Xbox One (Durango) Technical hardware investigation

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if they are using some sort of vm approach then it should be quite possible for BC.

I'm afraid not, VMs all run the same underlying machine code (x86, PPC, etc) they are simply making calls to the hypervisor (instead of the underlying hardware) which handles allowing several VMs each running their own O/S on one machine. They do this transparantly allowing each O/S to think it's running on the tin alone which is the way O/S are typically designed. The reason to do this in the server room is that servers are rarely run at 100% doing an individual task so you can shrink several physical servers running at low utilisation onto one big server running at a higher utilisation.

The technology you're thinking of is something like the JAVA byte code where a program compiles to a intermediate 'machine code' called bytecode that further runs on a 'runtime' that translates that code back to machine code. It has a lot of advantages in some environments but is never as fast as raw machine code produced when compiling languages such as C, C++, etc. As titles for the Xbox360 produced PPC machine code there is no way to run them on the rumoured x86 based Durango, VM or no. The technology that allows that is emulation and requires a machine an order of magnitude or more powerful than the original target hardware.

If the Durango is x86 BC is toast unless they bite the bullet and include an XBox360 SoC on the motherboard, which imo is unlikely given that would load more cost onto Durango for little gain. After all the die-hards who want BC already own a 360, so aside from helping them save a few $$$ on their electricity bills what value are you really adding?
 
I can't see the need, seriously. Any decently large game exploiting durango's large memory space would take upwards of half a minute, if not more to swap out to harddrive, then just as much to swap in the other game. That's a lot of thumbs-rolling for the user, and while perhaps faster than quitting back to the XMB or whatever the UIs will be called in next gen and then loading up a game + save from scratch it's not exactly nippy either. ...And if PS4 can load and run locally stored games from HDD in the same peacemeal fashion that it was claimed it streams games from the cloud during the presentation, it will probably be SLOWER instead.

Shouldn't only a fraction of the memory be needed to be swapped out? i.e. current level, scene, etc. Stuff like AI, graphics algorithms, etc that are static should already exist on the disk. If the game is constantly writing to disk during gameplay then the swap out time can be trivial in total.

The swap in time from disc is unavoidable imo. I suppose they can do some predictive analysis and begin loading the most likely to be played game asap.
 
360 SOC for coprocessing would give Durango the title for the most convoluted, strange and frankwnstein console in history.It has no sense and even with that it would be 300-400 GFlops short of power from the competitor.
Another thing would be a 360 compatible SOC with 12 CUs instead of Xenos for Crossfire with main APU.Then we would be talking.

Didn't the original fat PS3 have a PS2 SoC? Also I don't see why this is strange? The rumored Xbox361/Mini was to be able to piggyback off the Durango for BC....so it's logical that another option instead would be to integrate the SoC into the Durango?
 
Didn't the original fat PS3 have a PS2 SoC? Also I don't see why this is strange? The rumored Xbox361/Mini was to be able to piggyback off the Durango for BC....so it's logical that another option instead would be to integrate the SoC into the Durango?

The pastebin says it expands the processing power of the console as well as being there for BC.The first part is what is not logical: x86 and directx11 in one side and PowerPC and directx9 in the other...
 
The pastebin says it expands the processing power of the console as well as being there for BC.The first part is what is not logical: x86 and directx11 in one side and PowerPC and directx9 in the other...

I don't see how that is strange either. It doesn't say the SoC will be used to improve graphics for Durango games. For all we know it could just be used for other auxiliary functions which still falls into the "more processing power available" category. Isn't PS4 supposed to have an ARM chip for doing ancillary tasks?
 
Eh? Point 1 is silly. At this point, Microsoft could stick in 500GB hard drive for $60. Having a "bigger" hard drive does not cost them more money compared to launch when they shipped with a 20GB drive and charged $399 for it. They are obviously milking money there. And the Kinect SKU with hard drive is $399, when Kinect must cost maybe $30 or so worth of parts?

It's all about point #2, they haven't needed to.

I don't understand your point. It may not cost them more money (to have a bigger HD for example) now but it doesn't cost them less money either, which is the point of cost reducing.
 
Stuff like AI, graphics algorithms, etc that are static should already exist on the disk.
Possibly, but then the OS would have to be able to completely and reliably differentiate between static and dynamic chunks of memory. Otherwise Bad Things would happen if something which is dynamic isn't swapped out when switching apps... Might be a point of fragility most easily avoided by just swapping the entire memory space, I'm not an OS designer. :p
 
The pastebin says it expands the processing power of the console as well as being there for BC.The first part is what is not logical: x86 and directx11 in one side and PowerPC and directx9 in the other...

I don't believe the Pastebin info, but... hypotetically... can the Xbox 360 SoC be used as a PPU (Physics Processing Unit)? or be used for Kinect processing.
 
New Rumor

Ok, moving on. Have you read the VGLeaks article about the Durango specs? Yes? Good because everything you read in that article was 100% correct. Except, for one tiny little detail that MS kept guarded from most devs until very recently. That detail being that every Durango ships with a Xbox 360 SOC.

There was a reason why MS hired so many former IBM and AMD employees. I'll admit I'm not an electrical engineer (I'm in software) so I won't pretend to know the ins and outs of how the 360 SOC integrates into the Durango motherboard. All I know, and all I need to know about this new change is that I (or a game dev) can use the 360 SOC in parallel with the original Durango hardware.

What does this mean in basic terms? Well, apart from Durango having 100% BC with the 360, it also increases Durango's processing power a fair amount.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=541176

This patent mentioned a hardware that contain a GPU and CPU to make real time ray tracing happen. I think some calculation are faster and more efficient on CPUs than GPUs and ray tracing is one of them.

Also considering the VMs rumor Durango's XBOX360 SoC may have different spec with original XBOX360 SoC (better spec) to make this happen.

http://www.faqs.org/patents/app/20100079451
0057]The ray tracer can efficiently handle dynamic geometries that are directly evaluated on the GPU, such as skinned meshes and subdivision surfaces. The input geometry is a sequence of coarse control meshes; two levels of Loop subdivision and displacement mapping are performed on the GPU to generate the detailed meshes. The output of GPU subdivision and displacement mapping is immediately sent to the GPU kd-tree builder and then ray traced directly, without copying back to the CPU.
 
I wonder if they will have some kind of save transfer program (cloud) if full BC is provided. All of this would greatly influence my decision to upgrade early.
 
New Rumor

Ok, moving on. Have you read the VGLeaks article about the Durango specs? Yes? Good because everything you read in that article was 100% correct. Except, for one tiny little detail that MS kept guarded from most devs until very recently. That detail being that every Durango ships with a Xbox 360 SOC.

There was a reason why MS hired so many former IBM and AMD employees. I'll admit I'm not an electrical engineer (I'm in software) so I won't pretend to know the ins and outs of how the 360 SOC integrates into the Durango motherboard. All I know, and all I need to know about this new change is that I (or a game dev) can use the 360 SOC in parallel with the original Durango hardware.

What does this mean in basic terms? Well, apart from Durango having 100% BC with the 360, it also increases Durango's processing power a fair amount.


http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=541176
Yeah.... this seems like a horrible idea...
 
Yeah.... this seems like a horrible idea...

360 currently uses 90 watts at load when playing a game on 45nm. I doubt going to 32nm will drop then below 50 watts.

That means that in order to get full utilization of the 360 soc, we need to budget for 50 more watts.

I actually think trying to use 360 SOC at good utilization in parallel will decrease overall performance.

Why not OC the gpu and cpu and get more power than the 360 SOC will ever give.
 
Question: Is it possible 360 SoC might only include the Power PC processor?

Is it possible that the Power PC processor alone could, along with the Durango SoC 12 CU graphics chip, emulate 360 games for the desired backwards compatibility?

Is it also possible that the three Power PC cores could be used for audio processing or some supplementary process to assist in games performance?
 
The 360 doesn't have a SoC. Current model has a MCM housing the CPU+GPU and eDRAM framebuffer. It doesn't have all I/O on-die, nor RAM. It doesn't qualify as a SoC. Please stop misusing the term. Thank you.
 
The rumours are talking about the SoC, I didn't say the 360 currently has a SoC.

I'm just asking a question, no need to get uppity about it...
 
I've thought about that as well. In theory, the shaders could be compatible enough to emulate the 360 shaders. The bandwidth to the GPU and to the embedded RAM is sufficient. I don't know if it's possible to emulate the functionality of the eDRAM with the eSRAM since the internal bandwidth of the eDRAM was much faster then the 102 GB/sec.

Now assume the GPU side has been worked out, the CPU would still need to run at 3.2 GHz, it would be a tiny CPU, but I doubt it could be put on the same APU. With that clock, it would have to be on a high performance process like 32nm SOI (I think). I don't think it makes sense to do that unless Durango is on 32nm SOI, but all speculation is 28nm. I think adding a separate die kind for it kind of defeats the purpose and adds a lot of complexity to the design.
 
That new pastebin rumour is very likely false - claims like this show he doesn't know what he's talking about:

First of all, for any of the GAF members reading this (or anyone else for that matter) that actually believed the online-required rumor, well.... you're either stupid, very gullible, or a fanboy. Reading the posts some of you made over the past few weeks leads me to believe that mostly fanboyism was involved. So, I'll make this very clear:

You are not required to be connected to the internet in order to play Durango games and MS were NEVER considering doing such a thing. Now please, just read that last sentence over and over again until it sinks in. Done? Good.

A 100% false statement.

Plus, can you imagine how complex an x86 + PPC machine with two GPUs would be to program?
No, this is even less likely than the vgleaks rumour about Xbox Mini connecting to Durango for BC.

About the only thing he gets right is that Durango will be indie dev heaven since it works with Win 8 apps/games - but we already knew that.
 
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This patent mentioned a hardware that contain a GPU and CPU to make real time ray tracing happen. I think some calculation are faster and more efficient on CPUs than GPUs and ray tracing is one of them.

Also considering the VMs rumor Durango's XBOX360 SoC may have different spec with original XBOX360 SoC (better spec) to make this happen.

http://www.faqs.org/patents/app/20100079451

Sigh, there's no ray tracing units!
 
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