hmm. looks like the leaks are starting to find their way out, whether true or false, better make my last prediction before things get obvious by GDC.
Custom x86 8 Core Processor (joint developed with MS)
Custom GPU 6-7 TF (joint developed with MS) Feature Level 6_4 / 6_5 hardware support (so that should include DXR + Direct ML; though DirectML shouldn't require any AFAIK)
12-16 GB of GDDR6
1 TB Storage
UHD
The goals for custom is extremely low power profile, to be leveraged for multiple verticals; Surface Mobile to Surface Desktop, Hololens type devices, wireless VR device, Streaming/Data Center, Console.
Exploit effective binning and scaling as required across the verticals, order chips in massive volume to bring costs down, goals are for low power but to have access to a high end feature set.
I'm not saying it's not Navi or Zen, it could be, or heavily customized variants of it. Think Apple and their A1-A10 chips being fully customized ARM.
Link To Publication
The Xbox One X also contains an eight-core APU, but its cores are based on proprietary technology developed in partnership with AMD, rather than the Jaguar microarchitecture like its predecessor
Game Engine Architecture Third Edition
- Jason Gregory Lead Engine Development @ Naughty Dog
You guys can thank
@Scott_Arm for finding these, he just loves reading these types of books.
I believe we've already seen the beginning of it in the X1X, but the wording is vague. Given what is written above, I would give Jez a bit more space from our previous discussions
#17. It is as MS provides, a Custom 8 Core processor.
Takes a lot longer to customize, could lend some credence why they needed an extra year on X1X and the higher price points even though they could have done something similar as Sony did with 4Pro. But more importantly draws into some really weird and terrible comms from microsoft early during Scorpio;
- ranging from being open to supporting exclusives
- forward compatibility/rolling generations
- The sudden support for high frame rate and VRR
- M+KB support
- At one point wanting to support VR
- to the developers of Ori indicating that it was a true generational leap
- the devkit supports 24 GB of RAM IIRC
At one point in time these might have been plans that were abandoned I don't know (or care in this thread). But the fact that they never communicated further leads me to believe that they have made their minds up on how they want to proceed and that we may be able to see that with next gen.
On the flip side, their devkit supports some nifty features that may also require customization. Things like using that one devkit to profile both X1 and X1X performance. That can't be easy to do either.
Anyhoo, it's not much, so don't dive into Wonderland, just wanted to get out that I think looking at Navi and Zen as basis to guess feature and performance spec of X2 may not be helpful. But I don't think it's secret sauce that will necessarily let it out perform Navi or Zen, they just want something that will suit their needs for their entire line of devices that they want to sell. This is an effective way to get that stuff cheaper than sourcing intel for surface, and all these different manufacturers for all their products.