Exactly the CPU in the Xbox X would be a massive bottleneck also the architectural improvements to the GPU part will also have to be in the base design.
Next Generation Hardware Speculation with a Technical Spin [pre E3 2019]
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Exactly the CPU in the Xbox X would be a massive bottleneck also the architectural improvements to the GPU part will also have to be in the base design.
Tkumpathenurple
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As long as they talk about streaming games, they're on the right track. And they've already tried the power of the cloud PR, which has backfired with Crackdown 3 - it had troubled development, so we can't really blame the dozen or so studios that worked on it, but it's still going to make the cloud a difficult crutch on which to rest.
If they make all of their big IP's GaaS though, they'll fuck themselves again.
If they make all of their big IP's GaaS though, they'll fuck themselves again.
XBX CPU performs exactly like a 2.3ghz Jaguar. Whatever MS have done on the CPU is completely trivial.
If you think they are not going to use any Zen CPUs, an impressive new CPU architecture which was in 2015 the biggest R&D spending of AMD (a company with tens of years of experience in designing CPUs), and can finally decently compete with Intel CPUs while using the same power, you are completely deluded.
I thought he's saying it'll be AMDs Zen based but not their current newest level (Zen 2) and with the same sort of customizations as OneX so regardless of the actual base technology they will say it's "custom cpu". So pedanticly all it takes is for 1 customization to be always referred to as "custom cpu".
Well, not according to MS. They're not claiming massive gains, but they're made changes outside the core that they've got data on.
That's from hotchips btw. You're free to dismiss it, but I doubt they're lying about this.
That's not to say we won't see Zen next gen, but MS are certainly the only console vendor to have implemented noteworthy CPU customisations in the last decade.
20% less latency and up to 4.3% perf improvement. Why would they lie about this ? It's a custom Jaguar. They removed the Jaguar name for PR reasons.Well, not according to MS. They're not claiming massive gains, but they're made changes outside the core that they've got data on.
That's from hotchips btw. You're free to dismiss it, but I doubt they're lying about this.
That's not to say we won't see Zen next gen, but MS are certainly the only console vendor to have implemented noteworthy CPU customisations in the last decade.
I doubt they remove the Zen name next time. They woudln't want people believing it's a custom XB1 CPU...
I never said it’s supposed to be impressive. I didn’t say it was supposed to be highly performant either. MS has a great deal of products that they need to supply for particularly in the low powered segment and ideally a low cost segment. From consoles to a new mobile device. The customizations would likely be more around supporting, Windows Core, VM, and having very low power footprint. The main goal supporting windows core as a unified OS and to be able to deliver better on continuum.
Today only Xbox is running windows core. I believe.
Their main goal is trying to solve the UWP app/continuum performance issue. If they can get desktop class applications running on a low powered x86 device but well : that is the goal
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MS never lied about it. They just didn’t talk about it.
It was Jason Gregory from Naughty Dog that wrote about it in a published textbook.
His words. Not MS
I've been thinking (too much) about that Jeux France rumor and I think it could very well make sense for what MS is doing. Here's my theory: It's 1 SoC for both SKU.
The SOC has a 256-bit bus, 4096 shader cores and 8 Zen cores. Hitting 12 TF is possible but it require all shaders to be functional and running at 1.5 GHz which may not be possible in the end product. But maybe if MS can salvage the reset of the SoCs for the low end machine, they can bin that aggresively.
Top Tier: 8 CPU cores, all shaders enabled, clock 1.35+ GHz in the real of 10-12 TF flops. 16 Gbps GDDR6 for 512 GB/sec BW. Requires premium cooling and power supply solution like the X1X.
Low Tier: 8 CPU cores (maybe they'll disable 1). 1 GHz GPU with only 2048 shaders. 192-bit bus (cut down) with 14 Gbps GDDR for 336 GB/sec bus.
My expectation for Navi vs Vega/Polaris is to mainly focus in increased efficiency in compute, bandwidth, and power consumption.
Finally, reusing the same SoC for both could drive costs significantly down as the yields would be excellent. Yes, there might not be many for the top tier console, but that's ok in the short term. I think this is part of the driver for the potential two SKU approach. Keeping costs manageable of a very expensive and new process.
The SOC has a 256-bit bus, 4096 shader cores and 8 Zen cores. Hitting 12 TF is possible but it require all shaders to be functional and running at 1.5 GHz which may not be possible in the end product. But maybe if MS can salvage the reset of the SoCs for the low end machine, they can bin that aggresively.
Top Tier: 8 CPU cores, all shaders enabled, clock 1.35+ GHz in the real of 10-12 TF flops. 16 Gbps GDDR6 for 512 GB/sec BW. Requires premium cooling and power supply solution like the X1X.
Low Tier: 8 CPU cores (maybe they'll disable 1). 1 GHz GPU with only 2048 shaders. 192-bit bus (cut down) with 14 Gbps GDDR for 336 GB/sec bus.
My expectation for Navi vs Vega/Polaris is to mainly focus in increased efficiency in compute, bandwidth, and power consumption.
Finally, reusing the same SoC for both could drive costs significantly down as the yields would be excellent. Yes, there might not be many for the top tier console, but that's ok in the short term. I think this is part of the driver for the potential two SKU approach. Keeping costs manageable of a very expensive and new process.
I'll connect the dots that I have in my mind if you're following along. One thing to remember when I come up with my predictions is that you need to look at MS as a whole corporation, and they have their hands in a variety of things. Under Satya's leadership the synergy between departments has never been higher and we're seeing a dramatic change in how MS is attempting to penetrate and monetize their markets.
Rumours of a disc-less SKU continue to crop up and this is a critical rumour to Microsoft strategy and I'll explain why. Today most devices sold are laptops and mobile devices, and laptops replacing the need for a desktop as for the most part on the consumer side, laptops have more than sufficient resources to run a variety of consumer hardware. All but one particular area however: console level gaming. To achieve console level gaming you need a gaming laptop that has a ridiculously high price point, or a gaming PC.
If you think about the PC market for a moment, the PC market no longer relies on DVDs for software, all software is purchased through the internet. Thus why few of our laptops contain disc drives anymore.
The biggest issue with Xbox it continues to fight against their competitors for ownership over the living room. In which they have positioned the Xbox to serve the North America markets very well, as we tend to have larger homes and screens here. But everywhere else, like EU and Asia, real estate is a luxury and this device is not well positioned to serve that space because screens are smaller, living rooms are smaller, kinect is a terrible device if you're gaming space is no bigger than a high school desk - who needs Kinect when you're an arms length from the screen. It doesn't even work that close. Kinect was made for large living rooms where people sit an easy 10 ft away from the TV. All the 'big media', 'big screen', type features are no longer as important, and from a consumer price point it just makes more sense to get something with a better price performance point.
So what if MS decided to also fight for your office space. The tiny space where you have a desk, a cheap monitor and a mouse and keyboard. What if you could get a small, effective consumer desktop experience combined with console level gaming. You get your internet browsing, your microsoft office, your music, videos etc, and whatever else you do but you do it on the desktop. Basically whichever applications are developed for Windows Core, they should run on Xbox as well.
Then all of a sudden, a disc-less SKU, combined with their support for VRR and mouse and keyboard is starting to make sense - because you've got this device where at $399 + a monitor is cheaper than a laptop, but it does exactly the same things with so much more gaming capabilitiy and it fits well in a small office space or corner. All they need is the hardware that can support it properly. Perfect for college / dormitory environments, or families of 3-4 trying to live in a 2 bedroom condo.
Thus enter the need for custom CPU architectures. For this to really work, they need the price points to come down as much as possible, but also need the power requirements to come down as much as possible as well. Xbox isn't the only device they plan to deploy this for so the cost of developing this custom chip is divided over a variety of devices and can be binned effectively across the line. And if I'm correct, should come out cheaper because they don't need to keep relicensing different technologies for the different verticals they are trying to support.
Rumours of a disc-less SKU continue to crop up and this is a critical rumour to Microsoft strategy and I'll explain why. Today most devices sold are laptops and mobile devices, and laptops replacing the need for a desktop as for the most part on the consumer side, laptops have more than sufficient resources to run a variety of consumer hardware. All but one particular area however: console level gaming. To achieve console level gaming you need a gaming laptop that has a ridiculously high price point, or a gaming PC.
If you think about the PC market for a moment, the PC market no longer relies on DVDs for software, all software is purchased through the internet. Thus why few of our laptops contain disc drives anymore.
The biggest issue with Xbox it continues to fight against their competitors for ownership over the living room. In which they have positioned the Xbox to serve the North America markets very well, as we tend to have larger homes and screens here. But everywhere else, like EU and Asia, real estate is a luxury and this device is not well positioned to serve that space because screens are smaller, living rooms are smaller, kinect is a terrible device if you're gaming space is no bigger than a high school desk - who needs Kinect when you're an arms length from the screen. It doesn't even work that close. Kinect was made for large living rooms where people sit an easy 10 ft away from the TV. All the 'big media', 'big screen', type features are no longer as important, and from a consumer price point it just makes more sense to get something with a better price performance point.
So what if MS decided to also fight for your office space. The tiny space where you have a desk, a cheap monitor and a mouse and keyboard. What if you could get a small, effective consumer desktop experience combined with console level gaming. You get your internet browsing, your microsoft office, your music, videos etc, and whatever else you do but you do it on the desktop. Basically whichever applications are developed for Windows Core, they should run on Xbox as well.
Then all of a sudden, a disc-less SKU, combined with their support for VRR and mouse and keyboard is starting to make sense - because you've got this device where at $399 + a monitor is cheaper than a laptop, but it does exactly the same things with so much more gaming capabilitiy and it fits well in a small office space or corner. All they need is the hardware that can support it properly. Perfect for college / dormitory environments, or families of 3-4 trying to live in a 2 bedroom condo.
Thus enter the need for custom CPU architectures. For this to really work, they need the price points to come down as much as possible, but also need the power requirements to come down as much as possible as well. Xbox isn't the only device they plan to deploy this for so the cost of developing this custom chip is divided over a variety of devices and can be binned effectively across the line. And if I'm correct, should come out cheaper because they don't need to keep relicensing different technologies for the different verticals they are trying to support.
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I might be. It might be customization along the lines of how Apple customizes ARM or Qualcomm does.
But even then, the results are dramatic for their needs.
Anyway, I am keeping an eye on Build2019 for the app and windows core stuff. GDC for the nintendo collaboration and SDK.
About the difference between a PC GPU that targets 1080p vs one that targets 4K and the exact difference between the One and One X. Seems reasonable to me.
snc
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Targeting 1080p in 2020 is strange for me, microsoft is not a nintendo, I think its bad strategy
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