Editor's Warning: Die size estimations are always to be taken with a grain of salt. The slightest distortion/error in perspective correction can result in exponentially large differences. Use of certain lenses can also throw these calculations widely off. These are provided only for fun and to give our readers a "guesstimate" of the actual die size.



A picture of the upcoming Xbox Scarlett APU was posted by the 'head of Xbox' Phil Spencer and almost everyone went into a frenzy analyzing the die shot. This is our take and without any further ado, let's begin with the starting image:

Here is our methodology (A big shout out to WhyCry @Videocardz for helping us with image processing): the original image was enhanced and then perspective corrected (prioritizing the die and not the package). The cleaner parts of the image were then oriented to scale using an older image of the Xbox Scorpio APU, using two different points as an anchor/scale key. The result is a roughly clean image that we can compare on an apples-to-apples basis to get a good idea of the size difference.

Now assuming Phil did not use a lens with too wonky a perspective (eg: some fisheye lenses), our results show us that the Xbox Scorpio and Xbox Scarlett APUs are roughly the same in width but the Xbox Scarlett APU is slightly longer in height. Our calculations put the Xbox Scarlett APU at roughly 401mm², which is an increase of almost 42mm² over the Xbox Scorpio chip at 359mm². The brand new APU features hardware-based raytracing (which seems to be all the rage these days) and a Zen 2-based CPU core.

Scorpio had 2560 SPs with 2 CUs disabled and while the Xbox Scarlett APU is clearly bigger, it is not possible to speculate based just on the die size because of the different process node involved (7nm vs 16nm) but we can safely say that you are looking at at least 50% more power in the same die space. Since the Scorpio APU can output roughly 6 TFLOPs of power, we can guesstimate a range of at least 9 TFLOPs for the Scarlett APU ( up to 12 TFLOPS is within the realm of possibility).

Interestingly, the chip mentions 8K, as opposed to 4K on Scorpio, which might be an indication of the maximum available resolution on next-generation Xbox consoles. Considering 8K gaming is simply not possible even on a 12 TFLOPs chip (unless you are playing with very rudimentary, low poly models), it is likely that 8K decoding will be supported on the upcoming console. In any case, Xbox will be presenting at AMD's CES Keynote that is going to be happening in a couple of hours so we might find the answer to our question very soon. That is all for this rather short post.