RE: Episode 118: Ben's PlayStation 4 Teardown Episode

phoenixcomm — Thu, 03 Aug 2023 17:29:05 GMT

[mention:bec60c46f2ae4defb47417563331ddff:23b05a61c3e5445190d9bfa00453bce4:label=element14%26%2339%3Bs%20The%20Ben%20Heck%20Show] Interesting maybe ~~CAH

RE: Episode 118: Ben's PlayStation 4 Teardown Episode

kazriko — Wed, 05 Feb 2014 02:17:05 GMT

The chip you were pointing at when you said it was rom is actually another 256mb of DDR3 ram. To the left of the NB chip is 256mb of serial flash rom you were looking for.

I believe that chip is kind of a combo north-bridge and background network processor, also used for downloading stuff from the internet when the main APU is powered off. It has a little arm core built in. I suspect they do a whole lot of background os-type stuff on that chip leaving more of the main APU to run the games.

The wireless lan chip is a combo wlan/bluetooth one.

As for the one you called a video encoder, I'm not entirely sure what it does. It might be used for video encoding like you said, but it's kind of on the wrong end of the APU for that. Speculation on it seems all over the board, with the most rational thinking that it's a controller for various components like the power section, fans, LEDs, power switch, reset button, etc. There's about 3 variants of that chip on various PS4s.