Why would it be stuck to Zen 1/1.5 if it's a monolithic chip?
The PC Zen 2 APUs are predicted to come in Q4 2019 and those should bring Zen 2 and Navi, just like next-gen consoles.
Because of the time involved in creating and verifying a custom part.
If they use an existing Zen2 chiplet, they know the chiplet is good because it has already been verified for use in Ryzen and Epyc systems.
If they do a single APU consisting of CPU + GPU, there is a considerable cost in integrating the CPU parts into the rest of the system.
If it's an APU design they probably needed to start the design, what 12-24 months ago?
How far along was the Zen2 arch at that time? were they confident enough in the core arch to start integrating it into a monolothic APU?
maybe?
Perhaps i should have said i think it's a higher possibility of proper Zen2 if the console uses a chiplet design.
I didn't mean a 1:1, chiplet design = Zen2, pure APU = Zen1/1.5,
just i think, and imho only, a chiplet design is more likely to have the most recent CPU cores as part of the system.
Also there are the fab benefits to a chiplet design using 2 smaller dies, and even the ability to shrink 1 part independently of the other. 7nm+? anyone.
At the cost of overall system complexity of course...
Hell, we might end up with both options?
2 different consoles with very close performance, but quite different internal structure...
Sony with chiplet APU design, 8c/16th Zen2 + 10TF GPU
MS with a slightly "custom Zen2 like CPU", in an APU design but still 8c/16th + 10TF GPU.
(if your gonna go for a custom APU, then it's possible to do CPU customizations in the process, hence the "custom CPU")
** TF numbers pulled from thin air!
as always - speculation