[HN Gopher] A Suprising Discovery Inside the Steam Deck's APU
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       A Suprising Discovery Inside the Steam Deck's APU
        
       Author : ekianjo
       Score  : 33 points
       Date   : 2024-01-13 07:26 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (boilingsteam.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (boilingsteam.com)
        
       | kmeisthax wrote:
       | So what exactly were the Magic Leap cores? They don't look like
       | the GPU or CPU cores...
        
         | spuz wrote:
         | The specs of the Magic Leap 2 say "14 core computer vision
         | processing engine (CVIP)" which matches the 14 cores shown in
         | the photos.
        
         | jsnell wrote:
         | The original source[0] speculates they're computer vision DSPs,
         | specifically Tensilica Vision DSPs from Cadence.
         | 
         | [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERm1StY-4uY
        
       | modeless wrote:
       | Funny that AMD would design a bespoke chip for Magic Leap that
       | sold a tiny number of units, and Valve would ride on their
       | coattails for a game console that undoubtedly sold way more. I
       | wonder how much Magic Leap paid AMD for this design? Guess that
       | explains where some of their billions went.
        
         | gjsman-1000 wrote:
         | One possible explanation is that Magic Leap may have
         | significantly overestimated how many chips they needed, and
         | wondered if someone might buy excess inventory... or at least,
         | might buy out their contract.
         | 
         | Consider the first Magic Leap headset. They thought it would do
         | over 100,000 units. It only did 6,000.
         | https://www.engadget.com/2019-12-06-magic-leap-6000-headsets...
         | 
         | I don't know how the Leap 2 is doing. But in the above example,
         | let's say AMD wanted a minimum order of 100,000. If you were
         | Magic Leap, you're running to find a buyer - any buyer. You're
         | also going to cut the price for your batch as far as necessary
         | to cover for possible increased production costs in the future.
         | Even if you recover just half of your costs, it's better than
         | being forced to buy chips nobody wants that will quickly go
         | stale.
        
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       (page generated 2024-01-14 23:00 UTC)