n the here and now, we can safely assume that both Sony and Microsoft are moving on to the core design of their next-gen successors, which become viable from a manufacturing perspective in 2019, when next-gen 7nm processor fabrication is expected to be mature enough to accommodate the demands of a new console launch. And with the arrival of AMD's Ryzen/Vega-based APUs, launching today (with Digital Foundry review coverage to follow), we may well be getting our first look at the building blocks of tomorrow's PlayStation and Xbox. Based on a revised 14nmFF process,
AMD has integrated a quad-core Ryzen block and 11 Vega compute units in an area approximately 210mm2. Scaling down those components to what we expect from the new 7nm process on a similar area used by PS4 Pro and Xbox One X offers up some fascinating options for the platform holders - something we'll be returning to soon.