MT x 2ch x 8bits x 2chips = 2.5GB/s

Sony 6 chips:
32/41 x 600MT x 2ch x 8bits x 6chips = 5.6GB/s

Sony 3 chips with VC:
32/41 x 1200MT x 2ch x 8bits x 3chips = 5.6GB/s

This looks good.

 

[dobwal]

I guess you can take this with a grain of salt but it’s not from your usual game site/twitter account.

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2...ony-limits-playstation-5-output/#.XpyY_iVlDDs

 

[MrFox]

I guess you can take this with a grain of salt but it’s not from your usual game site/twitter account.

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2...ony-limits-playstation-5-output/#.XpyY_iVlDDs

It's a report using a bloomberg rumor as the reference. If you believe it, how is it changing your BOM prediction?

 

[dobwal]

It's a report using a bloomberg rumor as the reference. If you believe it, how is it changing your BOM prediction?

I don’t have one. LOL. Other than they will probably be somewhere in the range of $400-$600. The article pop up when I searched “Sony fiscal year”. I just posted because I thought it would be relevant to the discussion.

Personally I feel BOM predictions are a shot into the dark. Pricing per unit of big contract orders covering tens of millions of units doesn’t seem like something you can parse easily and consistently by checking spot pricing on some exchange.

 

[MrFox]

I don’t have one. LOL. Other than they will probably be somewhere in the range of $400-$600. The article pop up when I searched “Sony fiscal year”. I just posted because I thought it would be relevant to the discussion.

Yeah, but there's so many estimates to go around it becomes cyclic, they use each other as sources. "people familiar in the matter" is becoming a running gag. It comes down to which one we believe and I am grumpy enough to disbelieve everything and everyone

 

[AlNom]

I'm something of an analyst myself.

 

[RDGoodla]

Do we have any idea of BOM of DualSence? Is it more expensive than xbox sx controller?

 

[PSman1700]

Do we have any idea of BOM of DualSence? Is it more expensive than xbox sx controller?

Probably very close. In looks, they have grown very close to eachother. It will also depend on actual quality of the controllers, which is a much more important aspect then just about anything else, also for the batteries which i hope are better this time around.

 

[AlNom]

There’s not much new to the SX controller apart from the extra button, right? So it shouldn’t be much more than current XO gamepads.

 

[Tkumpathenurpahl]

There's the gyroscope, touchpad, microphone array, and speaker in the DualSense. So there's definitely some amount of additional cost there. What amount though? $1? $10?

I can't find the supplier for the DualSense's haptic feedback either, so I can't even begin to guess if it would be any cheaper to license.

Edit: all in all, this hasn't been the most constructive post...

 

[Silent_Buddha]

They won't be manufacturing in house. I imagine they would use TSMC more cheaper and ubiquitous nodes like 28nm or 16/12nm which Phison uses for their own controllers. Or use Samsung's fabs like they've used in the past for stuff like PS Vita if i recall correctly.

Both companies using TSMC doesn't mean it's the same cost. If we assume that the controller chip is roughly the same size as the chip used in the XBSX then the 2 major influencers of cost per wafer will be.

• Quantity of wafers ordered. More wafers = lower cost per wafer.
  • We can likely assume that PS5 will sell between 10-20 million units a year possibly more, unikely to be less.
    • They'll use a number of wafers depending on how many PS5's they plan to make and thus how many controller chips.
  • Phison likely sells more than 100-200 million controller chips a year. IE - at least an order of magnitude more than Sony.
    • It doesn't matter how many controller chips any one customer orders.
    • It doesn't matter if a controller chip is only used by one customer or many customers.
    • The wafer costs for Phison will be the same because all their chips (on a given node) use the same wafers.
• Length of wafer contract. The longer the contract, the lower the cost.
  • This part would likely be similar between Sony and Phison. The PS5 is likely to be around for greater than 5 years, for example.

So, in terms of wafer contract prices, Phison is going to be able to negotiate much lower costs than Sony. Even with resell margins from Phison so they make a profit, it can still end up cheaper than an in house chip by Sony. This all assumes that Sony isn't contracting an SSD controller maker to design their controller for them. Something we don't yet know.

The major benefit for an in house design isn't generally costs. It's that you get something that is designed specifically for your purposes. And customers are generally willing to pay more if there is no off the shelf part that meets their demands.

There are always exceptions, of course. A vendor like Apple sells in such high volumes that they can get highly discounted prices if they desire. However, due to them usually reserving priority for new nodes, they may actually be paying more per wafer (when that priority cost is factored in) than competitors who have to wait for availability on new nodes.

Regards,
SB

 

[dobwal]

There's the gyroscope, touchpad, microphone array, and speaker in the DualSense. So there's definitely some amount of additional cost there. What amount though? $1? $10?

I can't find the supplier for the DualSense's haptic feedback either, so I can't even begin to guess if it would be any cheaper to license.

Edit: all in all, this hasn't been the most constructive post...

No one is even considering the battery which isn’t even part of the Xbox controller’s BOM.

 

[chris1515]

No one is even considering the battery which isn’t even part of the Xbox controller’s BOM.

Out of haptic feedback, microphone and adaptative trigger all of this was part of dualshock 4 and it cost only 3 dollars more than Xbox controller. I suppose the PS5 controller will cost 5 or 6 dollars more than the Xbox Series one.

 

[goonergaz]

Out of haptic feedback, microphone and adaptative trigger all of this was part of dualshock 4 and it cost only 3 dollars more than Xbox controller. I suppose the PS5 controller will cost 5 or 6 dollars more than the Xbox Series one.

yes, I would think they need to keep any updates within a reasonable % of the DS4 $3-4 would represent around 15-25% I can’t see it being much more, especially if XSX controller is likely to remain around the same as last gen