News & Rumors: Xbox One (codename Durango)

[Silent_Buddha]

I believe VC-1 is still available for use in BlueRay titles. I wouldn't be surprised if they were still actively doing work on new codecs, but there hasn't really been anything noteworthy released by them since then, I believe.

Regards,
SB

 

[AlNom]

Might be too late for H265 hardware. *shrug*

*another nail for the 2014 coffin of technology

 

[3dilettante]

Unless you have an FPGA.

 

[AlNom]

Well folks, you heard it here first.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

There's also some vanishingly small chance that a GCN compute accelerated decoder for h.265 could be produced.

Regards,
SB

 

[bkilian]

Whoo! FPGA! I love FPGAs. Unfortunately, due to short sightedness on the part of FPGA manufacturers, they come with a whole bunch of features you don't need and are ridiculously expensive for the amount of utility you'd get out of them. A good programmable DSP or general purpose CPU with DSP extensions would be much more useful. And cheaper.

 

[fuboi]

Whoo! FPGA! I love FPGAs. Unfortunately, due to short sightedness on the part of FPGA manufacturers, they come with a whole bunch of features you don't need and are ridiculously expensive for the amount of utility you'd get out of them. A good programmable DSP or general purpose CPU with DSP extensions would be much more useful. And cheaper.

Yeah, I love messing with a cheapo Cyclone IV. But, just slap a quad core A9 in there and call it a day. The devs won't hate you and you saved a lot of design time.

 

[Acert93]

Might be too late for H265 hardware. *shrug*

*another nail for the 2014 coffin of technology

You should start a thread: 2014 technology killed by 2013 consoles.

Silicon Interposers, Stacked Memory, Stacked chips (?), 3D transistors (?), 20nm (?), etc.

 

[Scott_Arm]

You should start a thread: 2014 technology killed by 2013 consoles.

Silicon Interposers, Stacked Memory, Stacked chips (?), 3D transistors (?), 20nm (?), etc.

More like 2014 technology killed by financial reality of the console industry.

 

[silhouette]

I have been reading about 20 pages, and I am quiet shocked that nobody bring up this:

- the alpha kit has 8 core with 16 hardware threads@1.6 ghz while the Durango has 8
- the alpha kit has 2.5 TF GPU while Durango has 1.2
- the supposedly 60 Gb/s memory needs a 256 bit controller which would be an overkill for this APU
- there is a data move engine which nobody knows what it is doing
- there was a twitter post from a Crytek guy (which was deleted later btw) who attended the Durango info meeting says this is like a box with two computer in it...
- there was a Microsoft leaked document which has the dates of their coming products until 2015 basically includes not one but two Xboxes...

Now, /speculation mode on

What if the console has two of those Durango chips...
- It is already stated that a console with one of these would have a TDP close what current 360 has... Two of these are already quiet doable in a original 360 form factor
- the total power would be 16 core (as in alpha dev kit) and 2.5 TF GPU power (as in alpha dev kit)
- the two durango chips does not share the same memory space (hence the two computer in a box), but in order to communicate, they need something.. Here you need a data move engine (and if I am not mistaken, AMD already has such a move engine in their 7000 series for dual GPU communication, but largely not used)
- a single APU can still has 128 bit bus and two of them can provide 60 Gb/s memory
- they can even ditch 64 bit addressing on CPU as they do not need it for 4 GB
- Microsoft can target two demographics with a single APU: Put one of those in a box with no disk player and no HDD (but allow connection of external HDD through USB), they can release a very cheap machine.. Put two of those in a box, and you have quiet powerful (even more powerful than Orbis) system

However if they go with the current speced boxes, Steambox with a Project Shield will eat them alive...

 

[AlNom]

The extra cores may have been there to simulate what the fixed function HW was offloading.

 

[shiznit]

the dual socket intel cpu's were used because when downclocked are more similar to Jaguar than any of AMD's stuff.

 

[upnorthsox]

You let us know when you've picked up one of those dual apu nextboxes.....

 

[arijoytunir]

I also thought where did the rumor of Durango being like two pc taped together by vg247 go ?

 

[Grall]

What if the one of the mentioned console has two of those Durango chips...

No wai.

- the total power would be 16 core (as in alpha dev kit) and 2.5 TF GPU power

It's not as simple as just adding these things up; desktop GPUs today can't cooperate, you have to jump through hoops like SLI/crossfire to make them work together, which creates inefficiency and memory overhead (you need to duplicate framebuffers and textures for both chips, as well as transfer buffers between the two chips.) CPU is perhaps even more complicated, especially if the chip isn't engineered for multiprocessing from the start. With basically zero doubt whatsoever, the SoC used in durango is NOT equipped for hardware multiprocessing, which really screws with both software and hardware implementation (no bus snooping between the chips would make it impossible to know if one processor has "polluted" the memory of the other, leading to inconsistencies and thus bugs or even outright crashes.)

- they can even ditch 64 bit addressing on CPU as they do not need it for 4 GB. This would simplfy the chip design

It's not simply a matter of cutting something like this out. You'd need to reengineer large parts of the CPU and go through lengthy, costly verification. Not gonna happen, it's just not worth it.

What do you guys think?

No wai is what I think.

 

[silhouette]

The first one... An artist from Crytek who attended the Durango submit and leaking the name Durango (actually this was the first time that the word Durango is used for next-gen Xbox):

http://www.gamespot.com/news/crytek-dev-confirms-durango-code-name-of-next-xbox-6351818

The second one, the rumor of the next-gen Xbox being a two PC's in a box:

http://www.techradar.com/news/gaming/xbox-720-as-powerful-as-two-pcs-to-ship-in-2013-1074743

Now, I am not talking about a true multi-processor machine.. That one requires both CPU having memory controllers that needs to be synchronized to provide a coherent memory address space on both CPUs. Here, there is none required. The two APU's do not see others memory space at all. All they can do it communicate through this data moving unit (probably a DMA based data transfer logic). The two APUs works totally independent of each other, but only needs to communicate when needed..

Think it like PS3's SPUs, but on a SoC level. The PS3 SPU's neither see the main memory nor the other SPUs local, but only its own local 256 Kb memory. However, they have a DMA system to move data to/from the main memory pretty efficiently. This is similar: the APU does not see others memory space but can request or send data only when needed.

 

[Ruskie]

Maybe Durango is powerful like two PCs equipped with 2xHD6670, don't shoot for the stars mate

 

[Grall]

The second one, the rumor of the next-gen Xbox being a two PC's in a box:

Undoubtedly either a fake rumor, or a misinterpretation made by a non-technical person, maybe in reaction to previous rumors from last year of MS releasing two consoles, one being simpler and ARM-based, and the other being higher powered. IE, you'd have one traditional, high-powered CPU/GPU, and an ARM chip running windows RT for low-powered, casual gaming tasks. That'd be my interpretation slash explanation of such a rumor as you describe, not that there's two identical high-powered chips in one box.

Here, there is none required. The two APU's do not see others memory space at all. All they can do it communicate through this data moving unit

This seems very inefficient. Running a multithreading game across two completely disparate CPUs is bound to cause massive headaches for developers, much like say, the Sega Saturn for example. Add two separate GPUs that can't be coordinated in a low-level manner (thinking microstutter here for example), separate memory pools with lots of data duplication in both, thus limiting efficiency and so on... I just don't see where the gain is in that setup.

Of course so far we haven't even touched the cost aspect, but needing to build a system with two major ASICs versus just one, various support componentry, cooling system, duplicated power supplies (meaning voltage regulators, not mains PSU) and so on is another nail in the coffin here.

Not saying it couldn't be possible of course, stranger things have happened in the land of computing, but I don't think MS would be the ones to do something like that. Both previous xboxes have been very straight-forward, rather lean and uncomplicated pieces of hardware on the whole without massive quirks like PS2 and PS3 had. To massively diverge from that heritage, especially in light of sony's difficulties in that regard...I don't see it happening.

 

[Sonic]

No wai.

It's not as simple as just adding these things up; desktop GPUs today can't cooperate, you have to jump through hoops like SLI/crossfire to make them work together, which creates inefficiency and memory overhead (you need to duplicate framebuffers and textures for both chips, as well as transfer buffers between the two chips.) CPU is perhaps even more complicated, especially if the chip isn't engineered for multiprocessing from the start. With basically zero doubt whatsoever, the SoC used in durango is NOT equipped for hardware multiprocessing, which really screws with both software and hardware implementation (no bus snooping between the chips would make it impossible to know if one processor has "polluted" the memory of the other, leading to inconsistencies and thus bugs or even outright crashes.)


It's not simply a matter of cutting something like this out. You'd need to reengineer large parts of the CPU and go through lengthy, costly verification. Not gonna happen, it's just not worth it.


No wai is what I think.

Yet there's a patent application floating around that does show multiple processors in a multimedia console. It is obviously something Microsoft has considered before and may still be considering. It just might not be the option they go with initially. You say it makes no sense, but if they have solved the memory and communication problem, it makes a lot of sense.

 

[XpiderMX]

Am I the only one who thinks that Microsoft need to show their console soon?

I don't know if Durango is weaker than Orbis, but most people in forums have a better feeling for Orbis than Durango.

I hope new news from vgleaks for Durango.