I'd like any expert here that can tell us what a theoretical 6990 equivalent chip @28nm (22nm numbers would be nice too) would come in at RE: chip size and watts it would consume?
Not that I think for a second PS720 will get a chip this powerful.
Well, the 40 nm 6990 is 2x389 mm^2.
It's hard to judge exactly what the overall percentage shrink will be before actually laying it out, because not all components shrink at the same rate, so while theoretically that same die at 28 nm will be 70% of the 40 nm(which would be 2x272 mm^2 in this case), in the real world it's often less.
2x272 mm^2 is clearly too large for a console, its quite a bit more than twice as large as either RSX or Xenos were.
At 22 nm a chip with that many transistors (would probably end up around 350-375 mm^2, just as a guess, though they could possible cut it back closer to 300 mm^2 by using a smaller memory bus and cutting some pc centric stuff) could be possible in a $600+ super high end console, but not a mainstream one, and even then, would likely be underclocked severely.
Which is ignoring the important fact that expecting any 22 nm chips from anyone other than intel to reach the consumer level in volume within the next 2-3 years is a bit of a reach. Whatever the next consoles have, it will almost surely start out at 28 nm, unless they are really planning on waiting till late 2014 to launch.
I expect a single 6970 type chip at 28 nm, with features and bus width trimmed down until it fits on a roughly 200 mm^2 die. Which is still a huge leap in power over the current generation, over 10x the transistors and probably a substantial increase in clock speed.
