According to data disclosed by Mercury Research, AMD sold approximately 1 million Ryzen 5000 CPUs in the last quarter of 2020. Thanks to data provided during Sony’s Q4 earnings report, we also know that the company sold a whopping 4.5 million consoles in the same quarter. As far as the Xbox Series X|S is concerned, we know it sold about 2 million units during the launch week. It’d be fair to say that the overall sales for the quarter didn’t exceed 2.5 million, as indicated by various analysts.
Overall, that means that AMD sold 7 million units of next-gen console SoCs in Q4 2020 and just a million Zen 3 CPUs. Considering the large GPU paired with the former, the profit margins are going to be a fair bit higher with the Ryzen 5000 CPUs compared to the consoles. However, the high volume sold does make up for that, more or less.
Now, let me remind you of the following report that we published last month:
Overall, AMD sold approximately 9-10 million 7nm chips in Q4 2020 including the consoles, the Zen 3 parts, the older Zen 2 mobile, and desktop parts, and lastly the 200-300K Big Navi chips. The latter can be approximated by looking at the number of RX 6000 GPUs scalped and comparing it with that of the Ryzen 5000 parts. You get a figure of between 100-200K. That’s just 2-3% of AMD’s overall 7nm capacity at TSMC. [Updated Navi 21 count after checking with sources]
The Ryzen 5000 CPUs got around 11-12% of AMD’s total 7nm capacity while the older Zen 2 and Renoir chips were allotted approximately 7-9% (can’t be more than 10%). How much does that leave the next-gen consoles with? Approximately 80%. Of course, this is an approximation and the actual figure could be a few digits higher or lower, but it’s not going to vary by more than 5%.
Die measurements: (5th Feb: Corrected some errors)
- PS5: 308mm2
- Xbox Series X: 360mm2
- Xbox Series S: 197mm2
- Zen 3 chiplet: 81mm2
- Navi 21: 520mm2
As per the above figures, the PS5 consumed 1,386M mm2 of 7nm wafers while the Xbox Series X took about 720M mm2. The Series S being just about 197mm2 was responsible for just under 100M mm2 of 7nm wafers. That totals up to 2,204M mm2 of 7nm wafers.
Assuming that 75% of the Zen 3 chips sold were Ryzen 5 and 7 SKUs that feature a single chiplet while the remaining were the Ryzen 9 parts with dual-chiplets sold the remaining 25%, we get a figure of 101M mm2 of 7nm wafers. That’s just under 5% of the 7nm capacity if we exclude the Navi 21 dies.
We assume that around 200-250K Navi 21 GPUs were sold. Going with the upper limit gives us a value of 5 million or 5% of the total 7nm capacity. Adding the Navi 21 and Zen 3 sizes, the total wafers dedicated to the PC market come up to 231M mm2 or 10% of the total capacity. Assuming that roughly the same amount of wafers were used for the older Zen 2 based CPUs and APUs, we get a percentage of 20%, roughly the same calculated earlier.
Note: Thanks to the commenters for pointing out the errors. The Epyc and Instinct sales are harder to estimate and considering AMD’s relatively lower market share in those segments, it shouldn’t skew the overall result by much.
