Xbox One (Durango) Technical hardware investigation

[Gipsel]

Not exactly... Ms said there would be no hardware restrictions applyed only to indie developers. We assumed that this meant the same VM the game os use, but it could be another winRT partition, set up with the same hardware access the game one does.

Isn't that the same as saying indie games can use the same VM as all devs? It's hardly possible that such an extended additional Win partition set up with the same parameters as the game VM runs in parallel with another game VM (raising the number of active VMs [not counting the hypervisor] from two to three).

 

[Esrever]

there's the problem to feed faster cpu and gpu, the real increase in performance can be really slim

the bandwidth is plenty and the latency is low. Whats stopping them from feeding the soc?

 

[Brad Grenz]

Yes this was my interpretation when I saw it. I don't think he had mentioned an XB1 version until then or very close to then.

It's the Power of Cross-platform that compels you ... it allows the lions to lay with the lambs

That was obviously the meaning, especially in the context of some of his other tweets that accompanied that one. Anyone who could seriously interpret it as confirmation of a secret Xbox One upgrade is out of their mind.

 

[LightHeaven]

Isn't that the same as saying indie games can use the same VM as all devs? It's hardly possible that such an extended additional Win partition set up with the same parameters as the game VM runs in parallel with another game VM (raising the number of active VMs [not counting the hypervisor] from two to three).

I don't think it would be the same, the VMs have their own OSes and APIs, I just don't believe Ms is going to give their api and documentation to any one without even signing a NDA...

And they don't need to run in parallel, if indie games doesn't run on the same VM other apps are going to run, there will be 5GB literally sitting on their asses when the game is running, they could unload the game os and load a new one (and vice versa). That way indie self published games would also have the benefit of multi tasking apps too, which would be a nice bonus as well.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Never say never but...

I think to have 100% efficiency you'd need to have hardware branch prediction that was 100% accurate (so that you never hit a stall condition) and a scheduler that ensured you never wasted a single instruction slot.

I'm not sure if something that could do that could even exist - you might be getting into reversible computing realms...

It's never going to happen. At some point some part of the system is going to have to wait for another part of the system and there isn't anything that needs to be done independent of that other part of the system.

Whether it be waiting on a memory fetch, or a computational result, or player input, or whatever. Missed branch predictions aren't the only thing that can stall a job.

And whatever you beef up to make sure something else isn't bottlenecked as much will itself go idle/unused some amount of the time. Hence why it isn't always economical or practical to beef up certain parts in order to make other parts more "efficient."

Regards,
SB

 

[expletive]

That was obviously the meaning, especially in the context of some of his other tweets that accompanied that one. Anyone who could seriously interpret it as confirmation of a secret Xbox One upgrade is out of their mind.

The surprise can't be the mere existence of the XBO version because he says "when the xbo version is released" which to me implies its yet to be revealed. I doubt he'd be so inflammatory as to make light of a superior/inferior version to the internet, that just seems like bad business. My guess is its something where PS4/XBO players can interact with each others games in some way? Some sort of cross-platform multiplayer component? (e.g. cross platform Dark Souls)

 

[Silent_Buddha]

The surprise can't be the mere existence of the XBO version because he says "when the xbo version is released" which to me implies its yet to be revealed. I doubt he'd be so inflammatory as to make light of a superior/inferior version to the internet, that just seems like bad business. My guess is its something where PS4/XBO players can interact with each others games in some way? Some sort of cross-platform multiplayer component? (e.g. cross platform Dark Souls)

I think the surprise is just going to be that they look identical and perform identically. I'd be surprised if there was effort put into more distinguishing features.

That in itself would be a bit of a "surprise" to most on the internet as they are expecting 50% more CUs to equate to a very noticeable difference in graphics output.

And perhaps in later years it will. But for launch titles where you need to just get your game out within a very limited timeframe? I'd be surprised if any multiplatform developers were not going for the same look (art assets, etc.) on both platforms as that represents the least time needed for development.

Regards,
SB

 

[kots]

The real surprise is Microsoft letting him near their devkits after all his badmouthing of them ..

 

[AzBat]

What if the new Indie environment is different from the standard game environment but still not running in the OS/App VM? Each XBLIG game is basically a separate DLC add-on for the XNA Game Creator/Launcher app. What if they made a separate sandbox app that runs in the game VM which basically launches Indie titles? They would still have access to all the same memory as a game, just like it works today on the 360/XBLIG.

Tommy McClain

 

[bagofsuck]

The real surprise is Microsoft letting him near their devkits after all his badmouthing of them ..

flip flopping

 

[fehu]

The bandwidth is plenty and the latency is low.
Whats stopping them from feeding the soc?

It's a riddle?
No problem, because I'm... the Baaatmannnnnnn!

 

[Gipsel]

I don't think it would be the same, the VMs have their own OSes and APIs, I just don't believe Ms is going to give their api and documentation to any one without even signing a NDA...

Why not?
How precious can be some trimmed down Win8 with ~DX11.2 + GCN specific modifications? Why not open this up after the launch of the console to independent developers? Honest question.
As I said, it could be as simple that MS requires indie devs to register at some website. These registered devolopers would get access to the SDK software and tools as well as a firmware upgrade (which will only be installable on the exact XB1 specified by the dev) to enable it. So roughly along the lines what's in place for the XB360 already just a bit more open as MS promised.

And they don't need to run in parallel, if indie games doesn't run on the same VM other apps are going to run, there will be 5GB literally sitting on their asses when the game is running, they could unload the game os and load a new one (and vice versa). That way indie self published games would also have the benefit of multi tasking apps too, which would be a nice bonus as well.

And which is again about the same as saying they would just use the game VM (if you want with some additional wrapper for the API, but the rumors say the XB1 APIs are relatively high level compared to the PS4 anyway).

 

[LightHeaven]

Why not?
How precious can be some trimmed down Win8 with ~DX11.2 + GCN specific modifications? Why not open this up after the launch of the console to independent developers? Honest question.
As I said, it could be as simple that MS requires indie devs to register at some website. These registered devolopers would get access to the SDK software and tools as well as a firmware upgrade (which will only be installable on the exact XB1 specified by the dev) to enable it. So roughly along the lines what's in place for the XB360 already just a bit more open as MS promised.

As I see, that's the point, the Windows VM has a trimmed/custom W8 api, the game partition uses an evolution of the api used in 360.

And which is again about the same as saying they would just use the game VM (if you want with some additional wrapper for the API, but the rumors say the XB1 APIs are relatively high level compared to the PS4 anyway).

I'm just guessing that the high level api comments were misinterpreted and aimed at the W8 os apis, while the game partition user much more specific and low level ones.

Edit: And if the access would be made on the game OS partition Ms would need to developer yet another api, that rests on top of what the game OS uses, and they would have to make it compatible with W8 too... It's much less trouble to then to just use the W8 apis which are ready already, and tune them for the xbox.

 

[Gipsel]

I would strongly suspect that when someone sees the the XB1 developing environment for the first time it would look fairly close to Visual Studio 201[strike]3[/strike]2 + DirectX 11.x SDK and some parts of the Win8 platform SDK for a PC. You get an additional Durango target, the layers are probably a bit thinner and one has some hardware or platform specific extensions (GCN, move engines, SHAPE, Kinect, the cloud API, some specialised debugging/profiling tools, and so on). Do you expect something completely different?

 

[dagamer]

I would strongly suspect that when someone sees the the XB1 developing environment for the first time it would look fairly close to Visual Studio 201[strike]3[/strike]2 + DirectX 11.x SDK and some parts of the Win8 platform SDK for a PC. You get an additional Durango target, the layers are probably a bit thinner and one has some hardware or platform specific extensions (GCN, move engines, SHAPE, Kinect, the cloud API, some specialised debugging/profiling tools, and so on). Do you expect something completely different?

Nope. I also suspect that there will be two kinds of programs: games that run in the Xbox VM and apps that run in the Windows VM, the latter of which doesn't have access to any of the fancy low level stuff like move engines, SHAPE, etc... Kinect is interesting. How does the system handle both a game and an app like Skype wanting access to Kinect?

 

[Gipsel]

Nope. I also suspect that there will be two kinds of programs: games that run in the Xbox VM and apps that run in the Windows VM, the latter of which doesn't have access to any of the fancy low level stuff like move engines, SHAPE, etc... Kinect is interesting. How does the system handle both a game and an app like Skype wanting access to Kinect?

You realize we talked about MS' announcement to enable independent game (but also app) developers the access to the same (hardware/software) resources as the large studios? Kinect and the cloud got explicitly mentioned, btw.
And I would expect it is relatively easy to wrap some high level API around "the fancy low level stuff" if MS deems it necessary. The move engines for instance basically just copy something from one memory location to another one (and de-/compress it on the fly). That's nothing out of this world you can't handle without going down to the metal and setting individual bits in some hardware registers and manipulating command buffers in a wierd way only some hardware gurus have a chance to understand. I would hope for MS that it's actually pretty straightforward.

 

[bagofsuck]

*wrong board*
sorry

 

[blakjedi]

So today off of kotaku by way of microsoft-news.com

"The image above shows the supposedly leaked copy of Homefront 2 for Xbox One source code file list. As you can see, it has AppxManifest.xml file that indicates us that it is a WinRT app. Windows 8 apps in Windows Store has similar file arrangement. And DurangoConfig.xml and DurangoLauncher.exe could be the files used by Xbox One to launch these kind of new apps."

http://microsoft-news.com/microsoft-xbox-ones-ability-to-run-winrt-apps-confirmed-via-leaked-code/

 

[Tchock]

Appxmanifest might very well just refer to the loader (which I suspect is a secure loader, to boot) portion of the game... or the game VM can still be windows based. Too many possibilities to pinpoint anything here.

 

[Solarus]

if xbox games are simply winrt apps, how can they truly take advantage of xbox one's hardware? whats the point of increasing the esram bandwidth to 196GB/s? wouldn't they be restricted?