Steam Deck OLED's APU may be designed exclusively for Steam Deck & Steam Deck LCD's APU may be equipped with a drawing processor for AR goggles


by

Fritzchens Fritz

The portable gaming PC ' Steam Deck ' series developed by Valve, the operator of the PC game platform 'Steam', is gaining popularity because it allows you to play high-load games quickly . A close-up photo of the APU of Steam Deck's liquid crystal display model (Steam Deck LCD) has been released by Fritzchens Fritz , and many insights have been obtained from the photo.

AMD@7nmTSMC@DAPU_VanGogh@Zen2_RDNA2@Valve_Steamdeck_LCD@10… | Flickr
https://www.flickr.com/photos/130561288@N04/53420912673/

Steam Deck has ``Steam Deck LCD'' equipped with a liquid crystal display and ``Steam Deck OLED'' equipped with an organic EL display. Mr. Fritz released a close-up photo of the Steam Deck LCD APU of both models.

First of all, the logic board of Steam Deck LCD is below. The square-shaped part in the lower right corner is the APU that handles calculation and drawing processing.


by

Fritzchens Fritz

This is what it looks like when you trim around the APU. In addition to the Valve logo, it is also clearly stated that it is made by AMD.


by

Fritzchens Fritz

Below is a close-up photo of the contents after removing the APU cover. The CPU, GPU, etc. are packed tightly.


by

Fritzchens Fritz

High Yield , a hardware-related YouTube channel, has released a movie summarizing the APU configuration of Steam Deck LCD and the differences from Steam Deck OLED, based on the photos published by Fritz.

Exclusive: Steam Deck Chip Analysis - YouTube


◆Steam Deck LCD chip layout
The following is the result of estimating the APU layout based on Steam Deck LCD spec information and existing AMD APU chip layout. The location of the CPU, GPU, memory controller, etc. are speculated.



However, an area equivalent to 13.7% of the chip area remained as an area of unknown use.



It is known that the APU installed in the Steam Deck LCD was developed under the code name 'Van Gogh', but according to High Yield, the AR goggle ' Magic Leap 2 ' is also equipped with Van Gogh. It is said that it is. High Yield decided to refer to the Magic Leap 2 specifications to learn more about the APU's unspecified areas.



If you check the part of the Magic Leap 2

specifications that mentions the APU, you can see that it includes a chip called a ``14-core computer vision process engine (CVIP)''.



If you look again at the unspecified area contained in the APU on the Steam Deck LCD, it appears to contain 14 cores. From this, High Yield infers that ``Steam Deck LCD and Magic Leap 2 are equipped with APUs of the same design, and CVIP is disabled in Steam Deck LCD.''



◆Differences between Steam Deck LCD and Steam Deck OLED
The image below shows the specifications of Steam Deck OLED (left) and Steam Deck LCD (right) side by side. If you check the specifications, you can see that Steam Deck OLED is equipped with a '6nm AMD APU' and Steam Deck LCD is equipped with a '7nm AMD APU'.



The area of ``6nm AMD APU'' installed in Steam Deck OLED is approximately 133 square millimeters, and the area of ``7nm AMD APU'' installed in Steam Deck LCD is approximately 166 square millimeters. '6nm AMD APU' is approximately 20% smaller in area than '7nm AMD APU', but this can only be explained by 'improvement in density due to miniaturization of semiconductor manufacturing process from 7nm to 6nm'. It is said that the area has been reduced to such an extent that it is impossible to do so. For this reason, High Yield speculates that ``Steam Deck OLED is not equipped with CVIP and is equipped with a dedicated APU designed only for Steam Deck OLED.''



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