At some point soon, Fab lines are going to become long term investments, instead of being depreciated in 5 years. Wafers won't get any larger, transistors won't get any smaller, and it'll be on our hands as programmers to tweak every last ounce of performance out of things again.
I know the "demo" scene folks are keeping the craft alive, and it gives me hope for the future.
Of course, an array of non-cached, non-optimized but very simple and low power processors in a grid can do a lot more work than a single instruction-reordering monster trying to make a single thread go ever faster.
They are already. Commercial foundries operate lines that use decades old technology. GF has a .6 micron line that uses 200mm wafers for example.
> Of course, an array of non-cached, non-optimized but very simple and low power processors in a grid can do a lot more work than a single instruction-reordering monster trying to make a single thread go ever faster.
True if you look at theoretical best cases. Not always true on real problems, and it's not always the fault of the programmer if the problem can not be written to suit the flock of chickens processor. Limiting factors are latencies and communication overhead between various dependencies, which is the case whether you expose that to the programmer with your grid, or try to deal with in in the core with multiple execution units and reordering.
I mean, it's a readjustment to local currency values - otherwise they're selling the PS5 for 20% less in EU markets than in US markets. At some point it becomes worth it to buy a container of hardware and turn it around and sell it in the US as "grey market" and that's value that Sony wants to capture for themselves.
Even allowing software to be sold at different prices in different countries already has far more financial ramifications than people expect - the grey market seriously impacts the profitability of sales in high-earning countries, and it fosters a whole black-market of cdkeys that are purchased using stolen cards/etc and used for money laundering. But with hardware it is a very straightforward "this costs $X to R&D and $Y to build and we're not going to sell it to you for 20% less than everyone else", you're seeing the grey market die out even in traditional strongholds like cameras.
Also, PS5 is a console designed around hardware profitability. They reached profitability around 6-9 months after launch and they don't want to go backward. Everyone finally said enough is enough after PS3 losing hundreds of dollars per console, and the PS4 and XB1 are much more conservative designs with integrated hardware to cut costs, and they reached profitability fairly quickly. PS5 succeeds this and Sony absolutely does not want to go back to the "loss-leader hardware" model.
Prices are sticky, companies don't always want to adjust them every time $FXE has a bad week, but... Sony isn't interested in selling to multiple major markets at a discount that pushes their hardware into the "subsidized" territory. And they've been down for a while now. For everyone else, their cost-reduction in the console itself has been sufficient to hold the price down, but you don't get a discount like you normally would a couple years into the lifecycle. But for the markets where there have been big currency depreciations on top... they are adjusting it.
Going by the current EUR/USD price, from your link, they are charging more. They're overcharging by about $33. To make the Euro price be on par with the USD price, they would have to charge 515 euro, not 550.
This is a fact that hasn't changed since the launch of the PS5, so your point is nonsense.
Earlier poster has a very good point, and I'll add to it: Demand, years in, outstrips supply. The most sensible thing for ANY company to do is to increase the MSRP. In a supply constricted world, this slightly improves availability while improving the margins for Sony.
Don't get me wrong, I hate capitalism with a burning passion, and the names I want to call Sony are...inappropriate. However, they are playing by the 'rules' of capitalism.
partly because of difficulties of unified policy, partly because of energy crisis, and partly becayse braindead ECB policy it's likely the euro continues to fall. so sony is probably baking this in now.
Cost of living increases primarily affect day-to-day spending while a PS5 is a luxury purchase.
If you can’t afford it at the new price, it probably wouldn’t have been a wise purchase at the original price.
Sony is a business. Their costs have gone up markedly and when the hardware is already subsidised, it’s unrealistic to not expect increased costs to be passed on.
For this reason I always thought Sony and Nvidia should just auction off their products initially till the auction price is barely above the floor price/planned retail price. Just let the market do its thing and take the profit instead of giving it to scalpers and inconveniencing everyone in the process
I wonder if they actually would. It would be more obvious that prices are high because there is more demand than supply rather than because some third party is trying to make a profit of the shortage. If course some percentage of the population would likely start subscribing to some conspiracy theory about Sony keeping supply low on purpose...
Sony could be smart, for example keep existing price as is, but also offering “premium” version for higher price but with delivery this week. This would kill scalpers.
Nintendo did this, the Switch was out of stock consistently, unless you bought it in a "bundle". A lot of the bundles were 12 months of the Online service, so basically easy profit.
People here saying the PS5 should have dropped in price, I just checked Amazon for the price of a new Nintendo Switch (standard model, not OLED), seems almost identical to what I paid for one on launch day. £250. This is now really old hardware that launched over 5 years ago (Mar 2017).
This "standard model" had a SoC refresh too. And as said elsewhere in the thread, it's now cheaper in USD (how components are priced) than it was when GBP was at 1.30+.
PS5s are relatively easy to buy in bundles; if you're lucky you'll have a game you wanted, except at list price instead of market price, but most of the time you'll have useless overpriced accessories and average games. In fact, Sony is encouraging the practice, and makes it harder for resellers to not do this.
Another alternative is that they sell them first Party (probably a non-option because storefronts would probably throw a fit). And instead of first come first serve, simply have a queue.
Queue or lottery would work. That's actually how Nike (used to?) sell limited edition sneakers. They either had a lottery or queue depending on demand or something.
Leaves money on the table though and still leaves room for scalpers.
I would have preferred that. I bought mine from a scalper with a third of the warranty gone before it was out of the box. Would have preferred to get it from Sony.
Sony will have already factored in the cost saving over the entire lifespan of the product.
I recall that the original Playstation 3 was a massive loss leader. Despite being hugely expensive it was pretty much the cheapest Blu Ray player on the market at the time. They were able to sell it at a loss because gaining a foothold was critical to selling it for a profit later on and the projected savings would let them recoup their losses.
If cost of living and inflation weren't crazy right now across the world then I'm sure we'd be looking at a price drop on the Playstation 5 right now as that's where their projected margins would leave them. But factoring in both the cost savings and inflation means they still need a price rise just to keep on track.
PS3 wasn't particularly reliable for me (anecdotal).
I still have my PSP 1000, PS (Grey rectangular one, not the later "One"), PS2 Satin Silver was sold years ago, PS4 was given away when I got PS5, all launch day purchases; I went through 3 PS3s in its lifetime.
If they're selling out everywhere still, after years, I guess it makes sense to try especially with costs rising. Their subscription model is way less mature than Xbox's as well so they need to rely less on that to turn a profit.
It's interesting that they didn't do a big horse and pony show for new models of consoles these days. Historically console manufacturers would use updates like these to push a new "slim" model or whatever, but nowadays it's done without much fanfare. Perhaps they sell enough either way that there's no point in making a spectacle of it.
I always like to wait for the first revision of hardware to buy in, since better thermals generally mean better longevity of the overall hardware.
That's because this isn't a new slim model, just a minor internal revision. These never got big fanfare. There's like 10 different PS2 revisions for example and a similar number of PS3 revisions. Highlighting that you removed a handful of LEDs to save 43 cents on each unit isn't usually done. Occasionally there is a bigish difference like the original PS2s having their PCMIA slot replaced with a HDD slot or the slimline PS2 getting an integrated power supply near the end but often it wasn't visible unless you opened the unit and compared.
The only time I remember people seriously caring was for the 360 where every new revision was speculated to be the fix for RROD.
Retooling also has a cost. And the lower power with the precious heat sink and fan can make the console more reliable, reducing warranty expenses. This is all a guess, of course. I don’t have any of these numbers.
It's probably just too early in the product lifecycle for a slim model. The PS4 just barely eaked one out at the 2 year mark because the XBone and PS4 were pretty dated hardware when they released, the PS3 took 3 years, PS2 took 5 years The slim "PS One" took 6 years.
Capacity for die shrinks is probably a bit tight at the moment given the chip shortages and the fact that Apple are basically buying all TSMC production capacity on stuff that's vaguely new. The 6nm process they've just picked up for the PS5 refresh was coming online when the PS5 was first released. I imagine we'll see a true slim when Sony / AMD are able to get enough capacity on the 5nm or 4nm process.
Indeed, and there will absolutely be a “real” slim version, probably in the next year or so. The existing case is massive and mostly empty— so it’s really a matter of getting the thermals under control, whether via a better airflow design or by die size reduction and therefore power/heat savings at the source.
Well, and just the history, that literally every prior generation of PlayStation had one or more eventual size-reduced versions come out, though the time gap is clearly shrinking:
PSX launch was 1994, PSone in 2000.
PS2 launch was 2000, slim in 2004.
PS3 launch was 2006, slim in 2009, super slim in 2012.
PS4 launch was 2013, slim + pro in 2016.
It's interesting to see them roll out power-reduction die shrinks on the launch chassis— presumably they'll be able to monitor telemetry on these units over time and that'll allow them to build confidence on moving into a chassis with a drastically-reduced size and weight footprint.
Given that the PS5 launched in late 2020, it's not unreasonable to expect a PS5 slim for the 2023 holiday season.
They update internals many times without changing the case design generally. The reason is cost reduction. Smaller dies mean more dies per wafer. Thermal reduction implies you can get away with a less beefy power supply and thermal management solution, etc.
In the US perhaps. Here in Singapore they are still impossible to get unless you go through grey importers and pay the premium for it. And even then it's a coin toss whether you'll actually get it or not. Once I decided to pay the extra money, I placed and order and several weeks later it was cancelled. I have now done placed another order and got a delivery date in november.
I’m in the US and have not been able to buy one for as long as I’ve been interested, which is about 6 months. There are “drops” that happen every other week or so but they sell out in a few minutes.
Not exactly. You can put your name on a waiting list and be notified of opportunities to buy one periodically. I put my name on their list more than 6 months ago and still have not received a notification that I can buy one.
Semi related, I have a huge number of BC-250's [0]. Now that ETH mining is over, I'm looking for something interesting to do with them. Not looking to sell them, but that might be possible at quantity, I'd rather work with you to run something on them. They iPXE boot Ubuntu. GigE. No onboard storage, but have 16gigs of ram. Easily tuned for performance.
How well did the economics of this kind of an operation end up working out? Seems like these were a fairly recent development, so they really wouldn't have had much time, say, the 500 days cited to reach profitability.
It would be interesting to see how the GPU driver side of this works. If they boot Ubuntu, what kind of GPU driver is required to run the GPU? Is it open source amdgpu compatible?
In any case, these would work rather well for some kind of VPS server hosting or maybe more like dedicated server hosting, given the density/form factor. That is assuming the driver situation doesn't preclude a choice of operating system...
They run standard Ubuntu 20.04 and can be upgraded to 22 or whatever else comes along.
Standard AMD Ubuntu driver (21.50.2.50002, but can be upgraded as well). Heavily modified the AMD packaging to minimize it to just the necessary files because these iPXE boot (sadly, still around ~60megs).
The bigger issue is that they don't have any onboard persistent storage (could be added, but the speed is limited to about 500mbit/s) and they are only gigE.
Running strictly from memory, they are also prone to memory corruption. Odd, I know, but I see it at the scale we operate. Thus, they need to be treated as interruptible machines. Reboot to running is about 60s.
So, quite a few limitations, but still good hardware, if we can find a good workload for them.
Is this memory corruption you speak of silent, or simply fatal?
This could be a significant problem if the workload requires some form of integrity, since the hardware could be quietly introducing errors into otherwise normal looking computing
I remember having this issue with overclocked AMD cards mining too, where it was common to try to undervolt or overclock the memory. I wonder if any of those tuning tools work here, and if it would be possible to underclock the memory to increase its stability.
Either way, this echoes some of the sentiment I generally had around hardware intended for mining, including the bitcoin branded 2000 watt power supplies built with bottom of the barrel parts. Most hardware built for mining was built with exactly one purpose in mind, and has significant warts when it is attempted to be repurposed. The kind of constraints and requirements that cryptomining presents are really quite different from those of most modern IT systems.
Silent. It'll be things like you can't ssh into the box any more or you log in and can't reboot it. Likely due to ethash mining, which is heavily RAM based and the voltage/clocking. Luckily, it is easy to change those settings to build more stability. I have a process that auto tunes the machines for known instabilities... but the weird silent ram corruption ones are much harder to detect.
You're totally right that mining hardware was majority single purpose, especially at large scale. Those PSU's did the job, but yes, in general, hand soldered in China and prone to do weird things.
It certainly puts a hamper into what can be done with it now that the merge has happened, but I'd like to keep trying to find uses!
I wonder if these have any chance of running TensorFlow or other ML applications. The problem would again, be that there is no local storage and thus the 4GB Stable Diffusion model might be a bit much, but once loaded, perhaps it may work well for that kind of non critical application.
I think one of the reasons GPU memory corruption may cause the system to freeze is because the GPU and main memory are unified on APUs, which would probably explain the machines being difficult to login or use sometimes
> Running strictly from memory, they are also prone to memory corruption. Odd, I know, but I see it at the scale we operate. Thus, they need to be treated as interruptible machines. Reboot to running is about 60s.
This would be an instant dealbreaker for me. To quote the inimitable Sweet Brown, _ain't nobody got time for that_. [1]
N6 has the exact same design rules as N7 which means a die shrink is about as relatively close to trivial as it gets when it comes to dropping a half-node.
That's something that people who have no interest in buying one say - because if you did, you'd find that they have been in stock for months from various retailers and it's not an issue to buy one at all.
Out of a whim, I checked the Playstation store, and they actually had the PS5 in stock. I'm paying some extra for the blu-ray edition with Horizon bundle, but it's still cheaper than scalpers.
I and two of my friends bought PS5s. It took some effort, but it wasn’t too bad. We all got them within a month of deciding to buy. I don’t really disagree with what you’re saying though, you have to find an opportunity to buy and then make the right moves to get one.
Bought one a year ago here in Australia - went to an IRL retailer (!) who said they would put us on the list for their next shipment. About a week later, we got it.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oberon_(operating_system)