Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion Archive [2013]

[BRiT]

Shortbread, please stop using font colors. Your entire post is completely unreadable for a large portion of the readers.

 

[Shortbread]

Shortbread, please stop using font colors. Your entire post is completely unreadable for a large portion of the readers.

What font colors? I'm using the default black, as far as I see.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

According to Goosen the One has better scaling hardware than the 360. Which provides more than adequate results. So what's the problem exactly?

Scaling is worse quality than native. The scaling algorithm isn't the best possible and could be (much) improved. The scaler adds a sharpening filter a lot of the time that creates nasty artefacts.

I'm also trying to figure out how the system with the more exotic architecture and more diverse functionality is supposedly cheap.

One could design a tiny SoC with 50 different, exotic functional units all with bizarre abilities. It'd be very exotic with loads of diverse functionality, cheap to manufacture being tiny, but very hard to use. Ergo, exotic != expensive. In this case, the 'exotic' aspect, which isn't terribly exotic, is an ESRAM scratchpad which was included as it was deemed cheaper than 8 GBs of GDDR5.

Anyhow, the XB1 scaling capabilities should (will) improve in due time…

We don't know how hardwired or programmable the solution is, so scaling may not improve over time except in newer consoles with alternative scaling chips.

 

[Arwin]

What font colors? I'm using the default black, as far as I see.

I don't see anything weird either. Maybe BRiT is using a bugged forum reader?

 

[BRiT]

(COLOR=black)Seriously, do you believe they would say the opposite? (/COLOR)

(COLOR=black)Anyhow, the XB1 scaling capabilities should (will) improve in due time…(/COLOR)

Here is exactly what you posted but with the BB square brackets replaced with parentheses. It would be best if you simply posted text without any color tags. Maybe you need to use the normal editor and not the advanced one.

 

[Shortbread]

Here is exactly what you posted but with the BB square brackets replaced with parentheses. It would be best if you simply posted text without any color tags. Maybe you need to use the normal editor and not the advanced one.

Ok, I guess. It must do it automatically whenever I use the advance editor. Not a biggie... :smile:

 

[Shortbread]

We don't know how hardwired or programmable the solution is, so scaling may not improve over time except in newer consoles with alternative scaling chips.

I thought the scaler was part of the AMD GPU design, XB1 having an extra plane compared to PS4? So, a new scaling chip would be out the question... that would require a whole new GPU redesign. Something, I don't see MS doing...

Or am I missing something?

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I thought the scaler was part of the AMD GPU design, XB1 having an extra plane compared to PS4? So, a new scaling chip would be out the question... that would require a whole new GPU redesign. Something, I don't see MS doing...

Or am I missing something?

[strike]We don't have the specifics of where the scaling is performed, but even if [/strike]on the SOC as explained in the teardown (one of the fifteen processors), it'd just be a small block to change when designing the processor for the node reduction when shrinking in say 3 years. It's certainly an option. I don't see it happening though as not worth the effort.

 

[Shortbread]

[strike]We don't have the specifics of where the scaling is performed, but even if [/strike]on the SOC as explained in the teardown (one of the fifteen processors), it'd just be a small block to change when designing the processor for the node reduction when shrinking in say 3 years. It's certainly an option. I don't see it happening though as not worth the effort.

Ok, sounds fair.

I have a question though. Do you believe the 3rd plane (or inclusion) could be hurting the overall performance of the scaling chip (if we're to believe the chip is the same across PS4/XB1)?

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Nope. It'll be designed to run at full speed with all three layers. The hardware will support exactly enough performance to scale and blend three 1080p images. That's assuming it's not a programmable solution, which is extremely unlikely, though not impossible. (If you are going with a programmable solution, may as well just do it on the GPU with the OS reservation).

 

[Steve Dave Part Deux]

Scaling is worse quality than native. The scaling algorithm isn't the best possible and could be (much) improved. The scaler adds a sharpening filter a lot of the time that creates nasty artefacts.
Obviously scaling is worse quality, that doesn't address the question I asked. I see no reason why the hardware would be sharpening the image by default. My guess is that function is intended to make text more legible and not meant to be used for the plane storing the color buffer. That's likely a snafu in the tool chain.
One could design a tiny SoC with 50 different, exotic functional units all with bizarre abilities. It'd be very exotic with loads of diverse functionality, cheap to manufacture being tiny, but very hard to use. Ergo, exotic != expensive. In this case, the 'exotic' aspect, which isn't terribly exotic, is an ESRAM scratchpad which was included as it was deemed cheaper than 8 GBs of GDDR5.
In manufacturing, unique components are always more expensive.

We don't know how hardwired or programmable the solution is, so scaling may not improve over time except in newer consoles with alternative scaling chips.

We do know that it is flexible enough to accept new inputs frame by frame for each display plane. The 360 scaling hardware suffered from none of the aforementioned problems, which suggests to me that it is a software issue they have yet to rectify.