The Deck uses a special, low power (specifically targeting ~9W), graphics heavy AMD SoC. It was actually the first of a new laptop CPU line that AMD seemingly canceled:
AMD coincidentally had the right CPU at the right time. Intel and Nvidia had nothing comparable for Valve to use. In fact, the successor to the Deck chip is kinda an existential problem, as AMD's CPU-heavy laptop line (including the Z1) is less suitable.
Valve also had already spent considerable resources in making proton work well with AMD. even if an appropriate SOC was to be available from NVIDIA, it is possible that Valve would have chosen AMD.
Mind, proton does work well with NVIDIA, but my understanding is that AMD gets the most testing.
NVIDIA doesn’t have the license to make x86 chips with the modern patented features so they’d need to either have a dedicated GPU with an AMD/Intel CPU or develop, or invest resources into an existing, ARM emulation layer
As others have mentioned they are custom parts, but if you were forced to qualify them as either "laptop" or "desktop" parts they are much, much closer to AMD's laptop lineup than the desktop ones. Monolithic design with integrated GPU is not what AMD's desktop lineup has looked like.
One thing thats under-appreciated is the immense design/tape out cost (9 figures these days, maybe more?) of a fully custom chip. That is a huge flat expense, hence one does not simply make a custom design unless the volume (or margin) is absolutely enormous.
AMD/Nvidia/Intel can't just casually crank out an APU for Valve, as one might think. I'm not even sure MS/Sony can justify a die shrink this generation... Heck, maybe the PS6 will run commodity PC hardware.
Compared to what came before, the previous (Modified AMD Jaguar APUs) and the current-generation (Modified AMD Zen 2 APUs) consoles are commodity PC hardware compared to whatever bespoke cost-optimized ISAs consoles used to be built around. So in a way, it's already somewhat commodity PC hardware under very heavy TPM lockdown.
I don't think a next-gen APU for a Steam Deck 2 is going to be that big a problem. The Steam Deck's APU is officially designated: "AMD Custom APU 0405"[1], basically a mix and match of AMD's same-generation parts. With the success of the Steam Deck, a followup custom APU is all but assured, although I don't think it'll show up before next year. If I had to guess, I'd expect a 4C Zen5c and 12 CU RDNA 3.5 on 4nm in late 2024 which should offer a big bump (assuming they can improve memory bandwidth).
Note, we're seeing a lot of Chinese handhelds using 7840s already that while a bit behind at 10W, start beating the Steam Deck's performance (sometimes dramatically) at 15W+. Personally, I'd be pretty excited for a Strix Point handheld next year - AMD seems like they're finally getting serious on the iGPU side of things again (with Meteor Lake looking to be competitive).
> basically a mix and match of AMD's same-generation parts.
It is not. Its a distinct die from the Zen2/3 laptop parts.
If AMD was going to continue the Deck APU line, we would have seen Dragon Crest by now... But its not there, and the Z1 is in its place.
Again, I reiterate, taping out a chip is massively expensive. Valve cannot afford a custom die, they are stuck with what AMD has at the moment when they need it... Though if AMD starts tiling their laptop APUs, Valve might be able to tweak the CPU/GPU config.
No, the Steam Deck would have never upgraded to Dragon Crest (2022 on those leaked roadmaps). In case you didn't realize, the Steam Deck wasn't released until Feb 25 2022, and only sold 1M units in 2022 (vs 3M projected in 2023). It's certainly successful enough now (and has enough marketing, like it had just a ridiculous amount of floorspace at TGS) that it's all but guaranteed there will be a Steam Deck 2 (but probably not until 2025).
Since all the details are NDA'd, I guess we'll have to disagree on the economics, but "tweaking CPU/GPU config" is the whole point of AMD's Semi-Custom Solutions group and if they can't handle delivering a solution for a product that has at least $2B in sales, then I don't know what customers they're supposed to serve (tape-out costs are expensive, but not nearly as expensive as you're imagining I suspect, when reusing existing IP blocks). But we can revisit in a few years and see.
The Deck uses a special, low power (specifically targeting ~9W), graphics heavy AMD SoC. It was actually the first of a new laptop CPU line that AMD seemingly canceled:
https://videocardz.com/newz/amd-ryzen-2021-2022-roadmap-part...
AMD coincidentally had the right CPU at the right time. Intel and Nvidia had nothing comparable for Valve to use. In fact, the successor to the Deck chip is kinda an existential problem, as AMD's CPU-heavy laptop line (including the Z1) is less suitable.