this post was submitted on 04 May 2025
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Chips aren’t improving like they used to, and it’s killing game console price cuts (arstechnica.com)
submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by j4p@lemm.ee to c/technology@lemmy.world
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"These price increases have multiple intertwining causes, some direct and some less so: inflation, pandemic-era supply crunches, the unpredictable trade policies of the Trump administration, and a gradual shift among console makers away from selling hardware at a loss or breaking even in the hopes that game sales will subsidize the hardware. And you never want to rule out good old shareholder-prioritizing corporate greed.

But one major factor, both in the price increases and in the reduction in drastic “slim”-style redesigns, is technical: the death of Moore’s Law and a noticeable slowdown in the rate at which processors and graphics chips can improve."

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[–] Buddahriffic@lemmy.world 10 points 13 hours ago

Not to mention that even when some components do shrink, it's not uniform for all components on the chip, so they can't just do 1:1 layout shrinks like in the past, but pretty much need to start the physical design portion all over with a new layout and timings (which then cascade out into many other required changes).

Porting to a new process node (even at the same foundry company) isn't quite as much work as a new project, but it's close.

Same thing applies to changing to a new foundry company, for all of those wondering why chip designers don't just switch some production from TSMC to Samsung or Intel since TSMC's production is sold out. It's almost as much work as just making a new chip, plus performance and efficiency would be very different depending in where the chip was made.