Xbox 2 hardware overview leaked?

[passerby]

I still wonder about the "3 3.5GHz cores with dual threads each". That will be more advanced than any solution available from Intel, AMD or Apple till... what? 2007? 2008? 2009? And this is going to cost how much?

Have to be really slim CPU cores if the numbers are true.

 

[PiNkY]

I still wonder about the "3 3.5GHz cores with dual threads each". That will be more advanced than any solution available from Intel, AMD or Apple till... what? 2007? 2008? 2009? And this is going to cost how much?

Amd is planning dual core opterons for mid-2005, and these also come with an integrated memory controller. Considering that PPC970 is a 50 Mio transistor part, i think it should be possible. About the 3.5GHz+ clock i have my doubts.

 

[Guden Oden]

I will add the rest

Yeah, why not go for broke on the copyright infringement, huh?

The GPU has a peak pixel fill rate of 4+ gigapixels/sec (16 gigasamples/sec with 4× antialiasing).

8 gigasamples in reality, if ATi keeps the 2 Z-units per pipe (rather than 4). Anyway, even though "only" 4gpix/sec may seem "low", how much fillrate do you need for TV rez anyway...?

The interesting point about all of these values is that they’re not just theoretical—they are attainable with nontrivial shaders.

Hmm. That'd be a first EVER if that was to be true! (Btw; color me sceptical.)

A 720p frame buffer fits very nicely here.

720p sans floating-point precision sans antialiasing...

In addition to an extremely powerful GPU, Xenon also includes a very high-quality resize filter.

Stuff like this makes me think this might actually BE an official document, because it's not really something a fanboi would come up with.

Anyway, it probably means every game will "support" 1080i/p, except it's just upscaled 720p, so no extra image information.

The Xenon CPU is a superb processor for audio

This also makes me think it's an official text, because a f-boi would have invented an array of DSPs n shit like with the current box. Using CPU grunt to do audio is a logical choice, especially since the company they chose to do the southbridge has no known experience in developing audio solutions (umm, well, not that Nvidia did EITHER now that I think about it... ).

The Xenon system south bridge also contains a key hardware component for audio—XMA decompression.

I wonder what use this would be for though. Compressed samples would take up less space, but would have to be decompressed before they could be processed and combined, needing (lots) of extra CPU cycles per voice, and there's really no point in compressing output buffers as they take up little space anyway, and it'd just be a waste of CPU resources since the southbridge will decompress the stream anyway before output.

Methinks pre-orchestrated soundtracks for background music in games, rather than MP3s or ogg vorbis or any of the other solutions we've seen so far, MS makes their own format.

The Xenon console will be smaller than the Xbox console.

Thank GRUD for that!!!

The primary changes are the removal of the Black and White buttons and the addition of shoulder buttons.

Ok, so let's remove our own small "innovation", and steal an "innovation" of Sony's... Now MS has copied Nintendo and Sony pretty much to an equal amount (general joypad design and analog stick from Nintendo, dual sticks from Sony, analog stick layout from Nintendo, clickable sticks and analog face buttons from Sony.)

This document doesn't seem obviously fake. It has some PR spin to it - which one could say just makes it more believable as MS is the master of PR hehe - but it is also very informed regarding the technical bits.

Most f-boys are fairly ignorant of how things really work. They wouldn't know a push buffer if it bit them in the arse, and usually subscribe to the "bigger is better" school of thought when it comes to numbers. Rather than saying 4+ Gpix/s fillrate, they'd take the current leader and multiply by factor 2 or more. Repeat with pretty much every other number, and that is not the case with this text. So if it is forged, it is a VERY GOOD forgery. Of course, it can still be outdated.

The number I question the most is 3.5GHz CPU, knowing that IBM has trouble hitting even 3GHz right now. Of course, a process shrink might help, but considering they're stuck at "only" 2.5GHz now it means they're a full GHz from their desired target. 30% higher clock speed required in less than 1 1/2 year. Doable? We'll see.

Cooling doesn't worry me. Even if it burns 150W, that's not more than a large light bulb consumes, and as it is supposed to be a triple core, the chip area is 3x that of a single CPU. A large slow-spinning fan and an efficient heatpipe copper cooler will deal with the heat. Of course, there's the risk the GPU + memory might want ANOTHER 150W!

 

[PARANOiA]

CPU

The Xenon CPU is a custom processor based on PowerPC technology. The CPU includes three independent processors (cores) on a single die. Each core runs at 3.5+ GHz. The Xenon CPU can issue two instructions per clock cycle per core. At peak performance, Xenon can issue 21 billion instructions per second.

Am I the only one that thinks this is going to make for some damn bad programmers in the next couple of years?

I remember when resources were very finite - and coders had to have things running effectively. 3x3.5gHz?? That's unbelievable. Even older consoles had very slow CPU's compared to what was available on for PC. How could a feasable game run poorly on that?

Although... the fact is that multi-processors require good timing of code-running. Throwing multiple processors at a task can make it run much slower if an app is coded poorly.

We shall see.

 

[Jov]

Cooling doesn't worry me. Even if it burns 150W, that's not more than a large light bulb consumes, and as it is supposed to be a triple core, the chip area is 3x that of a single CPU. A large slow-spinning fan and an efficient heatpipe copper cooler will deal with the heat. Of course, there's the risk the GPU + memory might want ANOTHER 150W!

That still doesn't worry you?

It doesn't worry me either if I can get it to heat the bed.

 

[Riddlewire]

MU throughput is expected to be around 8 MB/sec for reads and 1 MB/sec for writes.

Microsoft signed M-Systems to develop a custom flash storage unit for Xenon. They already have flash memory that operates at 23MB/sec reads and 15MB/sec writes. I doubt Microsoft would commission the development of outdated technology. Surely the MUs will be faster than quoted in the 'leak'.
Also, with all the 'XXX+' numbers, it seems that whoever wrote the article had zero current information and was just loosening up the old numbers from the earlier leaked system diagram. I think it's mostly well-disguised speculation. Much of it might turn out to be accurate, but that would just be dumb luck.

 

[jvd]

I still wonder about the "3 3.5GHz cores with dual threads each". That will be more advanced than any solution available from Intel, AMD or Apple till... what? 2007? 2008? 2009? And this is going to cost how much?

Have to be really slim CPU cores if the numbers are true.

well the cell chip will be out and about and according to sony it will be more power full than this. SO i'm going to assume its cheaper than the cell chips .

Dunno though. Both seem a little out there for my likings .

 

[Guden Oden]

Microsoft signed M-Systems to develop a custom flash storage unit for Xenon. They already have flash memory that operates at 23MB/sec reads and 15MB/sec writes.

No, they do not. What they DO have though is a flash memory STORAGE SYSTEM that operates a number of flash devices in parallel (likely a LARGE number), to reach these speeds. This is not a feasible design for a console memory card because you end up with something that is physically much too large, with too much capacity and costs way too much also (think multiple times the cost of the console itself here).

What might work is having 2-4 flash devices operate in parallel (more would be hard to fit in the space of a memory card), but read and write speeds would still be low compared to a harddrive, as would capacity.

Also, with all the 'XXX+' numbers, it seems that whoever wrote the article had zero current information

Not neccessarily. By not stating final clock speeds and RAM capacity they're free to modify specs according to their needs and/or capabilities. If yields on their chips is better than expected and Sony's coming out with a badass mofo console, they might want to bump their numbers. Likewise, if yields are poor and they can't hit numbers that will be competitive with the badass mofo PS3 they won't lose face by having to publically downgrade speed like was the case with the GPU on the first box. Maybe they'd decide to go with twice the RAM of PS3 instead to compensate, for instance.

Much of it might turn out to be accurate, but that would just be dumb luck.

Perhaps.

 

[Bohdy]

This is just info from that block diagram put into paragraphs with a bit of fluff.

 

[London Geezer]

This is just info from that block diagram put into paragraphs with a bit of fluff.

Gotta love the fluff.

 

[Qroach]

Wow, this is certianly a very complete looking overview. IF it is real, then it sounds like MS has their ducks in a row. The thing that interests me in this article, is that you could buy a harddrive addon, or have it inked to your PC to you your hardrive networked.

If you can use your PC hardrive for xbox live and or save games, Then MS really doesn't need to include a harddrive at all. Damn, this sounds like a cool system. For te next generation, it's not going to be how many polys you draw, it's going to be how good looking they are.

 

[rabidrabbit]

Wow, this is certianly a very complete looking overview. IF it is real, then it sounds like MS has their ducks in a row. The thing that interests me in this article, is that you could buy a harddrive addon, or have it inked to your PC to you your hardrive networked.

If you can use your PC hardrive for xbox live and or save games, Then MS really doesn't need to include a harddrive at all. Damn, this sounds like a cool system. For te next generation, it's not going to be how many polys you draw, it's going to be how good looking they are.

but.. you can already do those on PS2 (maybe not the network PC HD thing, though)
why suddenly, as the xbox2 seems to have the HDD as an addon, is it fascinating, whereas when PS2 did it, it was just plain stupid and failure :?
IMO the xb2 not having a HDD is certainly not it's most interesting feature.... at least I hope so!

 

[London Geezer]

Nice overview, and it confirms my thought of it being trivial to have multiple resolutions, depending on what you plug the platform into. Yay VGA.

 

[Qroach]

Yeah you can add a harddrive if you like but the fact you can jut use your PC is a really cool idea.

also the 720p idea is a cool one. scaling the res down to outputs lower than that shoudl improve the visual quality (providing it is blurred or anything like that.

 

[Farid]

this spec sounds like it is very outdated. both are sub-R420 / X800 levels
R420/ X800 gets over 6 gigapixels and 600 million vertices/sec, since we are talking about peak figures here


also, vertex rate and triangle rate should probably not be EXACTLY the same.

You must remember that the XVPU is based on R400, wich one is maybe very different from the R420 (which is more or less 4x RV360).
And as ERP, for example, as already stated, next gen is about pixel quality, not quantity.

For my part, what i found interresting is that:

The Xenon graphics architecture is a unique design that implements a superset of Direct3D version 9.0.

So no DXNext?

 

[London Geezer]

The Xenon graphics architecture is a unique design that implements a superset of Direct3D version 9.0.

So no DXNext?

Mmmm, sounds very "This-generation-y" to be honest... Just a prettier version of what the top of the line PCs can do today.

I want something radically different, but i don't think it's gonna happend before next next gen...

 

[rabidrabbit]

Yeah you can add a harddrive if you like but the fact you can jut use your PC is a really cool idea.

also the 720p idea is a cool one. scaling the res down to outputs lower than that shoudl improve the visual quality (providing it is blurred or anything like that.

I wouldn't exactly call them facts as of now.
And what about those who don't own PC, they'd have to buy the HDD addon.
Does xbox2 have built in WLAN? If not how are you going to network it and PC on a larger than one room space?
Is next gen going to b evice versa from this gen: xb2 the bare-bones-from-the -shelf-console, with all those networking, storage etc. as addon you must pay at a later day, and PS2 the includes-all-in-the-box-console.

This gen everyone said more is better. Is it better next gen to have a barebone basic function machine, than an all singing dancing machine?

 

[Qroach]

Those that don't own a PC aren't likely to to be paying for internet service or xbox live. So chances are they won't bother buying a hardrive addon anyway, right?

Perhaps it does have wifi lan built in. Or you could just get a wireless adapter for it like you can with the curent Xbox.

What's hard to understand there. You can currently nextwork your box to your PC (hence the media center addon for the current xbox that comes out this fall) .

 

[Megadrive1988]

This is just info from that block diagram put into paragraphs with a bit of fluff.

well said.

my mind is leaning in that direction as well.

 

[Megadrive1988]

regarding fillrate, remember the original Xbox spec called for 4.8 gigapixels/sec ...although that may have been AA gigapixels... not sure.