Die Shrink?

[DANK_AS_gay]

How come new laptop GPU's aren't just die shrinks of previous generations of desktop GPUs? Also, why aren't consoles die shrunk as well? A PS1 the size of the dvd drive it has to have, would be cool, as it doesn't have to emulate anything. Same for other consoles like the PS2 or Xbox 360. It would also be cool to have DOS/95/98 gaming machines the size of a raspberry pi 4 at max. Pentium 3's the size of your thumbnail, GeForce 4ti's the size of your pinky nail. And a hugely reduced power consumption figure and heat production.

[jaslion]

It's not that simple. Those pieces of tech were made with and around the current process nodes out there and it's often just not doable to make them smaller. So what then happens is they make a new chip that can do everything the old one can do or just progress forwards.

 

Also we have far beyond pentium 3 performance the size of a thumbnail, geforce 4 performance the size of a pinky. There are dos/95/98 gaming machines the size of a pi 4 but they often cannot run the os natively because well it's just not supported as nobody has made drivers for those in ages.

 

So yeah could they do that? Yeah totally but will they? No not at all that is just not profitable enough or even possible in a way that it won't be a huge loss.

[SimplyGone]

10 minutes ago, DANK_AS_gay said:

How come new laptop GPU's aren't just die shrinks of previous generations of desktop GPUs? Also, why aren't consoles die shrunk as well? A PS1 the size of the dvd drive it has to have, would be cool, as it doesn't have to emulate anything. Same for other consoles like the PS2 or Xbox 360. It would also be cool to have DOS/95/98 gaming machines the size of a raspberry pi 4 at max. Pentium 3's the size of your thumbnail, GeForce 4ti's the size of your pinky nail. And a hugely reduced power consumption figure and heat production.

I don't think a 'Die Shrink' works like that but it's a nice idea 

[Guest]

11 minutes ago, DANK_AS_gay said:

How come new laptop GPU's aren't just die shrinks of previous generations of desktop GPUs? Also, why aren't consoles die shrunk as well? A PS1 the size of the dvd drive it has to have, would be cool, as it doesn't have to emulate anything. Same for other consoles like the PS2 or Xbox 360. It would also be cool to have DOS/95/98 gaming machines the size of a raspberry pi 4 at max. Pentium 3's the size of your thumbnail, GeForce 4ti's the size of your pinky nail. And a hugely reduced power consumption figure and heat production.

Die shrink doesn`t give that big of a reduction in power consumption unless you do it multiple times and sometimes it can make a chip run hotter than it`s predecessor because of unwanted transistor power leakage(see what happened to Snapdragon 810,Pentium 4 Prescott, Nvidia GTX 480).

[mariushm]

A die shrink is not free... just the making of the masks involved in the making of dies can cost over a million dollars for the latest 7-12nm processes. 

It's a few hundred thousands dollars for the old 28-32nm.

 

If they're gonna spend that much money, it makes more sense to also iterate, improve on the old design. Also, a lot of old designs need tweaks, like for example you have an old design that's tuned / optimized to work with GDDR5 but now GDDR6 is mass produced and more available than GDDR5 and possibly cheaper, so you'd have to change the design anyway.

 

[Roswell]

6 hours ago, DANK_AS_gay said:

How come new laptop GPU's aren't just die shrinks of previous generations of desktop GPUs? Also, why aren't consoles die shrunk as well? A PS1 the size of the dvd drive it has to have, would be cool, as it doesn't have to emulate anything. Same for other consoles like the PS2 or Xbox 360. It would also be cool to have DOS/95/98 gaming machines the size of a raspberry pi 4 at max. Pentium 3's the size of your thumbnail, GeForce 4ti's the size of your pinky nail. And a hugely reduced power consumption figure and heat production.

 

6 hours ago, jaslion said:

It's not that simple. Those pieces of tech were made with and around the current process nodes out there and it's often just not doable to make them smaller. So what then happens is they make a new chip that can do everything the old one can do or just progress forwards.

 

Also we have far beyond pentium 3 performance the size of a thumbnail, geforce 4 performance the size of a pinky. There are dos/95/98 gaming machines the size of a pi 4 but they often cannot run the os natively because well it's just not supported as nobody has made drivers for those in ages.

 

So yeah could they do that? Yeah totally but will they? No not at all that is just not profitable enough or even possible in a way that it won't be a huge loss.

 

6 hours ago, YouSirAreADudeSir said:

I don't think a 'Die Shrink' works like that but it's a nice idea 

 

Consoles have been getting die shrinks for decades.

[jaslion]

34 minutes ago, Roswell said:

 

 

 

Consoles have been getting die shrinks for decades.

They have that's true because it was doable and worth the investment but they've not done that in recent years anymore. I mentioned the economics of it in my comment too.

[Roswell]

8 minutes ago, jaslion said:

They have that's true because it was doable and worth the investment but they've not done that in recent years anymore. I mentioned the economics of it in my comment too.

Switch, PS4 and XBOX One all underwent die shrinks.

[jaslion]

52 minutes ago, Roswell said:

Switch, PS4 and XBOX One all underwent die shrinks.

Oh huh they did for the ps4 xbox one forgot about those. Didnt know about the switch