Esram in Scorpio as L3 cache in non-BC mode.

"Specs Leaked!"... I'm not seing any new specs..only speculation based on a paper which has probably been freely available to D3D devs on MSDN since July 2016.

Spec#1 - No ESRAM in Scorpio
Spec#2 - DCC in Scopio
Spec#3 - Four times more L2 cache

Most probably expected DCC in Scorpio, but now we know it's definitely in there and now we know there's no ESRAM.
 
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Spec#1 - No ESRAM in Scorpio
Spec#2 - DCC in Scopio
Spec#3 - Four times more L2 cache

Maybe more?

Most probably expected DCC in Scorpio, but now we know it's definitely in there and now we know there's no ESRAM.
All of those were a given unless the person expected it to based on the same GCN version as the Xbox One..
Real specs leak would mean knowing which GCN gen its based on, which CPU architecture, amount of Ram, clock speeds, CU count etc....
This is Eurogamer "leak" is nothing.
especially if it's nothing but a comment on a paper available to MSDN subscribers (? maybe someone who has access to it can look for it an let us know... I'm no longer registered since 2012 so I can't unfortunately.)
 
All of those were a given unless the person expected it to based on the same GCN version as the Xbox One..
Real specs leak would mean knowing which GCN gen its based on, which CPU architecture, amount of Ram, clock speeds, CU count etc....
This is Eurogamer "leak" is nothing.
especially if it's nothing but a comment on a paper available to MSDN subscribers (? maybe someone who has access to it can look for it an let us know... I'm no longer registered since 2012 so I can't unfortunately.)

You know what thread you're in, right? One of those at least wasn't considered to be a given. And going from expected to known is still worth something, IMO.
 
"Specs Leaked!"... I'm not seing any new specs..only speculation based on a paper which has probably been freely available to D3D devs on MSDN since July 2016.
Yes, no specs in there. But at least it confirms that there is no more esram inside.

HBM? but that would be a bit to cost intensive.
 
"Specs Leaked!"... I'm not seing any new specs..only speculation based on a paper which has probably been freely available to D3D devs on MSDN since July 2016.

If it's the same paper that's been available for half a year then someone should have noticed it already:

Microsoft's whitepaper categorically rules out ESRAM for Scorpio, while at the same time suggesting that developers continue to support it to ensure strong performance on legacy Xbox One hardware.

"ESRAM remains essential to achieving high performance on both Xbox One and Xbox One S," the whitepaper reveals. "However, Project Scorpio and PC are not provided with ESRAM. Because developers are not allowed to ship a Project Scorpio-only SKU, optimising for ESRAM remains critical to performance on Microsoft platforms."
 
If it's the same paper that's been available for half a year then someone should have noticed it already:
I wonder who is the stool pigeon.:LOL: Maybe an infiltrated dev who wanted to be a Eurogamer journalist and his frustration led him to become a tattletale.
 
I don't think there won't be ESRAM; ESRAM is essential to Xbox One; it's faster than other memory types and it has much lower latency. Latency is a key element to high performance, if there is no ESRAM then there won't be compatibility with Xbox One, it's that simple.

There can be more ESRAM though, maybe 64MB or even 128MB. Zen would really shine with 128MB.
 
I don't think there won't be ESRAM; ESRAM is essential to Xbox One; it's faster than other memory types and it has much lower latency. Latency is a key element to high performance, if there is no ESRAM then there won't be compatibility with Xbox One, it's that simple.

There can be more ESRAM though, maybe 64MB or even 128MB. Zen would really shine with 128MB.
there's no esram on scorpio. this information has been leaked already
 
I don't think there won't be ESRAM; ESRAM is essential to Xbox One; it's faster than other memory types and it has much lower latency. Latency is a key element to high performance, if there is no ESRAM then there won't be compatibility with Xbox One, it's that simple.

There can be more ESRAM though, maybe 64MB or even 128MB. Zen would really shine with 128MB.

The low latency of the eSRAM is probably not that important for the sorts of code being executed on XB1's GPU. And even if it lent itself well to some algorithms I don't think developers will be that thrilled about code that doesn't work well on PS4.
 
I read on the internet that it would be impossible to maintain BC with Xbox One without ESRAM, I'll look for the article
No it is not impossible.
Everything you've done before is still possible at 4-times the base hardware.
So if your memory-access is now a bit slower, the pure computation-speed of the 4x hardware absorbs those slower things. If you loose 2ms on slower memory (just as example) you get your work still done in a 16ms timeframe because the rest of your calculations is done in maybe 8-10ms.
esram was also part of the normal virtual memory, so there is no problem here, too.

The only thing that could get worse is memory contention. But we got just much higher bandwidth of main memory and bigger GPU caches. Maybe even bigger CPU-caches, so less main memory access is needed.
 
That's easy to say now, but I believe before the leaks, nobody would believe that Xbox One "BC" would be possible without ESRAM. Many experts argued this.
 
That's easy to say now, but I believe before the leaks, nobody would believe that Xbox One "BC" would be possible without ESRAM. Many experts argued this.
Not true. I (no real expert) and a lot of experts argued that the eSRAM ist just there for somewhat masking the low memory bandwidth of the XB1. With higher memory bandwidth in Scorpio it becomes utterly useless, especially as it is not exactly blazingly fast in the first place. And it can be easily accounted for in Scorpio as the eSRAM is part of the flat memory address space of the XB1. Games won't even notice it isn't there anymore. There is a very clear path for BC without the eSRAM. According to a lot of experts.
 
Sebbbi said this which I take to mean the ESRAM needs to be present for software to talk to it.*
https://forum.beyond3d.com/posts/1908974/
You need to manually manage your ESRAM usage and allocation policies, move data in/out (using custom move engines) and write/read data to/from the ESRAM using ROPs and compute shaders. XBox One ESRAM is not an automatic cache, it is a fully manual scratchpad memory. Intel's L4 EDRAM cache (in some Broadwell and Skylake models) on the other hand is a fully automated cache. Caches need considerable amount of extra die space for cache tags and coherency hardware. Microsoft (AMD) probably decided that a manual scratchpad is more suitable for a console, because custom code will be written for the console anyway. Intel on the other hand chose to implement fully automated 64MB / 128 MB EDRAM cache in their processor, because PC software is almost never optimized solely for a single architecture.

The UMA memory architectures of modern consoles (Xbox 360, Xbox One, PS4) make it very difficult to emulate games on platforms with a discrete GPU (such as the PC). First party console games can use algorithms where the CPU and GPU are tightly cooperating. This level of (low latency) CPU<->GPU cooperation not possible on a PC with a discrete GPU. In general, no console I have ever worked with has been designed to be fully forward compatible (I have worked with 7 consoles). It is always a trade off to make the next console fully backwards compatible. As long as the console developers are allowed to have low level hardware access, easy 100% forward compatibility will not happen.

* Added by mod as an explanation. Original content was a quote without personal context.
 
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The UMA memory architectures of modern consoles (Xbox 360, Xbox One, PS4) make it very difficult to emulate games on platforms with a discrete GPU (such as the PC). First party console games can use algorithms where the CPU and GPU are tightly cooperating. This level of (low latency) CPU<->GPU cooperation not possible on a PC with a discrete GPU. In general, no console I have ever worked with has been designed to be fully forward compatible (I have worked with 7 consoles). It is always a trade off to make the next console fully backwards compatible. As long as the console developers are allowed to have low level hardware access, easy 100% forward compatibility will not happen."
Emulating UMA on PC is difficult as graphics memory (discrete GPU) and system memory are fully separated. There is no fast direct link between them. However "emulating" UMA with another UMA architecture shouldn't be hard, as the memory could be simply mapped differently.
 
You need to manually manage your ESRAM usage and allocation policies, move data in/out (using custom move engines) and write/read data to/from the ESRAM using ROPs and compute shaders.
That would theoretically be replaced with 'ESRAM area in RAM' in Scorpio. It doesn't have to physically be ESRAM to fit the requirements for use. RAM is accessed as an address. Think of it as a postal box. The dev says, "stick this buffer in Postal Box 124" and the system puts that in the third MB of ESRAM in XBOne, while instead in Scorpio puts that buffer in the 13425th MB of system RAM.

As an aside for good Netiquette and discussion practice, you should provide a link to whomever you are quoting. I'll edit your post... If you're unhappy with my opening line of conversation, let me know what you want to change it to (assuming you haven't got edit privileges yet to change it yourself).
 
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