News & Rumors: Xbox One (codename Durango)

[Bert Macklin]

I'm not so sure its supposed to refer to Xenos. If you check the document its using similar phrasing for both GPUs. One is "64ALU" and the other is "48ALU". Also on the Yukon slide it refers to the CPUs with a similar data sequence. "*Quantity & Architecture Type* @ *Frequency*"

In that GCN paper I linked it contrasts older architectures with new GCN stuff.

"The shader arrays in earlier generations of AMD GPUs consisted of a number of SIMD engines, each of which consisted of up to 16 ALUs. ... In GCN, each CU includes 4 separate SIMD units for vector processing. ... The instruction buffering, registers and vector ALUs are private for each of the 4 SIMDs to sustain high performance and utilization"

I just don't know if this is some strange shorthand or GCN nomenclature mix up. It just seems like a weird descriptor for GPUs. Anyways, just wondering if anyone can explain this.

 

[liquidboy]

and less than two weeks ago. They were on there the last time I checked.

They were one of the developer members... had the logo and everything.

 

[AlphaWolf]

Interestingly it also claims there are 10 developers, but they now list only 9. Perhaps there is just a problem with their logo, has anyone looked at the source code for the page? I can't atm, on mobile.

 

[DopeyFish]

Interestingly it also claims there are 10 developers, but they now list only 9. Perhaps there is just a problem with their logo, has anyone looked at the source code for the page? I can't atm, on mobile.

I looked, the entry is entirely removed

It's possible Microsoft was throwing R&D money at the project until the specifications were finalized, then became an adopter (without being listed as one) without any intention of furthering/upkeeping the standard.

Could have yanked that info just in case they decided to run with it and has hopes of Sony not realizing it was for Durango.

Or maybe they were just there for the sake of being there and found they weren't able to help in it's development or couldn't dedicate any reasonable resources so they dropped out.

To be honest, I really wouldn't put much weight into anything and just assume it's just general dealing. It would be nice if they could get double throughput with potentially equal or better latencies... maybe it was just too expensive in the end.

 

[dagnastyep]

I looked, the entry is entirely removed

It's possible Microsoft was throwing R&D money at the project until the specifications were finalized, then became an adopter (without being listed as one) without any intention of furthering/upkeeping the standard.

Could have yanked that info just in case they decided to run with it and has hopes of Sony not realizing it was for Durango.

Or maybe they were just there for the sake of being there and found they weren't able to help in it's development or couldn't dedicate any reasonable resources so they dropped out.

To be honest, I really wouldn't put much weight into anything and just assume it's just general dealing. It would be nice if they could get double throughput with potentially equal or better latencies... maybe it was just too expensive in the end.

If they were going to put HMC in Durango/720, wouldn't they have had to use similarly fast RAM in the alpha/beta kits to approximate the advantages of HMC? Seems like all the previous rumblings have indicated nothing but DDR3.

Though, I agree. It would definitely be nice to have. And it is a little strange that all of a sudden their name was removed without mention or really any notice, especially with the timing of next gen announcements upon us.

Setec Astronomy.

 

[AlphaWolf]

Well there is the option that the rumors are bs.

 

[XpiderMX]

Durango memory looks a bit like 3DLabs P10:

I have a question... in the memory managment (for example) for texturing, are involved some flops?

 

[bagofsuck]

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=221187435627#ht_500wt_1156

superDaE at it again.

 

[DaveNagy]

Heh, if this audio block brings back things like environmental 3D mapping of sound effects (along the lines of Creative Labs EAX, but hopefully even more advanced) then I would be an extremely ecstatic and happy panda. Even more so if developers take advantage of it to do real 3D positional audio with convincing environmental effects.

EAX? Ptuu! I spit upon EAX! The forces of A3D will rise again!

(J/K, I totally share your enthusiasm.)

 

[DaveNagy]

Durango memory looks a bit like 3DLabs P10

Yeah, I saw that you had posted on that Spanish guy's blog....

BTW, I would have thought that that article would have been a hot topic of discussion on this forum. (Maybe there's a new thread that I didn't notice.) While I wouldn't have been able to fully wrap my head around all the concepts even without the wacky machine-translation, it did appear to bring together and make sense of most of the Durango leaks we've seen so far. I'm suddenly a bit more excited to see what MS came up with.

And damn... that John Carmack. It's scary how much of this he foresaw. He's just a touch scary.

(I'm talking about this blog, although I'm sure you all knew that already.)

 

[dagamer]

With a potential Durango DVR, it will still cost $200/yr plus a Live subscription, neither MS nor any cable company will give up revenue. If anything it will be treated like a premium DVR with a premium to pay. I'm not holding out any hope that Durango will save me money on cable bills.

I doubt it'll cost $200/yr, especially when for most cable companies, your first CableCard is free and can handle 6 streams at a time.

 

[Cheezdoodles]

importance of DVR - People seem to be really discounting the importance of a whole house streaming DVR. Currently in the US, it would cost around $200/yr or more from the cable company to accomplish this in just 3 rooms.

The cable company can do this only because people are idiots and for some reason struggle to figure out how much a DVR cost.. One box can be bought in Norway, most expensive country in the world, for 100 bucks..

 

[wco81]

But you pay way more for other stuff.

 

[XpiderMX]

Yeah, I saw that you had posted on that Spanish guy's blog....

BTW, I would have thought that that article would have been a hot topic of discussion on this forum. (Maybe there's a new thread that I didn't notice.) While I wouldn't have been able to fully wrap my head around all the concepts even without the wacky machine-translation, it did appear to bring together and make sense of most of the Durango leaks we've seen so far. I'm suddenly a bit more excited to see what MS came up with.

I will try to translate the article.

And damn... that John Carmack. It's scary how much of this he foresaw. He's just a touch scary.

(I'm talking about this blog, although I'm sure you all knew that already.)

Take a look: http://timothylottes.blogspot.com/2013/02/virtual-texture-space-shading-multi.html

 

[ramr]

The cable company can do this only because people are idiots and for some reason struggle to figure out how much a DVR cost.. One box can be bought in Norway, most expensive country in the world, for 100 bucks..

In the US the cable companies own the boxes. Subscribers only lease them. A HD DVR right now runs about $10/month per room. Much better deals can be had with Satellite service but then you lose your internet.

 

[loekf]

As I understand it, Durango/STB is a hell of a lot more than Tivo...
- in theory it should be able to stream the TV to your tablet, whilst you play a game on the TV.
- a popup window or a twitter feed or whatever that appears on your TV, but appears identically in your 1080p AAA game.
- "play a game whilst the console record's the TV you were watching".
- in your 1080p60 game, you get a popup with your tv programme to warn you that it's starting.
- you press install and then select 'tv', the system tells you when it's installed.
- you recieve an email and a warning pops up on the tv 'newemail' - you can select it and the live tv records then resumes afterwards.
- it connects to your PC and informs you when something happens to it.
- skype pops up overlayed, recieving the call pauses the TV (or the game).
- it connects to your phone.
[etc]
(the original leaked design brief covers a bunch of use cases - and, I guess, there's no requirement for only 1 HDMI in, or only 1 HDMI out?)

Having said all of that, and despite being intrigued... I am concerned that tablets might make this 'less relevant' in 2013 than it seemed a few years ago. Also the interface is likely metro, which hasn't been all that popular.

Not going to happen in good old europe, where the cable providers are deeply entrenched and protecting their networks. At least here in Holland. I don't see Microsoft able to establish itself as a IPTV provider.

 

[loekf]

The cable company can do this only because people are idiots and for some reason struggle to figure out how much a DVR cost.. One box can be bought in Norway, most expensive country in the world, for 100 bucks..

Not if your cable provider insists on their own non-DVB encryption and pushes their own STB or CI+ card down your throat. Europe: UPC or Chellomedia.

No, taking another cable (at least) provider is no option because of the cable market has been nicely divided up in a regional way. So, no way to switch to another one, unless you're lucky to have fiber passing your home.

 

[loekf]

If they were really going for a high and low system setup, it seems like they should have shot higher for the high. But I'm not 100% on the leaks anyway. I mean, how is it that the Xbox 3 leaks can be so detailed well before it has even been announced and we still don't really know what is actually in the Wii U months after it is out in store shelves? Is MS and Sony that much more leaky than Nintendo? Did Nintendo just send dev kits to developers and say, figure it out yourself?

I think it just shows how much more impact Sony and Microsoft have on the games (console) market and specially the developers' community.

Usually when more people know about it -> more gossip and leaks

 

[dagamer]

If they were really going for a high and low system setup, it seems like they should have shot higher for the high. But I'm not 100% on the leaks anyway. I mean, how is it that the Xbox 3 leaks can be so detailed well before it has even been announced and we still don't really know what is actually in the Wii U months after it is out in store shelves? Is MS and Sony that much more leaky than Nintendo? Did Nintendo just send dev kits to developers and say, figure it out yourself?

If you were a developer, which would you be more interested in, Durango and Orbis where you actually get to do some cool nifty stuff or the Wii U, which is basically the same hardware techniques you've been working with for the past 8 years?

Exclusive Wii U 3rd party games are falling like dominos, so the answer seems pretty clear to me.

 

[Gradthrawn]

I mean, how is it that the Xbox 3 leaks can be so detailed well before it has even been announced and we still don't really know what is actually in the Wii U months after it is out in store shelves? Is MS and Sony that much more leaky than Nintendo? Did Nintendo just send dev kits to developers and say, figure it out yourself?

This very question was addressed directly in DF's recent Wii U article:

While there's still room for plenty of debate about the Wii U hardware, the core fundamentals are now in place and effectively we have something approaching a full spec. It took an extraordinary effort to get this far and you may be wondering quite why it took a reverse engineering specialist using ultra-magnification photography to get this information, when we already know the equivalent data for Durango and Orbis. The answer is fairly straightforward - leaks tend to derive from development kit and SDK documentation and, as we understand it, this crucial information simply wasn't available in Nintendo's papers, with developers essentially left to their own devices to figure out the performance level of the hardware.