Microsoft Xbox Reveal Event - May 21, 2013

[(((interference)))]

It's a cost reduction measure for the long term. It is what allows MS to use DDR3 for main memory. Three years from now MS is going use a half width DDR4 interface on XBox One V1.1, while Sony will be stuck with boutique GDDR5 for the duration.

Cheers

Yup, definitely cost related - the engineers came up with it as a way of having 8GB of memory while maintaining adequate performance - without breaking the bank on GDDR5 that is.

 

[Tchock]

It's a cost reduction measure for the long term. It is what allows MS to use DDR3 for main memory. Three years from now MS is going use a half width DDR4 interface on XBox One V1.1, while Sony will be stuck with boutique GDDR5 for the duration.

Cheers

I suspected simplicity in design (trace routes) rather than cost, actually. That, and DDR3 seems to have hit an irrecoverable valley in pricing when GDDR5 still seems price-controlled (at least that's what the hesitance to use it in lower-end mobile parts hints)

 

[Silent_Buddha]

This whole "offload computations to the cloud" bullshit is just that.

Are we really to believe that some "cloud" center has assigned cpu resources to each user process that exceed that which is already in these consoles or (in the case of PC computing) their computers? Really? Buy a $400-500 console and we'll set aside a blade server for your "cloud computational" needs?

Either the xbox one or ps4 could run circles around the Cray that I did my PhD modeling work on back in 1996...they don't need to offload anything. Sheesh.

It's not so much about is Cloud computing more powerful than what is in the current box.

Even if they can only allocate 10% more resources above and beyond what is in the box, that's 10% more.

The point is, that if cloud computing is used, that they can expand upon that in the future, thus increasing the resources over the course of the life of the console. So in theory, 5 years from now, instead of some hypothetical 10% more, perhaps there's now 50-100% more due to the evolving nature of computing in general.

Instead of releasing an updated Xbox One in 2 years. You upgrade the cloud and the same console that a gamer bought in 2013 has the same resources available to it as a console bought in 2015. Rather than a purely physical model where a console bought in 2013 has less resources than an upgraded console in 2015.

In some ways it allows for the platform to grow in power similar to what you can do with PCs.

This isn't something like Gaikai where you need at least as much resources in the cloud as the box itself per user. It can easily be just a fraction of it, because it's in addition to what's in the box instead of replacing/emulating what's in the box.

Regards,
SB

 

[Inquisitive_Idiot]

Terrible presentation from start to finish to the point of it being lol worthy. Everything they showed was completely nebulous and sounded like 100% marketing speak. They failed completely to explain why this appeals to casual players or the core market. The only thing I liked was the design of the console, which looked much more like a premium home theatre piece than anything we've seen so far from Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo. I really don't know what else to say, it was just fucking terrible from start to finish.

 

[sebbbi]

i looked at the amd pps on it and it seems to be a 7970 feature... or a 7970 feature first.

Yes, PRT (hardware virtual texturing) is a Radeon 7970 feature. It's only supported by the 7900 cards, and only in OpenGL (requires a extension). It's a great feature, but unfortunately not yet used by any PC games, because of the very limited hardware support.

AMD PRT actually has quite a few nice uses cases (large sparse structures, such as SVOs and hash tables, etc). Nobody has yet used it for these things on PC because of the limited hardware / API support (single card generation + OpenGL), but on a console you don't need to worry about things like these.

 

[Tap In]

Offloading computations is great, but now you're telling developers they have to have servers for single player games too, and you're telling gamers that if their internet connection drops, their game is going to lose features.

they just tie into the 300k servers being made available to them from MS

 

[dobwal]

Looks like Engadget got access to XB1 prior to the event.
http://www.engadget.com/2013/05/21/building-xbox-one-an-inside-look/

In-house silicon is at the core of what makes the Xbox One tick. It provides the structure that enables the console to run two operating systems at once for instant multitasking, and for the new Kinect to dish out much more information than before (to the tune of 2 Gbps). Most importantly, the five pieces of custom silicon spread across the console and its new camera peripheral helped the Mountain View team support their vision of an "always-on" console.

In order to do that in an efficient way, you have to architect all of that into the box up front. A lot of it is in the SoC," Holmdahl says. That SoC contains both the CPU and GPU, as well as embedded ESRAM; the first two components are based on an AMD design, and custom-built into an SoC with embedded ESRAM. That CPU is based on the Jaguar design from AMD, with eight cores and a 4MB L2 cache, while the GPU is of the D3D11.1 (with extensions) variety, Baker told us.

In one corner, a massive 4K television is seamlessly playing two HD video streams from a single box. Though the Xbox One is capable of pushing and receiving 4K signals, this test station is an illustration of how Microsoft's architecture went into the console's SoC (not a demonstration of its raw power).

In different levels, we were working on five custom-designed components. Silicon components. Three of them going to the console and two of them to the sensor," Spillinger explains. That's the SoC that drives the console, the CMOS processor in the new Kinect, I/O integrators in both Kinect and the console, and a digital signal processor on the Blu-ray drive.

 

[lowlyMonk]

What does everyone feel about the transistor count?

Xbox One - 5 billion transistors
AMD 7970 - 4.3 billion transistors
AMD 7850 - 2.8 billion transistors
AMD 7770 - 1.5 billion transistors

 

[ERP]

I would do something like crowd simulation for a racing game. Play offline, you get sparse crowds like current gen, play online, you get huge dynamic crowds with much more diversity.

There is a lot of scope for interesting gameplay which requires always on simulation even in a single player game, it opens up scope for actual new things in games.
Having said that I have to wonder how the azure services are paid for, if it's a cost to the developer, I wouldn't expect them to be broadly used.
If it's covered by the Xbox Live subscription there has to be some limitation on their use.
Azure certainly isn't the cheapest cloud service available either.

 

[anexanhume]

Yes, PRT (hardware virtual texturing) is a Radeon 7970 feature. It's only supported by the 7900 cards, and only in OpenGL (requires a extension). It's a great feature, but unfortunately not yet used by any PC games, because of the very limited hardware support.

AMD PRT actually has quite a few nice uses cases (large sparse structures, such as SVOs and hash tables, etc). Nobody has yet used it for these things on PC because of the limited hardware / API support (single card generation + OpenGL), but on a console you don't need to worry about things like these.

I thought Rage's megatextures were a kind of PRT implementation?

And I thought PRT was a GCN feature, not just Tahiti.

I assume PS4 will have this capability due to being built on OpenGL and having close to the metal access.

 

[Strange]

What does everyone feel about the transistor count?

Xbox One - 5 billion transistors
AMD 7970 - 4.3 billion transistors
AMD 7850 - 2.8 billion transistors
AMD 7770 - 1.5 billion transistors

That 5 billion includes a whole bunch of stuff that isn't on a standard GPU.

like the 1.6 billion transistor eSRAM.

 

[(((interference)))]

Pretty meh overall - the biggest surprise (besides the name) was live action Halo series, but I think don't think Spielberg will be involved in any great capacity. I also don't need to get an Xbox to watch that.

All the TV stuff doesnt apply to me since i dont watch TV, can see how people (besides just gamers) would like it though.

Not sure if I like Xbox One, what does it mean? Would've preferred just 'Xbox' or 'new Xbox'.

And the slab sided box is quite boring, it looks like every other under TV device out there.
The new controller looks ok, doesn't look as well executed as the current controller though, having the Xbox logo near the top rather than the centre looks messier.

Wired has a good gallery up:
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2013/05/xbox-one-photos/#slideid-138529

The no hard specs thing is telling, I wonder how the reveal is going down with GAF

 

[3dilettante]

It's not so much about is Cloud computing more powerful than what is in the current box.

Even if they can only allocate 10% more resources above and beyond what is in the box, that's 10% more.

At least early on, there would be more modest benefits. 300K cloud servers would be physically outnumbered by any high-profile game's first day sales. Even something like 10% of the FP throughput of each console is an astounding amount of computation to host for millions of machines.

I'd imagine developers would face scrutiny from Microsoft for validating their cloud-side software, just as there is validation for the client code.
With the fact that EA's a prominent partner in the launch, Microsoft better be sure about it.

Microsoft doesn't want the Xbox One to have the same reputation as every multiplayer EA launch.

 

[Daozang]

Microsoft should probably provide the APIs and system support. Its Azure service would underpin a lot of it. This should allow for greater growth for Azure and provide a corporate backstop to publishers and devs afraid of committing to their own servers.

It's not impossible to replicate. The hardware virtualization bits are AMD features, but competitors would need to put up the software and physical infrastructure. We don't have that confirmed.

Either way, the more I think about it, the more it sounds like marketing...

The only thing I think this can work, is calculate the implications of other players to the virtual world. A way for the game to track a lot more players perhaps, than most games currently can???
Most of the hard work, (when we are talking about games) happens on the client. And I just can't see how that can change with the bandwidth limitations of today's internet...

I can see that happening in the future though.
And perhaps, this is the start towards that.

 

[anexanhume]

That 5 billion includes a whole bunch of stuff that isn't on a standard GPU.

like the 1.6 billion transistor eSRAM.

Where you getting 1.6b? With 1T SRAM, you're around 300M.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

And the slab sided box is quite boring, it looks like every other under TV device out there.
The new controller looks ok, doesn't look as well executed as the current controller though, having the Xbox logo near the top rather than the centre looks messier.

I think that's the point. If you are making a play for the living room then it helps if you make it as similar as possible to other A/V components that you normally see an A/V cabinet.

Only the core gamers will care that it doesn't look like some Teens fantasy of a game console. The public in general might be more drawn to something that looks like a serious A/V electronics product that is at home with their potentially high end A/V equipment.

It wouldn't surprise me at all if the size of the console is more to reflect that design philosophy than anything to do with how compact they could make the console.

My X360 S for example is nice and compact. But it looks EXTREMELY out of place stacked on top of my classy and good looking A/V equipment. The Xbox One on the other looks like it would look like just another classy piece of A/V equipment when stacked on my other A/V equipment.

Regards,
SB

 

[GrimThorne]

What does everyone feel about the transistor count?

Xbox One - 5 billion transistors
AMD 7970 - 4.3 billion transistors
AMD 7850 - 2.8 billion transistors
AMD 7770 - 1.5 billion transistors

Well all of those transistors aren't going to the GPU. Besides according to the Wired article Microsoft is saying that Xbox One has 8x the graphical performance of the 360. Basic math is 256 Gflops x8 = 2.048Tflps.

I'm actually more interested in learning more about about this massive cloud network that Microsoft has invested in.

 

[Strange]

Where you getting 1.6b? With 1T SRAM, you're around 300M.

General consensus is 6T eSRAM.

 

[anexanhume]

General consensus is 6T eSRAM.

Then it's changed since I last remember. The consensus was 1T because it'd be a huge transistor/die expense for 6T.

 

[(((interference)))]

Well all of those transistors aren't going to the GPU. Besides according to the Wired article Microsoft is saying that Xbox One has 8x the graphical performance of the 360. Basic math is 256 Gflops x8 = 2.048Tflps.

I'm actually more interested in learning more about about this massive cloud network that Microsoft has invested in.

6-8x is vgleaks specs - you have to take into account the efficiency gains from Xenos (60% efficient) to GCN (~100% efficient) - then the 8x works out to about 1.2 TF.