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.
Latest Answers