Gamasutra GameDev Breakdown of Microsoft Xbox Scorpio [2017: 04-12, 04-14, 04-17]

[Rikimaru]

The dev kit looks like an Xbox One S at the same size/volume of a original Xbox One. Also looks like it's mirrored compared to the Scorpio renders considering the disc drive is on the left.

MB is on the top likely. There are no holes on the top for the fan either.

 

[Jay]

I always heard that the specs of a dev kit were roughly double that of the retail...

I will say that I'm taking what they say at face value though. Possible spin and pr accepted

 

[3dilettante]

Still two major questions remain unanswered:
1. What hardware does it have to help checkerboard
2. Does it have double rate FP16

How difficult is it for journalists to ask real questions?

The Frostbite presentation linked earlier in this thread mentioned additional features/tweaks with the PS4 Pro to better handle checkerboarding, such as correcting gradients for the wider aspect ratio of the checkerboard pattern, allowing the hardware to automatically handle some stride adjustments, and controlling shading versus sampling frequency, etc.
Those were noted under the Pro's heading, but how much of that is unique to the Pro like the explicitly custom ID Buffer is not certain. Some of them may have elements that are found in GCN, or tweaks added with the later generations. Those could count as hardware support.

The Scorpio GPU is listed in the Gamasutra article as being custom with "Polaris features", which if taken at face value leaves out elements from Vega.
I'm not certain "Polaris features" necessarily means that Scorpio's GPU has Polaris as its baseline in all parts of the architecture, but details are still sparse.

 

[RancidLunchmeat]

It didn't sound to me like Gamasutra had any new tech information about Scorpio other than the specs of the dev kit. I wouldn't take too much stock in their listing the GPU as "with Polaris features", it seems like that is just taking DF's article and making a broad brush statement. If the details weren't in the DF article, you won't find them in the Gamasutra article because it looks like they have less info.

 

[Scott_Arm]

@3dilettante

Seems to me that Scorpio is brute force with high clocks vs adopting newer architecture features. From a cost standpoint, I'm curious to know if that's the cheaper option or the more expensive one.

 

[AlNom]

The Frostbite presentation linked earlier in this thread mentioned additional features/tweaks with the PS4 Pro to better handle checkerboarding, such as correcting gradients for the wider aspect ratio of the checkerboard pattern, allowing the hardware to automatically handle some stride adjustments, and controlling shading versus sampling frequency, etc.
Those were noted under the Pro's heading, but how much of that is unique to the Pro like the explicitly custom ID Buffer is not certain. Some of them may have elements that are found in GCN, or tweaks added with the later generations. Those could count as hardware support.

The Scorpio GPU is listed in the Gamasutra article as being custom with "Polaris features", which if taken at face value leaves out elements from Vega.
I'm not certain "Polaris features" necessarily means that Scorpio's GPU has Polaris as its baseline in all parts of the architecture, but details are still sparse.

*tin-foil hat on*
The presentation also talks about bringing checkerboard to "Xbox and PS4" platforms. Maybe Scorpio doesn't have much specific hardware for checkerboard afterall!

 

[Scott_Arm]

*tin-foil hat on*
The presentation also talks about bringing checkerboard to "Xbox and PS4" platforms. Maybe Scorpio doesn't have much specific hardware for checkerboard afterall!

We're really just going by one sentence in a digital foundry article where it mentioned hardware in scorpio for checkerboard, but without any details. If anyone could enlighten us, it would be DF.

 

[mpg1]

One thing I noticed about this article was the seemingly repeated claim that DX12 at the hardware level was something new for Scorpio.

What’s more interesting about the Scorpio console is that, according to Microsoft, it’s designed to incorporate basic, oft-used DirectX12 draw calls into the GPU command processor itself, potentially freeing up some processing power for devs.

“It's the first time I'm aware of us ever doing something like this,” Gammill said. “We actually pulled some of the DX12 runtime components directly into the hardware. So basically, these high-frequency DX12 draw calls you'd normally call [to output a frame, for example] which would take up a lot of GPU and CPU cycles, now that that's baked into the system itself, it makes the system significantly more efficient.”

Gammill estimates this can lead to situations where hundreds of specific API calls can be cut down to 10-15, potentially giving developers a bit of extra efficiency to play with.

 

[iroboto]

One thing I noticed about this article was the seemingly repeated claim that DX12 at the hardware level was something new for Scorpio.

i know, unfortunately, no way to verify or test these claims without a dev unit.

 

[mpg1]

i know, unfortunately, no way to verify or test these claims without a dev unit.

OK, this Gamasutra quote was by a Program Manager at Microsoft. The correction on DF was done by a technical guy...I'm siding more by what he said.

 

[MrFox]

We're really just going by one sentence in a digital foundry article where it mentioned hardware in scorpio for checkerboard, but without any details. If anyone could enlighten us, it would be DF.

I'm guessing DF and gamasutra signed an NDA, because when Richard was asked if he saw the box, his answer was something like "well sort of, yes, but MS doesn't allow me to talk about it". In retrospect maybe gamasutra had exclusivity about the dev kit, while DF got exclusivity about the specs.

 

[turkey]

I'm guessing DF and gamasutra signed an NDA, because when Richard was asked if he saw the box, his answer was something like "well sort of, yes, but MS doesn't allow me to talk about it". In retrospect maybe gamasutra had exclusivity about the dev kit, while DF got exclusivity about the specs.

It seemed pretty logical he saw a devkit and the image from gamesutra shows historically how little the Dev kit design differs from retail and also shows the Scorpio Dev kit...

 

[AlNom]

They might want to differentiate the design from XO Slim more though. :s

 

[Scott_Arm]

They might want to differentiate the design from XO Slim more though. :s

Two boxes with near identical photos. One is titled, "Xbox One S." The other is titled, "Xbox One Scorpio."

 

[dobwal]

hum. I wondered if maybe they didn't want it for compatibility reasons, but it'd seem shortsighted.

And daft.

Then again, if they at least grabbed FP16 support (GCN3/Tonga), there'd still be wins with register usage & bandwidth vs compute speed.

Maybe it's a product of two different design goal. Sony wanting to get close to 4K while not wanting to add the number of transistors necessary to produce a gpu in the 6 TFLOP range. While MS wanting native 4K to be a reasonable option for developers so a 6 TFLOP gpu became their target.

Rapid packed math isn't free but it still represent cost savings on 4.2 TF gpu with the feature versus a 6 TF gpu without it. Adding the feature to a 6 TF gpu might of pushed the cost too high for MS.

It seems like everybody with the gpu expertise and knowledge, deems 16FP limited to certain usage. But for a 4 TF gpu with double rate 16FP to spit out the same number of ops of 6 TF gpu limited to 32FP, two thirds of the ops must be 16FP (6-32b vs 2-32b and 4-16b). What's the chance of happening in terms of gaming?

 

[turkey]

Scorpio dev kits ......., can be toggled to replicate Xbox One, One S, or Scorpio

Is this the rumoured project helix in the flesh? Do we know any more on this unified development environment, as this is what I had assumed the piece on gamesutra would be about, not a summary of the df piece with a few photos of the xdk hardware, although that is welcome.

 

[rokkerkory]

Disappointing article with regards to specs.
It does reiterate that it will be multiple devs are getting X1 games running on Scorpio quickly.

Yeah but it's a development-ish article not spec-ish if that helps. I am sure we will hear more on specs soon.

I think they may be using next iteration of polaris, was it polaris 20 or something?

 

[Jay]

we've had "specs", we've had dev box spec and development philosophy guess i would call it.
be nice if next would be relaxing studios nda's so they can talk about it.
that would really keep hype going untill e3. (also may get the sort of answers we're looking for)

 

[Rockster]

Clearly based on their disclosed timelines with Scorpio kits shipping soon and DF saying the timing of their exclusive was partly to preempt developer leaks; the Scorpio enabled XDK will be in dev hands soon which should provide those additional details everyone is looking for such as presence of rapid packed math, etc. Patience people.

 

[AlNom]

What's the chance of happening in terms of gaming?

I suppose to an extent that may depend on Switch development since that's the other major platform with support for it. XD

I'm more interested to see what developers could do or find acceptable for precision loss since that may have implications in the next generation with the slowing down of fab nodes.