News Steam Deck's custom AMD processor exposed — Van Gogh die shots reveal CPU, GPU core designs, and unused hardware

[Admin]

YouTuber High Yield has done a deep dive into the Steam Deck APU, and some interesting details have been uncovered.

Steam Deck's custom AMD processor exposed — Van Gogh die shots reveal CPU, GPU core designs, and unused hardware : Read more

 

[bit_user]

However, it uniquely has four memory channels instead of the usual two, which enables greater bandwidth.

I wondered... but this turns out to be a "nothing burger". It's just referring to the way DDR5 has 32-bit subchannels. Just like mainstream desktop CPUs, this thing has a 128-bit datapath.

Van Gogh, AMD’s Steam Deck APU

Zen 2’s launch was a defining moment for AMD. For the first time in many, many years, AMD’s single thread performance could go head to head with Intel’s best. Zen 2 also started a trend where AMD b…

chipsandcheese.com

So, no. Nothing "uniquely" about it. You can even see that much from the annotated diagram in this article: 4x "32-bit LPDDR5 PHY" = 128-bits.

claims Van Gogh and Mero are the same chip used in both the Steam Deck and Magic Leap 2.

Holy cow! I didn't even realize Magic Leap was still a going concern! Yeah, this does seem quite anemic for a high-end AR device. It's nowhere close to what Apple's got in the Vision Pro.

It's also not clear how well modders would be able to utilize the CVPE since it's used exclusively in Magic Leap hardware and software.

Would be interesting if it turns out to be some off-the-shelf Xilinx IP. It's probably off-the-shelf from somewhere (MS used Tensilica DSP cores, in Hololens' SoC). It wouldn't make sense to design a full-custom block just for that, due to all the software toolchain and additional validation that would be needed.

 

[usertests]

I wondered... but this turns out to be a "nothing burger". It's just referring to the way DDR5 has 32-bit subchannels. Just like mainstream desktop CPUs, this thing has a 128-bit datapath.

Luckily it doesn't have 64-bit, like the similar Mendocino appears to have.

 

[-Fran-]

The other way to read this is that Valve has had plenty of time to play around with this SoC and see how they can use it in their next HMD. Or that is the dream?

Regardless, it ties in well with the SteamVR 2.0 rehaul making it, basically, the same SteamDeck UI.

Interesting findings and some hopium into Valve putting out a proper Enthusiast VR HMD and not a Apple-fied expensive piece of junk.

Regards.