Sony refreshed its PlayStation 5 console a couple of month in the past. Gaming tech lovers have revealed little by little, the underlying modifications delivered with the CFI-1202 consoles on the internet and social media. The crucial distinction that precipitated the brand new compact cooling system and lighter construct is Sony’s shiny new Oberon Plus processor contained in the refreshed consoles.
The primary two revisions of the Sony PlayStation 5 used the identical AMD semi-custom processor. Then, what we within the PC world would describe because the ‘APU’ within the PS5, was dubbed Oberon and was fabricated on TSMC’s N7 course of. Based on Angstronomics’ report, backed up with refreshed APU comparability imagery, the brand new Oberon Plus is current within the CFI-1202 fashions, mass-produced by TSMC on the N6 course of. It’s simple to identify variations within the chip packages, and the supply calculates that the newer processor has a die dimension of under 260mm^2 – fairly a discount from roughly 300mm^2 for the Oberon.
The brand new Oberon Plus brings sensible advantages to the PS5 CFI-1202 fashions with its die shrink. Formally (opens in new tab), TSMC’s N6 “delivers 18% greater logic density over the N7 course of,” in addition to being absolutely design rule suitable with beforehand produced N7 chips for extra simple migration. Nevertheless, TSMC’s linked press launch doesn’t point out among the related advantages of transferring from N7 to N6; in addition to the smaller die, a processor can see decrease energy consumption with higher thermals. It’s notably true the place the chip designer doesn’t re-spec different points of the chip, like its clock velocity. This side of the CFI-1202 was a part of the teardown video earlier in September. The revised PS5 reportedly used 10% much less energy for a similar gaming expertise in that video. We have now additionally seen that the 2022 revision had extra reductions in cooler system bulk and general system weight bringing down Sony’s bill-of-materials (BOM).
Not like many machine makers who would have submitted a flurry of design enhancements alongside the order for a brand new batch of N6 SoCs, the console business is peculiar in that it’d steer away from overt efficiency enhancements throughout the identical technology. So Sony was glad that the die shrink allowed it to cut back its BOM, as described above, and didn’t have any additional ambitions for it. Certainly, the ten% energy saving when gaming isn’t a profit they are going to be promoting, however it’s welcome nonetheless. Lastly, it’s good to know that Sony PS5 consoles didn’t lose as much as 600g of mass over the past two generations to any actual detriment to the system (however some say the 2021 revision ran just a little hotter than the unique).
Lastly, Angstronomics additionally observes that the PS5 is the primary of the large three current-gen consoles to get a 6nm chip and that Sony is getting practically 50% extra PS5 chips per wafer than Microsoft with its Xbox Sequence X processors. Even so, Sony, with its cheaper silicon invoice and new decrease BOM, just lately pushed value hikes worldwide (besides within the U.S.).
