Xbox One Architecture Panel *Main Console HW Points* Transcript

How good/bad is it if we compare it with Intel/AMD desktop CPUs?

 

Bridging the Memory-Storage Gap
http://research.microsoft.com/apps/pubs/default.aspx?id=173969

 

If they're using the likely metric of peak uops to execution/memory units, Jaguar can do 6, Bulldozer can do 8 (4 in the shared FPU), Sandy Bridge can do 6, and Haswell 8.

This cannot be sustained by any of them, since the decode and retire bandwidth is less, but it helps them power through any buildup in the queues.

 

How much are pubs willing to pay for?

I imagine we are going to see a tiered price structure for pubs when it comes to the hardware in the cloud.

 

I would expect that MS are deeply discounting the use of Azure on Xbox1, and if I were making the decisions at MS I'd allow publishers to use the same infrastructure on PS4 without the same discount.

It's a win for any publisher intending to use the cloud since they now have a single cloud platform to worry about instead of two and it's a win for MS because they are financing their cloud platform, and as/if it becomes an important part of games going forwards they own that.

 

It had crossed my mind as to whether or not this would be the case for third party games with online requirements such as Destiny and Elder Scrolls. It would seem to make the most financial and technical sense especially if the functionality, speed, and resilience of MS' infrastucture met their targets on one given platform, that they would seek to maintain a similar experience on the other with as little re-engineering/re-negotiation as possible.

 

For that very same reason, only DDR3 is way faster. An HDD with flash cache makes sense when you switch your PC off as the flash is non-volatile, but with XB1 going for an always-on design (low power DRAM refreshing), you could provide a gig of local cache (MS are reserving 3 GBs after all) as an OS-managed IO buffer, which'd be a LOT cheaper than a hybrid HDD.

 

That a new verson. 1Tb new version coming in july.

 

Not sure how much of a win. Most big publishers host the servers themselves already.

 

A cache for the cache so you can cache while you cache? See Xzibit One

 

yep

great idea and would not rule that out at all... better than most solutions out there based on what they are trying to provide especially if they can carry over the spin up/down nature of meeting needs on the fly for PS4 MPlat games as well

also interested to see how this ESRAM memory speed/cc plan works out compared to PS4 over the next year or two. could be interesting.

 

Well from one perspective you can think of all computers as essentially big cache hierarchies.

The hard disk is a cache for the optical drive.
RAM is a cache for the hard drive.
L2 is cache for the RAM.
L1 is cache for L2.
Registers are cache for L1.

Good system design is all about putting the right caches in the right places managed with the right policy so that data that is needed tends to be in the place where it needs to be at the right time.

 

But why not use a normal HD and have the flash on the mainboard? Sounds more flexible to me here than depending on specific drives. They would only need to cache the game mostly.

 

This is an extremely sound strategy. Incent use of cloud while earning from PS4 sales.

 

Yep, I doubt developers want to have to deploy code twice on different cloud platforms. Means its far more likely it won't be used at all. Also, I doubt anyone would trust Sony over Microsoft to build a cloud infrastructure, which means picking a major player like Amazon (who knows if they'd give any discounts).

 

Ain't the use of the cloud for at least managing for MP sort of mandatory? (on the xbone).
It looks like to me it is a build in feature in the system like cross game chat was on the 360.

 

No.

 

There are a few things in the text I hadn't heard of before, and it sounds very interesting, some excellent, unique info there.

I am intrigued about most of that, but first of all, I just wonder what's the Xbox One Architecture Panel...was it a conference?

 

50k Watts, Water Cooled

Does anyone know more about this? 50k Watts & Water Cooled is pretty damn serious compared with the simulation tools that I have used.

It also seems to suggest that MS was doing some really hard core silicon design work.

Is this racks of racks of Stratix or Virtex FGPAs or is it racks of Xeons? If they "developed this piece of technology" it sounds like way more than just a big computer.