7nm shrink or any node shrinks may be part of a contract with AMD. I would declare this as standard cost savings, the same could be going into 1S. And 1X could experience a shrink as well. It’s not like sales for devices will suddenly stall for the next 2 years and growth has been increasing for Xbox.
Good point. But I'm not sure whether node shrinks are necessarily part of their agreement and, if so, how many shrinks?
I've been under the impression, possibly misapprehension, that there would be a cost to bear, for Microsoft or Sony, for any given node shrink. At least, when an existing node hasn't been retired.
On that basis, I've considered it possible that it may just be cheaper to use existing 7nm parts i.e. an 8 core, 1.75Ghz Zen 2, with a 12CU Navi.
The memory's probably tricky, but given that the X1X dispensed with SRAM, it's possible. Maybe too expensive though, given that the X1X's solution was 12GB of GDDR5 on a 384 bit bus.
TV is already there, they won’t spend the R&D to take it out. But if it’s a small form factor they may remove as many ports as possible.
HDMI out, power, digital audio, Ethernet. Maybe USB if there is spce
Oh, I thought the XBoxOneS had already removed the TV in thing. Fair enough then, it'd be a pretty good inclusion, but yeah, agreed, I think it's one of the first things on the chopping block if the form factor's small enough.
A 7nm XB1 will be the smallest, cheapest option, surely? Any other solution that's more powerful will be more silicon so cost more, plus the added development of making it perfectly XB1 compatible.
Possibly, especially if iroboto's right about node shrinks being included in their agreements.
I'm really curious how close we are to seeing GPU chiplets. Zen 2's there already, Navi may or may not be. Being able to take some fairly low binning CPU and GPU chiplets and bash them together with some GDDR6 could make this device reeeeeally cheap.
And at that point, why not just push the BOM up another $10-$20 and use slightly higher binning parts? And maybe each GPU chiplet's 20CU's, even 10 CU's, would 12CU's be the right amount any more?
That's a lot of maybes
As for the development of making it XBoxOne compatible, if it was the XBoxTwo architecture in its most minimal form, that development would be done anyway.