Xbox One (Durango) Technical hardware investigation

[Cjail]

I say it's still possible. They may be waiting for more fan feedback like with the DRM situation and indie support before going ahead with the upgrade.

If they really wanted to be aggressive they could launch with 8gb and simply offer upgrades for early adopters to the 12gb unit a few months later.

Devs are receiving final devkits so really I think that the time for feedback is over.
Also MS is not going to release a 12Gb XBO at a later date.

 

[XpiderMX]

What if 8GB is the max memory for games and 4GB is for system (O.S. reservation)?

Technically, the Microsoft information (8GB) could remain true.

P.D. Personally I don't believe the 12GB thing.

 

[warb]

What if 8GB is the max memory for games and 4GB is for system (O.S. reservation)?

Technically, the Microsoft information (8GB) could remain true.

P.D. Personally I don't believe the 12GB thing.

They would advertise 12GB, because 12 > 8.

 

[dobwal]

Why does XB1 need an extra 4 GB of DDR3?

Its has a flash cache. Both the 360 and the PS3 superslim come with on board flash. The SuperSlim comes with 12 GB of it.

Flash performance with SSHD or SSD is limited because SATA is a bottleneck. The Mac Pro comes with a PCI-E flash solution and sports read and write speeds over 1 GBps. Mac Book Air sports 800 MBs. There are some PCI-e solutions that read at 1.8 GBps.

Maybe, MS didn't bother to increase RAM because it feels its solution is robust enough that going 12 GBs of DDR3 isnt warranted.

 

[MrFox]

Why does XB1 need an extra 4 GB of DDR3?

Its has a flash cache. Both the 360 and the PS3 superslim come with on board flash. The SuperSlim comes with 12 GB of it.

Is that confirmed?

 

[grndzro]

It is unlikely MS would use 20nm chips for system memory since the MTBF of 20nm memory chips is awful.

Using it for system ram would be a ticking RROD MS suicide bomb.

 

[dobwal]

Is that confirmed?

It was posted here from an architectural discussion

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=63929

We added lot's of memory both system memory and flash cache in order to have that simultaneous and instantaneous action.

Its also diagrammed in the 9-24 document.

 

[dobwal]

It is unlikely MS would use 20nm chips for system memory since the MTBF of 20nm memory chips is awful.

Using it for system ram would be a ticking RROD MS suicide bomb.

What 20nm chips are you referring?

 

[grndzro]

What 20nm chips are you referring?

The oned they were referring to for the proposed MCM 12gb ram upgrade theory I think.

 

[BRiT]

No. The 12GB ram rumor does not rely on using 6GB units.

 

[eastmen]

It doesnt specificly have to be 12 gigs either

 

[BeyondTed]

It is unlikely MS would use 20nm chips for system memory since the MTBF of 20nm memory chips is awful.

Using it for system ram would be a ticking RROD MS suicide bomb.

Do you mean the MTBF of certain 20 nm MLC flash? (Heard of that. Don't think Xbox One contains that.)

Or are you saying there is 20 nm DDR3 with bad MTBF out there? (Never heard of that.)

 

[BeyondTed]

Is that confirmed?

I didn't see that on the Wired photos. Can anyone find that on the Wired mainboard?

If not, then it is in the hard drive (hybrid), on the back of the board or not there.

 

[MrFox]

I didn't see that on the Wired photos. Can anyone find that on the Wired mainboard?

If not, then it is in the hard drive (hybrid), on the back of the board or not there.

Can't see it either, but it could be in a shadow, or even on the underside?

It would be kind of stupid to have it on the hard drive (hybrid thing) if they can manage it much more efficiently than a classic hybrid HDD. Also it probably cost less to add their own flash than rely on an HDD vendor to implement a cheap block-level implementation. It's a game console, there's a huge opportunity to do something clever with a flash cache if it's managed manually by the OS.

 

[grndzro]

Do you mean the MTBF of certain 20 nm MLC flash? (Heard of that. Don't think Xbox One contains that.)

Or are you saying there is 20 nm DDR3 with bad MTBF out there? (Never heard of that.)

The failure rates and MTBF of memory chips get progressively worse as the process node shrinks due to leakage. 3 times higher I think and higher mtbf. It wouldn't make sense to put it in a console that will be a long term gaming platform.

 

[BeyondTed]

The failure rates and MTBF of memory chips get progressively worse as the process node shrinks due to leakage. 3 times higher I think and higher mtbf. It wouldn't make sense to put it in a console that will be a long term gaming platform.

I know of one source of MLC flash that had a bad spell resulting in a nasty batch of SSDs.

But I have not heard that for the DDR3. (Meaning I have not heard of DDR3 products exhibiting unacceptable MTBF.)



Are you talking about FLASH or DDR?

 

[LightHeaven]

I don't know yet if the new final kits have 12 GB or not.

We know the alpha kits definitely had 12 GB but I don't think we've had any confirmation that the beta kits had 8 or 12.



When the System OS is in the foreground (and the Game OS is backgrounded) it has access to 4 CPU cores.
Virtualisation makes it trivial for the hypervisor to fold the six cores used by the Game OS (when it's in foreground) down to four without any issues.



http://kotaku.com/the-five-possible-states-of-xbox-one-games-are-strangel-509597078

What about the suspended state? The game is still loaded (which means no other game was opened), but it's not running...

If it is like W8 and other mobile systems, the game would be left in the constrained state for a while, usually to save state and whatnot and then suspends the game.

A game running on the application OS could request the game os to be suspended so they can get 6 cores and 90% of the gpu...

That wouldn't be too bad for indie games. 3GB is still plenty of RAM, and they would have same processor resources...

 

[AzBat]

According to Phil Spencer tweets it seems some believe indies will have access to all 8gb...

@XboxP3 So do indie devs get access to the bigger pool of RAM? Or are we limited to the 3GB in the windows partition?

@GeorgeTeV Goals is to allow devs access to full pool of resources available, no indie RAM limit.

http://www.oxm.co.uk/59041/microsof...access-everybody-gets-full-pool-of-resources/

They have more Phil Spencer tweets too.

Tommy McClain

 

[grndzro]

I know of one source of MLC flash that had a bad spell resulting in a nasty batch of SSDs.

But I have not heard that for the DDR3. (Meaning I have not heard of DDR3 products exhibiting unacceptable MTBF.)



Are you talking about FLASH or DDR?

I thought I was talking about both but it seems I am wrong. There is no reliability issues with 20nm sdram. It's only nand/flash.

 

[Solarus]

so what are the odds that xbox gpu and cpu will get clock increase? since theyre based on computer parts shouldnt it be easy without increasing heat too much? i do remember someone saying like increasing the cpu to 2gh would increase the tdp by 66%, but what about gpu? would increasing the gpu to 1ghz be out of the question?