Console hardware: what Sony/MS went with versus what they should have

[ShintaiDK]

Here's the cost breakdown of the PS4 -

APU $100
GDDR5 RAM $88
power supply $20
Optical $28
Hard drive $37
electro-mechanical (cooling?) $35
Other (motherboard?) $40
Controller $18
Box/packing $6
Manufactruing cost $9

Total: $381
source

Thats the factory cost tho. No shipping, no software, no RMA, no sales cost, no support, no R&D etc.

 

[mrmt]

OT, hmm though the analysts said low teens margins? or are those numbers just for argumentts sake?

ot what were the margins for intel on the xbox one :hmm:

Mid-teens.

 

[AnandThenMan]

Thats the factory cost tho. No shipping, no software, no RMA, no sales cost, no support, no R&D etc.

Right, but this thread is not about those things.

 

[Tuna-Fish]

The issue with the consoles wasn't the choice of manufacturer or the specific type of CPU or GPU, it was that both of the main console vendors chose to go for a sales price of near $400, and a mostly unsubsidized hardware.

At that price point, the total budget you have for the major silicon, that is, GPU, CPU and RAM, is well below $200. Both of the modern consoles at launch spent less than half on the main parts than the previous gen consoles did. At this price point, I really cannot see any discrete parts winning over an apu solution. Remember that discrete parts cause significant additional expenses in high-speed signaling and the like.

So, as the price point necessitated an APU, the choice of manufacturer was really simple. IBM had no decent GPU, nVidia had no decent CPU, Intel would have been way, way too expensive.

The choice between the small and big cores is interesting. The best big core that would have made the mfg cutoff was probably Piledriver -- apparently both of the vendors decided that the weaker cores were better.

 

[Rezist]

ARM is the future of consoles, no one wanted to buy a 700$ PS3 and it almost bankrupted Sony. If the APU is 100$ like suggested I'm sure Sony feels it still costs too much.

 

[AnandThenMan]

The PS3 initially cost over $800 to produce IIRC. But it had Cell, Reality Engine, Emotion engine (lol at component names) XDR memory and the blu ray drive which at the time was very costly. Put another way the hardware was overly complicated and expensive given the performance.

 

[Fjodor2001]

3Ghz+ 2M4T SR.

And drop the silly TV wannabee.

Could you fit that within the same TDP as for current XBONE/PS4, while keeping the same amount of GPU units?

I.e. will 3GHz+ 2M4T SR consume less power than 8 Jaguar cores at 1.6 GHz?

And what about die area (implicitly cost)?

 

[el etro]

I personally think Sony and Microsoft needed at least R7870 graphical levels. But the die size of the chip is already toping at 550mm² and the cost of the chip is making zero profit to Sony... so this generation consoles became what they(this generation consoles) need to be.

No regrets, then.












Everybody knows the life cycle of the console will be no more than 5 years, yes?

 

[frozentundra123456]

being weak is a relative term, weak relative to what? intel haswell cores? arm cores? ppc cores? mips cores? etc. The constant repetition of the "weak cores" mantra seems more like FUD than an obvious truth.

Weak relative to the big core lineup of the only 2 major x86 cpu suppliers, which is what the posters are obviously referring to in this discussion. Or if you want to bring in more irrelevant comparisons, maybe we should compare it to a 15 core server cpu. Is it perhaps weak relative to that?

Is this specific enough for you or do you need a list of every Haswell and FX processor with a higher ipc and clockspeed than the cpu cores in the consoles.

Honestly, I am trying to be nice here and grant that the console cpus are a decent compromise. If you want to accuse me of spreading FUD, go right ahead, I don't really care.

 

[monstercameron]

Weak relative to the big core lineup of the only 2 major x86 cpu suppliers, which is what the posters are obviously referring to in this discussion. Or if you want to bring in more irrelevant comparisons, maybe we should compare it to a 15 core server cpu. Is it perhaps weak relative to that?



Is this specific enough for you or do you need a list of every Haswell and FX processor with a higher ipc and clockspeed than the cpu cores in the consoles.



Honestly, I am trying to be nice here and grant that the console cpus are a decent compromise. If you want to accuse me of spreading FUD, go right ahead, I don't really care.

Come on, don't make this personal. Also Idc if you grant whatever. That's your opinion. Weak is a relative term, we can't just say that it's a weak cpu.

The constant complaints of it being a weak processor seems like a fud attack. Especially since it is more than competitive with its contemporaries.

 

[Chevron]

I really don't think exotic cooling is an option also. It's not just the power within the console you have to worry about, you also have to be concern about the power being dumped into the general vicinity. I actually think both MS and especially Sony went too far by even allowing the consoles to exceed 100 watts overall. Remember this in many homes will be stuck in a wooden badly isolated entertainment hutch. Imagine the typical home with an entertainment hutch, you chuck a 100 watt light bulb in there and a fire is almost inevitable.

I had to now Google what an "Entertainment hutch" was. Never heard the term before. I know them as home/theatre cabinets.

On topic though, I think Sony/M$ did the smart thing going x86 and apu.

x86 so that the dev cost can be spread around once a pc version is taken into account.

APU as separate CPU and GPU produces more heat and is expensive to produce.

 

[ShintaiDK]

I personally think Sony and Microsoft needed at least R7870 graphical levels. But the die size of the chip is already toping at 550mm² and the cost of the chip is making zero profit to Sony... so this generation consoles became what they(this generation consoles) need to be.

The diesizes are nowhere near 550mm2. They are 348mm2 and 363mm2.

 

[AnandThenMan]

So how about this:

Intel 4-core CPU ??$
Nvidia GPU ??$
GPU/CPU bridge ??$
GPU memory $80
CPU memory $65
power supply $20
Optical $28
Hard drive $37
electro-mechanical (cooling?) $35
Other (motherboard and components?) $40
Controller $18
Box/packing $6
Manufacturing cost $9

I honestly don't know what to put down for cost of the CPU/GPU and whatever link/bridge/interface used to tie them together. Anyone want to venture a guess?

 

[ShintaiDK]

So how about this:

Intel 4-core CPU ??$
Nvidia GPU ??$
GPU/CPU bridge ??$
GPU memory $80
CPU memory $65
power supply $20
Optical $28
Hard drive $37
electro-mechanical (cooling?) $35
Other (motherboard and components?) $40
Controller $18
Box/packing $6
Manufacturing cost $9

I honestly don't know what to put down for cost of the CPU/GPU and whatever link/bridge/interface used to tie them together. Anyone want to venture a guess?

Why do you need 4 cores and twice the memory?

 

[AnandThenMan]

Why do you need 4 cores and twice the memory?

Same amount of memory, non unified means you need GDDR5 and DDR3 or 4. Pros and cons to either approach. 2 cores would be pathetic.

 

[futurefields]

they could have still used an amd cpu, 4 amd desktop cores at 3.2ghz would give vastly better game performance than what they are using now

i honestly think the system designers were OK with less CPU power because they see the rise of mobile gaming, etc... gaming is trending towards simpler games with prettier graphics aka low cpu overhead high gpu overhead, which goes against what hardcore gamers want out of their games which are more complex systems and worlds

 

[Fjodor2001]

So how about this:

Intel 4-core CPU ??$
Nvidia GPU ??$
GPU/CPU bridge ??$
GPU memory $80
CPU memory $65
power supply $20
Optical $28
Hard drive $37
electro-mechanical (cooling?) $35
Other (motherboard and components?) $40
Controller $18
Box/packing $6
Manufacturing cost $9

I honestly don't know what to put down for cost of the CPU/GPU and whatever link/bridge/interface used to tie them together. Anyone want to venture a guess?

I think you've blown both the TDP and $ budget with that BOM.

 

[monstercameron]

Same amount of memory, non unified means you need GDDR5 and DDR3 or 4. Pros and cons to either approach. 2 cores would be pathetic.

Doesn't mean you would have to duplicate capacity between cpu and gpu. Read 2 8gb pools of memory.

 

[monstercameron]

they could have still used an amd cpu, 4 amd desktop cores at 3.2ghz would give vastly better game performance than what they are using now

i honestly think the system designers were OK with less CPU power because they see the rise of mobile gaming, etc... gaming is trending towards simpler games with prettier graphics aka low cpu overhead high gpu overhead, which goes against what hardcore gamers want out of their games which are more complex systems and worlds

The industry is obviously going compute... Not simpler. Cerny did allegedly speak about tuning the design towards compute.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Same amount of memory, non unified means you need GDDR5 and DDR3 or 4. Pros and cons to either approach. 2 cores would be pathetic.

Memory could easily be unified.

You may feel 2 cores is pathetic. But those 2 cores run in circles around the current console hardware.

 

[ShintaiDK]

they could have still used an amd cpu, 4 amd desktop cores at 3.2ghz would give vastly better game performance than what they are using now

^^ This.

 

[Erenhardt]

Thats the factory cost tho. No shipping, no software, no RMA, no sales cost, no support, no R&D etc.

Those are someone estimates.

If you are willing to count all expanses then why ignore some income sources? Include PSN and xbox live subscriptions on the other side aswell as royalties from games.

3Ghz+ 2M4T SR.

And drop the silly TV wannabee.

3Ghz 4T SR would be about as fast as 8 cat cores at 1.5Ghz.

While there wasn't SR back in 2013 it probably would require more die area and more power to run than jaguar cores.

Also, jaguar core was designed with portability in mind, which is very important for console chips. Allowing easy and swift fab or process switching can be very profitable in the console lifecycle.

 

[AnandThenMan]

Doesn't mean you would have to duplicate capacity between cpu and gpu.

So what memory configuration then?

 

[el etro]

So how about this:

I honestly don't know what to put down for cost of the CPU/GPU and whatever link/bridge/interface used to tie them together. Anyone want to venture a guess?

Ok, i will draw some more speculation here:

Raise the console TDP;

Put cat cores at 2GHZ(Sadly Puma was not ready to PS4);
Put 1536 stream processors at the same clock;



Putting Tahiti on PS4/X1 would made the console GPU being bigger than ever. Cost avoid is what the console makers did.

 

[monstercameron]

So what memory configuration then?

The target is 1080p for this gen. So maybe a gpu frame buffer of 2gb gddr5 would work with the cpu getting 8gb ddr3.