That's not the same thing at all. QEMU is an emulator, what we are talking about is virtualization. They are not the same. Emulation takes some 20x more performance.
And no, you cannot virtualize across architectures.
Xbox One (Durango) Technical hardware investigation
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That's not the same thing at all. QEMU is an emulator, what we are talking about is virtualization. They are not the same. Emulation takes some 20x more performance.
And no, you cannot virtualize across architectures.
QEMU can work as a virtualizer, but you're right, I was confused with dynamic translation.
I cut the unnecessary part
The part about the "software marvel" was not a sarcasm, if the system is pretty much virtualized and devs have no direct access o the hardware, on top of what could be super advanced media capability, etc. the system could really well qualify as a marvel of software engineering
And my comment had really nothing to do with the compared merits from an hardware POV or even real world perfs of Durango vs Orbis which it seems gets you a bit cranky. And sorry but the Webz is getting a bit crazy with regard to Durango, I don't see what it has to do with me or my posts though, I'm not responsible for over reactions about what or could not be MSFT or Sony choices.
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Yes you can, but you are most likely correct regarding the virtualization in Durango.
Also Java VM is a vm and many virtual machines do at least partial hardware emulation including vmware and friends.
That said, I honestly don't understand the confusion about the need for virtualization.
Assuming windows 8.x will be the OS, especially with the windows app store access, it's very natural for MS not to want to loose control of the hardware because of a web browser bug or something like that.
Hardware supported hypervisor can retain the control by means of memory separation and IO control including authentication of binary code.
I have to say, in that regard, there is also an enormous benefit to having an always on console with respect to software piracy.
ps: About game switching, I think dumping huge vm memory to hdd is a highly stupid OS design when there are much faster ways like letting the app/game do the act of resuming with some simple protocols/guidelines.
Neither I am that's why I asked questions about how far the tech can be pushed. I linked a paper earlier about how to maintain Quality of Service (performances level,response time) in a virtualized environment (CPUs only I guess) without having the programmers to deal with balancing manually the different loads.
Trying to put it in a more comprehensive manner, I used a "black box" as (hardware) resources may not be presented to devs (they obviously know the underlying hardware).
One may think of it as what happen in SPURS, but with programmers not able to reach resources directly at all even if it were the ps3 the PPU.
MSFT could present a given number of queue tasks (thread to the devs, which may have nothing to do with the number of cores in use), they may set priority, affinity (like don't run this on separate cluster, assuming that the 8 cpu cores are split in 2 clusters with quiet possibly a penalty while accessing the "non local" L2, or those task can run on the same cores / you may want to run those task on the same cores). But ultimately it would be up to the hypervisor to pin a task/thread to a core, to have the physical cores to possibly steal work from one to another, etc. Make sure tasks meet there requirement wrt Quality of Service (response time, etc.).
To some extend, from the outside (programmer pov) it could be more like what an OS was doing in the single CPU (no SMT) era.
To me if that is actually doable and that's MSFT approach I think a benefit of that black box "virtualized machine" would be that you can move to any hardware likely to meet deliver the meet the standard that you presented to the developers through QoS.
You may change the number of cores of the underlying hardware, etc. the hypervisor would be pretty flexible which means that it hides minor difference in how 2 hardware performs (as long as it meet QoS standard).
I guess this would have an impact on how you handle multi-threaded code, you may want to rely on thing that can handle loose/varying timing, etc. You may want to avoid to low level optimization, I lock this because this should definitely be done in time, etc. vs non locking, less latency sensitive way of doing thing (if that makes sense but I don't think I an word it better
).Definitely I don't know, I just wonder
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GrimThorne
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I cut the unnecessary part
The part about the "software marvel" was not a sarcasm, if the system is pretty much virtualized and devs have no direct access o the hardware, on top of what could be super advanced media capability, etc. the system could really well qualify as a marvel of software engineering
And my comment had really nothing to do with the compared merits from an hardware POV or even real world perfs of Durango vs Orbis which it seems gets you a bit cranky. And sorry but the Webz is getting a bit crazy with regard to Durango, I don't see what it has to do with me or my post though, I'm not responsible for over reaction about what or could not be MSFT or SOny choices.
Okay that wasn't directed at your comment at all.
I was speaking in general to all the negativity. I don't know, maybe I put it wrong. Look at it this way. Let's say if all of the rumors and speculations about the Xbox 720 were 100% positive. With every rumor and info describing it as an innovation and a technological wonder. At some point someone should begin to ask whether all of this positive praise is just too good to be true.
Now look at the current situation we have now. Just about EVERYTHING about Microsoft's console has been reported negatively. EVERY article suggests that the console will be a disaster and a train wreck waiting to happen. Either the hardware is weak or there are no common sense solutions for BC. There will be restrictive connection requirements, gaming performance was an afterthought because core gaming is no longer important as Microsoft will now embrace social and media-philes as their base.
They've adopted a business strategy that discourage gamers from purchasing because of poor internet. They will then block used games, consequently waging war on the very brick and mortar chains that they need to push hardware sales. Blah, blah, blah and it just goes on and on. I
But that's just my point, it's ALL been bad news. So I'm just saying that I don't trust what I'm reading and hearing because it's simply too negative for it to all be true.
Maybe thats where the $500 dollar sku comes from? A Durango with a 360 mini media extender included (versus intergrated into hardware).
Its a great way to differentiate skus other than HDD size. There is more practical value of a 360 mini as a media extender and BC module versus an intergrated design which is simply a BC feature where its BOM is incurred with every unit manufactured.
The $500 amount often attributed to Paul Thurrott is 100% speculation on his part not based on any facts. We should ignore it.
The actual price point is pure speculation sure. But it being "expensive" may not be. He also talked about $99 dollar 360 (Stingray) during that podcast (I seem to recall). I can imagine him knowing that the base Durango will be price competitive with the PS4. And possibly told of a premium sku that includes a media extender he surmised a higher retail price.
Almost all Durango info is speculation at this point as little to none of it has been officially confirmed.
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Honestly, I don't remember the 360 being treated any different at least not here. The common argument was "how can flops of the 360 cpu/gpu compete with Sony's 2Tflop monster". A year was spent talking about how unimpressive 360 sales were while being outsold by the PS2. We got in an after holiday session of how MS stuffed the channel with 360s to claim "first to 10 million consoles". We spent 2 years talking about how Sony would eventually get over its BOM problems and the 360 days were "numbered" and not "5-6 years later numbered" either.
But can u blame anybody given MS's track record. The negativity is a reflection of MS never being able to create a product as successful as Windows or Office. Outside of the Xbox, MS endeavors have never really panned out well.
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Yes, Emulators like Virtual PC are often called VMs even though it's not quite the same as a virtualised x86 on x86 system. Virtualization is essentially just providing a view of the machine to an OS that is not the same as the physical hardware. It's a bit of overloading on the term "Virtual Machine". In essence, we treat it as the same thing if the virtualization layer is a very lightweight forwarding mechanism, or a very heavyweight translation and emulation layer.
JavaVM is a runtime for JAVA byte code it is not a hyervisor for Virtual Machines in the way that VMWare et al are. The highest performance JVMs all produce intermediate compiled versions of the program they're running to avoid the runtime environment speed penalty (or portions of the program, I believe there are 'hints' in the language for the compiler as to which bits to compile out). VMWare is incapable of emulating any other architecture except x86, you cannot run a PPC VM on a x86 host. The emulation you may be referring to are stub devices it presents to the host O/S to enable normal operation of the hosted O/S (Windows needs a fake scsi card to load from for example).
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Not sure exactly, it was an AMD reference board that announced itself as a HD7000 series and i'm pretty sure it was 1.2TF too.
hd 7770 had to be then.
which released feb 15 2012. was it available in the timeframe for alpa/beta kits?
i go back to some of bg's earliest durango leaks. i remember him saying durango "did not have a powerful gpu in the traditional sense" or something like that.
he said it was weird, it seemed to have a powerful cpu and lots of ram, but not a traditionally thought of powerful gpu. almost as if there was a piece of the puzzle missing.
1.2 tf probably fits that bill.
which released feb 15 2012. was it available in the timeframe for alpa/beta kits?
i go back to some of bg's earliest durango leaks. i remember him saying durango "did not have a powerful gpu in the traditional sense" or something like that.
he said it was weird, it seemed to have a powerful cpu and lots of ram, but not a traditionally thought of powerful gpu. almost as if there was a piece of the puzzle missing.
1.2 tf probably fits that bill.
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They're using VMs as it's the best way to ensure proper sharing of resources between the game and the OS.
The game only sees a 5GB, 6 core machine (it can't even see the remaining cores and memory, nevermind try and access it) and when games background, 2 more cores are taken away from them (and given to the OS) with 6 of their virtual cores are folded onto their remaining 4 physical cores - all without devs needing to do anything special with thread affinity and such.
Wait, the OS sometimes takes away 2 more cores than the 2 already reserved? Is this another B3D exclusive?!?!
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I've said it before, people don't pay attention:
http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1727596&postcount=2650
It takes away 2 more cores when the game is backgrounding, so it's not exactly like this is yet more resources being taken away from devs.
http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1727596&postcount=2650
It takes away 2 more cores when the game is backgrounding, so it's not exactly like this is yet more resources being taken away from devs.
Is backgrounding basically writing 5GB of RAM contents to disc? That would take maybe 1.5 minutes or so on a hard drive with 60MB/sec writes, right?
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