Is this the PS5's cooling system?
https://pdfaiw.uspto.gov/.aiw?PageNum=0&docid=20200126884&IDKey=0F180FFF3C7A
EDIT: well, obviously just a tiny part, mostly a heartsink innovation from the looks of it, bringing the heartsink to both sides of the mb.
It may be possible that this is applied to something in the PS5 or associated with it, but there are a lot of components in the console or peripherals that might use this. I think a lot of the scenarios outlined are not important to the APU or may interfere with components with high power and connectivity requirements.
If so, what are the benefits ?
More freedom in component placement, and potentially some ancillary improvements in cooling efficiency, component stacking, cooling encased chips in an inline package, and minimizing heatsink mounting pressure during.
However, a lot of those are usually not limited in this manner for a central processor. The top-mounted heatpipes or vapor chambers are already more than sufficient compared to a through-board heatsink, and the heat density and wiring requirements don't play well with stacking or encasing the APU in a plastic block with other components. The APU is very likely to need high mounting pressure for its optimal transfer characteristics, so backing off on that seems counterproductive and might be a source of variation in thermal performance between individual consoles.
I don't see a major demand for mounting a wireless transmitter on top of the Zen cores, and I don't know of a reasonable thermal interface material that would function equivalently to a standard mounting when the through-PCB solution would be the equivalent of having a thermal pad or thermal grease application as thick as a PCB and BGA substrate.
The spacing requirements for the high-speed DRAM buses tend to give breathing room for the APU, regardless.
It's a broad patent in other ways, with many choices in how the PCB is structured, what package the chips are in, or what materials join the sides together. Some of the options like having a lot of metal under the chip, large thermal connections relative to the solder balls, or making the thermal links part of electrical ground may not play well with the sort of connectivity needs of a high-speed chip, but I'm not familiar with the (edit: signalling) needs of chips like that.
Perhaps other components with more modest power dissipation and electrical needs could find a use case. Smaller controllers or support components could fit this more readily and might not need high-performing heat transfer. LEDs, motors, and inverters are also mentioned and they have more tractable connectivity and power needs.
The focus on layout, multi-component inline packages, LEDs, motors, and combining of a specialized PCB's production and thermal interface could point to a space-constrained element like a controller, perhaps.
Maybe some other board elements in the console's main board could use this, we haven't seen indications of Sony's layout for the PS5.
Perhaps some of the power-delivery components have the underside space and can tolerate some of the limitations such cooling could have. The SSD might be be modest enough in power consumption, although I'm not certain about the connection requirements of the controller and all the NAND chips.
Many modern PC mainboards have heatpipes and sinks wrapping around them and going through them, as a good example.
None of them try to drill through to the underside of a major SOC, however.
