Nvidia Licenses Xbox Tech. for Backwards Compatibility

[Shark Sandwich]

http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3141472

Microsoft and Nvidia currently have a license agreement for Nvidia-related technologies for use in the Xbox 360, 1UP.com learned today, in order to achieve backwards compatibility with Xbox. The original Xbox was engineered with an Nvidia-developed GPU, whereas Xbox 360 utilizes a new ATI GPU, which has proven problematic in coming up with an easy solution for backwards compatibility.

Nvidia confirmed the existence of a licensing agreement for Nvidia-related technologies to 1UP.com, but would not enter into specifics. According to the agreement, Microsoft will make payments to Nvidia over several years. Unfortunately, Microsoft is keeping quiet on the subject. "We have no further announcements on backwards compatibility at this time," said an official Microsoft spokesperson.

Microsoft has been investigating the feasibility of backwards compatibility for around eight months now, said a source close to the project, and signed the deal with Nvidia about five months ago.

Last week, ATI European Developer Relations Manager Richard Huddy provided the first hint in an interview with Bit-Tech. "Emulating the CPU [of the original Xbox] isn't really a difficult task. They have three 3GHz cores, so emulating one 733MHz chip is pretty easy," he said. "The real bottlenecks in the emulation are GPU calls - calls made specifically by games to the Nvidia hardware in a certain way."

In order to overcome the problem of games calling upon chip specific features within the Nvidia hardware, Microsoft needed to emulate the Xbox's GPU. Without an official agreement with Nvidia, however, Microsoft would have to reverse engineer the technology, which would have been a "legal nightmare" for the company, said our source.

 

[Shark Sandwich]

Sorry if this was common knowledge already. It seems like the X360 could have better backwards compatibility than many of us first expected.

To the people who know more about this stuff than I do: is this going to make backwards compatibility "easy"? Or is it still a major technological challenge?

 

[PARANOiA]

This is good news, since I can hopefully reduce my cabinet by one oversized XBox, while still being able to play the games. I am curious about how they plan on transitioning the save-games which you can't put on a memory card.

I have a question on this... surely Sony will have the exact same issues next gen (PS4) since there are likely to be a lot of NV-specific function calls on the PS3 in OGL.

I'm not sure about ATI, but I was under the impression that ATI tech favours general routines, whereas NV prefers specific paths. Keep in mind I'm not as low-level as a lot of folks on the board.

Care to comment?

 

[ralexand]

Wow this machine has to be costing MS alot more money than they anticipated.

They had to go from
256MB>>512MB
no BC>>License fee for BC
no harddrive>>20Gig Seagate.

 

[jvd]

KK is saying sony is using both hardware and software and so they wont have these troubles. I don't believe it but we will see

 

[archie4oz]

I have a question on this... surely Sony will have the exact same issues next gen (PS4) since there are likely to be a lot of NV-specific function calls on the PS3 in OGL.

Nope, NV licensed their technology to Sony (nevermind that Sony will be manufacturing the GPU as well)... GL calls aren't the problem, it's what they represent (especially when you've granted register-level access to developers)... It's a lot harder to emulate a feature or algorithm your hardware lacks, can't perform, or produce the same results when emulating a particular function...

 

[jvd]

archie , what features do you believe the nv2a has that the xenos doesn't ?


anyway , nvidia didn't make the gs . Sony did , so they will have the smae problems emulating the gs as ms has with the nv2a , unless they put a gs inside the rsx

 

[The GameMaster]

I am going to have to say to Sony this...

Good luck in trying to emulate the Emotion Engine as well as the Graphics Synthesizer... because it is not going to happen.

The Cell CPU just does not have the processing power needed to translate the operations from the EE to the Cell CPU and additionally the PS3 system does not have enough bandwidth to emulate the GS. The most likely scenerio is basically what they did with the PS2 to achieve backward compatibility to the PS1, include the actual processor as a dual use processor in the system itself. The PS2 had, in addition to the EE and GS the actual MIPS CPU in the system itself, mostly for the hardware backward compatibility... but it was used for a few other functions. The PS3 will more than likely use the "Dragon" CPU, which is a combination of the GS and the EE, in a similar fashion and use software to glue everything together. The PS2 architecture is just too messy to effectively emulate (heck it is bad enough trying to get PS2 emulation on the PC).

In regards to how much all this will be costing Microsoft... it was already stated in a article that Microsoft is losing $75 follars per machine at a price point of $299. Microsoft is probably paying nVidia roughly $1 per machine for this function and no more than that. Keep in mind this is a LOT better scenerio for Microsoft than before with the original XBox where they lost $150 dollars per machine at a $299 price point, the difference is that Microsoft owns the chips and is paying for their manufacturing on their own instead of buying the chips from the vendor. This also means it will be easier for Microsoft to implement backward compatibility going forward as well as being easier for Microsoft to reduce their costs over time as manufacturing becomes more advanced.

Microsoft's backward compatibility is purely software, though this will be more time consuming and this requires some very significant programming ability... it may give them some extra functions in doing so like improving the graphics or framerate of XBox games. (Ever try playing a PS1 game on your computer using a PS1 emulator?).

Sony's backward compatibility is mostly hardware, though this will likely assure that most of the games will work at the start, this will also be more costly as this requires additional hardware components. That also means there is little or no possibility of improving previous games.

Nintendo's backward compatibility is UNKNOWN, but chances are it will be hardware based if they use the existing GameCube technology.

 

[Megadrive1988]

I have a question on this... surely Sony will have the exact same issues next gen (PS4) since there are likely to be a lot of NV-specific function calls on the PS3 in OGL.

provided Sony sticks with Nvidia for PlayStation4 graphics, running PS3 games on PS4 should not be a problem. even easier than PS3 running PS2 games, I would think.

 

[Megadrive1988]

Wow this machine has to be costing MS alot more money than they anticipated.

They had to go from
256MB>>512MB
no BC>>License fee for BC
no harddrive>>20Gig Seagate.

and its damn well good for us (and developers). without those 3 things, Xbox 360 would be ALOT less appealing than it is now.

 

[PARANOiA]

provided Sony sticks with Nvidia for PlayStation4 graphics, running PS3 games on PS4 should not be a problem. even easier than PS3 running PS2 games, I would think.

That's a big 'if'. I'm sure MS thought the same thing a few years ago!

 

[fulcizombie]

Watch your cursing . Watch your posts in general . They wont be tolerated

 

[Inane_Dork]

This is the first time it's been confirmed, though it had to be true if MS cared about the feature at all, and we know they do. The best-selling games are the ones most likely to use the special Xbox extensions, so of course MS licensed the tech.

They would have major egg on their face if they tried to reverse engineer it, so the only alternative is to do what they did: become nVidia's b**** all over again.

 

[Fafalada]

archie , what features do you believe the nv2a has that the xenos doesn't ?

I don't think there need to be any - if their GPU emulation is purely high-level, you're unlikely to ever get rid of all compatibility issues (or rather, different games will require their own game-specific "patches" to work right).

The PS2 architecture is just too messy to effectively emulate (heck it is bad enough trying to get PS2 emulation on the PC).

You're assuming that Sony gave the job of their backward compatibility to a bunch of hobbyists with incomplete documentation and no real development tools.

The PS3 will more than likely use the "Dragon" CPU

They'd need to include the rest of PS2 chipset not just Dragon to make that work - not gonna happen.

 

[_phil_]

not have enough bandwidth to emulate the GS

i'm not sure the GS has ever been maxed out.

 

[pipo]

I'm not sure about the planning of the HDD. I think it was in all the time. I have a feeling they just didn't want Sony to know that...

The whole 360 strategy needs it too badly to be optional. IMHO.

 

[pc999]

I'm not sure about the planning of the HDD. I think it was in all the time. I have a feeling they just didn't want Sony to know that...

The whole 360 strategy needs it too badly to be optional. IMHO.

They should make a lot of profit with their Live MarketPlace and downloads (2 levels... at 0.5 dolars and they make a lot of profit), all of that needs a HDD, but they had played this game the all time anyway

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I don't see this announcement as brining anything new to the XB360 situation. We already know that there should be out-of-the-box BC for some games (level 1 whatever that means) and there'll need t be software 'patches' for more hardware-hitting games.

It may well be ATi is incorporating some nVidia ideas on Xenos to enable a level of hardware BC that is cimpliant with the DX API's that level 1 games use, which enables the BC for these games. Anything that hit the hardware more directly would need to be reconfigured somehow to hit the ATi hardware instead.

 

[Farid]

You're assuming that Sony gave the job of their backward compatibility to a bunch of hobbyists with incomplete documentation and no real development tools.

Ohh.. Do you know something, that we don't, about the PS2 emulation on the PS3, Faf?

At least did you heard rumors about the GS being emulated?
Because it would be sweet to be able to switch on some supersampling for all the PS2 games (Same thing for the PSone).

 

[ban25]

Sony's backward compatibility is mostly hardware, though this will likely assure that most of the games will work at the start, this will also be more costly as this requires additional hardware components. That also means there is little or no possibility of improving previous games.

The PS2 provided texture filtering for PS1 games.