Someone invents something that works a certain way. How do they get that technology and make it smaller and better? Why couldn’t they just do that from the start? Like PS4 and a PS4 slim. Or PS2 and PS2 slim? It’s the same performance yet it’s smaller?
In: Engineering
Heat, almost always heat
Things like game consoles have a ton of power in a tiny box with minimal cooling, this is what leads to jokes about the PS4 sounding like its taxiing for takeoff
Generally the “slim” game consoles come many years after the original release and are because the main CPU/GPU is now able to be made on a smaller “node”. It gets talked about in every GPU/CPU review article but the smaller the “node” the more performance/watt so you can have the same performance as an older chip for less power(useful for the Slim models), or more performance for the same power (useful for the PS4 Pro)
When they swap to this more power efficient CPU or GPU (or combo) they don’t need as much space for fans and heatsinks to keep everything happy so they can pack it all closer together to give customers a “slim” version while keeping all the components happy.
The other side is things like the PS4 pro which took the more powerful chip with the same power and put it in roughly the same sized box to give a more powerful console.
It takes *years* for us to shrink nodes, but that’s fine with console generations now lasting about 8 years they can fit one or two upgrades in that cycle. It was 3 years between PS4 and PS4 slim which was enough to get the APU from 28nm to 16nm for a big power savings.
Manufacturing and design innovations basically. The first computer filled a room because they needed that much space to get all the parts/power supply/etc. but then once the concept of how a computer worked was established, people could start innovating with “can we get the same number of circuits on the board in a more efficient way?” or “what else is out there that could power this thing that’s smaller?” And the manufacturing technology that allows for smaller and smaller components is also come leaps and bounds. The robotics needed to make the microchips have gotten better and more refined over the years, so can make smaller things
Because the technology isn’t there. To give an example, the current generation of CPUs have features as small as 7nm (nanometres, that’s very small indeed), which allows them to be smaller and use less power. Go back 20 years and the average feature size on CPUs was 20 times larger than that, while they ran significantly slower than today’s chips.
A lot of great answers. One more reason to throw in is that often in engineering, the first version is focused on solving the problem. The next iterations are focused on improving the solution. If you would try to focus on making perfect thing the first time, you will end up in the endless design loop. It’s hard to predict what the users will really need or want, so it better to get something out and look into users feedback.
Wow, isn’t humans amazing that we can at least do that. By we I mean them because I know I can’t haha
Latest Answers