The OG Steam Deck (7nm, comparable to the Series S) has a die size of ~162mm2. In there, it packs an 4 core, 8 threads CPU and a 8 CU GPU.
On the other hand, the Xbox Series S packs an 8 core 16 threads CPU with 20CU GPU of the same architecture in ~197mm2 die.
This is a technical question, how come the Series S packs much more in just 25% more size? I’m not saying the Steam Deck should be as powerful as a Series S (that’d never happen, the power constraints would not make it possible), but I wonder if the CPU in the Series S is cut-back or if there’s anything in the Steam Deck’s SoC that could have been removed to get a lower cost.
Bingo. The Steam Deck OLED’s SoC seems to have cut out the Cadence DSPs, which we can see with the significantly smaller SoC (especially when combined with the new process node).
Pretty sure VGH also has more PCIe lanes on die as well, alongside full size Zen 2 cores (all console variants have a cut FPU).