Question Speculation: RDNA2 + CDNA Architectures thread

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uzzi38

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Oct 16, 2019
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All die sizes are within 5mm^2. The poster here has been right on some things in the past afaik, and to his credit was the first to saying 505mm^2 for Navi21, which other people have backed up. Even still though, take the following with a pich of salt.

Navi21 - 505mm^2

Navi22 - 340mm^2

Navi23 - 240mm^2

Source is the following post: https://www.ptt.cc/bbs/PC_Shopping/M.1588075782.A.C1E.html
 

MrTeal

Diamond Member
Dec 7, 2003
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Tomorrow we'll see if the Axial blower is any good or not. I believe Nvidia has quite a silent and cool design coming up.
Keep in mind Nvidia doesn't have an axial blower. They have one fan acting as you describe, and then one pushing air unobstructed through a large fin array at the back of the card. Looking at least at the information that's public so far I would imagine the back fan is responsible for dissipating several times more heat than the front fan.
 

Zstream

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Oct 24, 2005
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It makes sense for consoles since while you don't know what demand will be, there's little downside to overproducing since you know you will sell it eventually. Well, as long as yields are good. MS has said the Series X SoC yield is good.
I'm not going to argue your position because it's all opinion. However, I firmly believe that Sony, to sell 15M units on revision 1 of the SoC, with a Microsoft console released at the same time, plus a world pandemic with Covid, and lastly PC refreshes.. was not only ignorant, but downright stupid. This is why they had to decrease production.
 

Zstream

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Oct 24, 2005
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Keep in mind Nvidia doesn't have an axial blower. They have one fan acting as you describe, and then one pushing air unobstructed through a large fin array at the back of the card. Looking at least at the information that's public so far I would imagine the back fan is responsible for dissipating several times more heat than the front fan.
I'd like to see a axial fan on the GPU running at a set speed, never changing, while a centrifugal fan pushing cool air from the outside towards the axial fan. The amount of air pressure pushed towards the GPU by the centrifugal fan would keep the GPU cool all while pushing a majority of it out the back of the case.
 

A///

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Feb 24, 2017
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That's interesting. See of Sony coroborates anything.


Article says as low as 50%, not less than. Also says 11 million chips made, doesn't specify a time period though. Current us fiscal year ends 31st September.

I was under the impression the chips were made to order based on monthly projections, rather than bulk manufacturing. How long would it take to sell 11 million units?
The original articles from earlier in the year were that Sony projected 6M orders through March 2021. Then, they later increased that order. However, this new article says they reduced by 4M units, to 11M units. Which implies at some point Sony increased their 10M updated order to 15M units by March 2021.


You don't have to sell all those units by then. I don't believe Sony follows JIT protocols because it caused them shortages in the past. The PS4 since its original launch has sold, maybe 40M units or just a bit more. Or they could sell it all by then. It's difficult to say given how much people are spending time at home, and realistically we won't have say 50% of the global population inoculated against COVID. Peleton sales are through the roof, for example. It's an expensive bike, but a couple who makes 40-50K each can afford it and split the cost. Home fitness equipment has been on fire since March.

I don't believe in the 50% yield issue. The reporter is known for lying and barred by many Japanese firms, according to those who know his work. 7nm+ on EUV isn't new to TSMC. It's a mature node at this point. It reads like a hit piece.
 
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blckgrffn

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I'm not going to argue your position because it's all opinion. However, I firmly believe that Sony, to sell 15M units on revision 1 of the SoC, with a Microsoft console released at the same time, plus a world pandemic with Covid, and lastly PC refreshes.. was not only ignorant, but downright stupid. This is why they had to decrease production.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

For all of 2020, every console made has been sold, near as I can tell from trying to buy them myself. Despite looming refreshes.

In my mind, Sony was aggressive because the stakes are huge. Let's say by the end of Q1 both MS and Sony have sold every console they could build.

If Sony has 2x the consoles in the wild - not mention their clear demarcation in generations - they will be well on their way to holding the same advantage in the next generation as they have in this one.

I haven't really seen the numbers that MS has been expecting to build, but it seems much lower Sony's position. The S is also a much smaller console in terms of how much silicon it requires, so I guess we'll just have to see how it plays out.

Each console refresh seems to be a moment in time (6-12 months) where the next several years of revenue are built upon and can be nearly life or death. I have zero problems with Sony being very aggressive on this front. Worst case they have too much product and low liquidity in 2021? The downside of that seems small compared with what flipping sales positions with MS might mean.
 

Zstream

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Oct 24, 2005
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¯\_(ツ)_/¯

For all of 2020, every console made has been sold, near as I can tell from trying to buy them myself. Despite looming refreshes.

In my mind, Sony was aggressive because the stakes are huge. Let's say by the end of Q1 both MS and Sony have sold every console they could build.

If Sony has 2x the consoles in the wild - not mention their clear demarcation in generations - they will be well on their way to holding the same advantage in the next generation as they have in this one.

I haven't really seen the numbers that MS has been expecting to build, but it seems much lower Sony's position. The S is also a much smaller console in terms of how much silicon it requires, so I guess we'll just have to see how it plays out.

Each console refresh seems to be a moment in time (6-12 months) where the next several years of revenue are built upon and can be nearly life or death. I have zero problems with Sony being very aggressive on this front. Worst case they have too much product and low liquidity in 2021? The downside of that seems small compared with what flipping sales positions with MS might mean.
You’re assuming Sony sticks to a single revision. There is absolutely no need to stock pile these chips, while they can make enhancements and changes after six months and still satisfy quantity. There is no way they will sell 15 million chips in the first six months, ever.
 

jpiniero

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Oct 1, 2010
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You’re assuming Sony sticks to a single revision. There is absolutely no need to stock pile these chips, while they can make enhancements and changes after six months and still satisfy quantity. There is no way they will sell 15 million chips in the first six months, ever.

They don't make changes that quickly.

I'm starting to wonder if it's a poor machine translation and not verbatim...

The english version of the article says the same thing.
 

blckgrffn

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You’re assuming Sony sticks to a single revision. There is absolutely no need to stock pile these chips, while they can make enhancements and changes after six months and still satisfy quantity. There is no way they will sell 15 million chips in the first six months, ever.

They said they needed that many chips by the end of Q1 - that's probably not the same as having a box sitting on a shelf at Best Buy waiting for some lucky soul to pick it up?

Over three quarters of actual availability world wide 15M is just PS4 numbers transferred to the PS5, so long as the initial sales are in order. First three quarters of PS4 sales look like ~11M units.

Again, if having them on the shelf when your competitor is sold out changes a customer preference for the next 5-7 years, I'd probably make the same investment. Especially if an outbreak can cripple your supply chain. Get as many units that you can sell as fast as possible.

I import for sale for the business I own. We are leveraging buying more than normal now because lockdowns are devastating.

Reference used: https://www.statista.com/statistics/222403/unit-sales-of-sonys-gaming-hardware-by-category/
 

MrTeal

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I don't know if the pace has slowed with the newer consoles, but the PS2 had 18 revisions. Not only were they fixing issues, but the system continued to simplify and reduce in cost throughout its run. Rev 1 is going to be the most expensive and riskiest version of the console you produces, I don't imagine a manufacturer would want to produce any more of them than they need to make it to the next improved version.
 

insertcarehere

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Jan 17, 2013
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I don't know if the pace has slowed with the newer consoles, but the PS2 had 18 revisions. Not only were they fixing issues, but the system continued to simplify and reduce in cost throughout its run. Rev 1 is going to be the most expensive and riskiest version of the console you produces, I don't imagine a manufacturer would want to produce any more of them than they need to make it to the next improved version.

The PS2 had a 13 year production run, started production on a 250nm process and ended up in 65nm, which allowed much of those revisions. I don't see much gains on the table for new-gen console revisions in the near term with a mature 7nm process, chassis designed to dissipate the chipset power, and digital-only console versions at launch.
 

A///

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Feb 24, 2017
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The PS2 had a 13 year production run, started production on a 250nm process and ended up in 65nm, which allowed much of those revisions. I don't see much gains on the table for new-gen console revisions in the near term with a mature 7nm process, chassis designed to dissipate the chipset power, and digital-only console versions at launch.
Today's hardware also has less moving parts and is generally more reliable than ever before. I think the first half of the PS2's life was plagued with drive/laser issues.
 
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Hitman928

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I don't know if the pace has slowed with the newer consoles, but the PS2 had 18 revisions. Not only were they fixing issues, but the system continued to simplify and reduce in cost throughout its run. Rev 1 is going to be the most expensive and riskiest version of the console you produces, I don't imagine a manufacturer would want to produce any more of them than they need to make it to the next improved version.

This is what Wikipedia has for the PS4

1600187450778.png

Looks like the first revision came out about a year after launch which means they were probably getting updated parts (where necessary) from suppliers for the new consoles about 6 - 8 months after the PS4 launched. I don't know what was updated in the new revision.
 

MrTeal

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This is what Wikipedia has for the PS4

View attachment 29891

Looks like the first revision came out about a year after launch which means they were probably getting updated parts (where necessary) from suppliers for the new consoles about 6 - 8 months after the PS4 launched. I don't know what was updated in the new revision.
Within those versions how many PCB/part revisions were there though, if any? IE, what about the xx's? At least with the fat PS2, there were 11 revisions most without apparent outside changes other than the exact model number or even serial number sequence. The internals could be wildly different though.
 

Hitman928

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Within those versions how many PCB/part revisions were there though, if any? IE, what about the xx's? At least with the fat PS2, there were 11 revisions most without apparent outside changes other than the exact model number or even serial number sequence. The internals could be wildly different though.

It's a good question but I don't know, I don't follow consoles very closely, this was just what a quick google search came up with.
 

Hitman928

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Within those versions how many PCB/part revisions were there though, if any? IE, what about the xx's? At least with the fat PS2, there were 11 revisions most without apparent outside changes other than the exact model number or even serial number sequence. The internals could be wildly different though.

Another quick google search found this:


It says the XX numbers are regional codes.

So based on this info and the above Wikipedia chart, it seems the PS4 went through yearly revisions up to 2017. If the PS5 were to follow the same pattern, then starting mid next year Sony would already be on new chip/component revisions for consoles to come out 4Q2021.
 

Hitman928

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If that's true, there was ~15M or so of Rev 1 of the original PS4. I don't think this is that crazy if Sony is seeing another console selling north of 100M units.

15M seems a bit high. Sony said they sold 10M PS4s by Aug 2014. Some google searching shows the revised console was on store shelves by Sept 2014. Obviously there will be some overlap, but the overwhelming majority of the 4Q sales of 2014 should have been the new console at that point.
 

blckgrffn

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Fair enough. The link I posted earlier had either just over 10M through the first three quarters or ~13.5M sold through the first four quarters.

August 2014 would have been an awkward time to get a total as the is in the middle of one the quarters Sony reports. Their fiscal year appears to start on April 1st. Q2 would then end at the end of September.

Anyway, IMO hair splitting. We'll see if being bullish pays off. I think it will, the relative utility of a gaming console has shot up in the pandemic times and will likely only increase during the winter here in the US. Escapism ftw.
 

Hitman928

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Fair enough. The link I posted earlier had either just over 10M through the first three quarters or ~13.5M sold through the first four quarters.

August 2014 would have been an awkward time to get a total as the is in the middle of one the quarters Sony reports. Their fiscal year appears to start on April 1st.

I don't know how accurate Statista is in their numbers. Thankfully Sony was bragging up and down about their console sales in the first couple of years of the PS4's life so it's easy to get accurate numbers, lol.
 

kurosaki

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Feb 7, 2019
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Keep in mind Nvidia doesn't have an axial blower. They have one fan acting as you describe, and then one pushing air unobstructed through a large fin array at the back of the card. Looking at least at the information that's public so far I would imagine the back fan is responsible for dissipating several times more heat than the front fan.
Of course the axial "blower" has to dissipate quite a lot of air and heat. The card would probably burn out, at least throttle very hard of one functioning fan only. Best bet is that at least 40% heat is going out from the back. Would be easy enough to stop one fan at a time and observe throttling/ high temps.
 

DisEnchantment

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Mar 3, 2017
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VCN 3.0 of Navi2x supports AV1.

The hilarious thing is that they used magic numbers all along, and replaced them recently with defines :eek:
So the support was there but no one knows what the magic hex mask is all about until they replaced it with a define

Sienna gets PCI IDs :D



C:
+    {0x1002, 0x73A0, PCI_ANY_ID, PCI_ANY_ID, 0, 0, CHIP_SIENNA_CICHLID},
+    {0x1002, 0x73A2, PCI_ANY_ID, PCI_ANY_ID, 0, 0, CHIP_SIENNA_CICHLID},
+    {0x1002, 0x73A3, PCI_ANY_ID, PCI_ANY_ID, 0, 0, CHIP_SIENNA_CICHLID},
+    {0x1002, 0x73AB, PCI_ANY_ID, PCI_ANY_ID, 0, 0, CHIP_SIENNA_CICHLID},
+    {0x1002, 0x73AE, PCI_ANY_ID, PCI_ANY_ID, 0, 0, CHIP_SIENNA_CICHLID},
+    {0x1002, 0x73BF, PCI_ANY_ID, PCI_ANY_ID, 0, 0, CHIP_SIENNA_CICHLID}


There are VRS registers as well.
 
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GodisanAtheist

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I guess we're out in left field here, but Black Griffin makes a good point about front loading sales. I doubt data exists publicly, but I'd bet dollars to donuts that launch console sales end up being much more profitable for Sony and MS, even with cost cutting revisions that are launched later.

A launch console is an opportunity to sell someone every brand new sparkling $60 $70 game and the associated licensing fees. People who buy the console later might simply never buy older games or if they do they will buy them at a significant discount with lower margins.

Additionally, Covid is a double edged sword: Yes a lot of people are hurting in terms of money, but there are also a lot of other people who have nothing but digital experiences competing for their money. With nowhere to go and nothing to do, even people that might have waited for a better deal might have money in their pocket to pick up a new console at launch.

I can see the logic of picking up a large number of chips and making sure that some stir crazy customer with a wad of cash in their hand doesn't buy your competitor's console or something else entirely.
 
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