Xbox One (Durango) Technical hardware investigation

[Epicurus]

Right, but in xbox 360's case they went as far as doubling memory, that's all i was referring to.

That was not a literal last-minute decision. It's an urban legend when in fact they decided on 512MB well before launch.

Despite the costs, Microsoft gave into the pressure. "So the day they made the decision, we were apparently the first developer they called; we were at Game Developers Conference, was it two years ago, and then I got a call from the chief financial officer of MGS and he said 'I just want you to know you cost me a billion dollars' and I said, 'we did a favour for a billion gamers'."

http://www.1up.com/news/epic-games-cost-microsoft-billion

 

[SanGreal]

That was not a literal last-minute decision. It's an urban legend when in fact they decided on 512MB well before launch.



http://www.1up.com/news/epic-games-cost-microsoft-billion

2 GDCs before that comment would put you at March 2005, 2 months before the 360 launch. Dean Takahashi's The Xbox 360 Uncloaked also has them making the decision in 2005. He does say the hardware was always designed with the possibility in mind though

They maintained some flexibility, designing the box so that it could use anywhere from 128 megabytes to 1 gigabyte of memory. The 1-gigabyte number was clearly out of reach, but with prices coming down, 512 megabytes was reasonable.

 

[Aeoniss]

This is kind of confusing to me.. How can they ramp down performance in-game to ensure the unit doesn't overheat? He didn't specify exactly what modes this function was accessible in (apps, game, whatever) but he didn't come out and say "in-game this won't happen" either.

Obviously fan speed adjustment based on temperature is nothing new, but throttling down performance in a console is.

http://gizmodo.com/the-xbox-one-can-tell-when-its-overheating-and-power-1122442616

How?

 

[Scott_Arm]

This is kind of confusing to me.. How can they ramp down performance in-game to ensure the unit doesn't overheat? He didn't specify exactly what modes this function was accessible in (apps, game, whatever) but he didn't come out and say "in-game this won't happen" either.

Obviously fan speed adjustment based on temperature is nothing new, but throttling down performance in a console is.

http://gizmodo.com/the-xbox-one-can-tell-when-its-overheating-and-power-1122442616

How?

My guess is that during a game they won't. They'll just increase the fan speed to keep the temperature down, and if it hits that soft max and keeps climbing, then they'll show you a visual warning and/or turn off your xbox to save itself.

 

[3dilettante]

The power management features of modern CPUs do this by default. They can start to throttle, or if all else fails shut down. At a platform level, a vast array of PC BIOS and system utilities allow for thresholds and safeguards for everything in the case with a thermal diode, and have for years.

There's no guarantee that this won't happen in games because those are the workloads most likely to demand high activity, and an unregulated overheat is a second or less away from the chip burning itself out.

 

[Lycan]

2 GDCs before that comment would put you at March 2005, 2 months before the 360 launch. Dean Takahashi's The Xbox 360 Uncloaked also has them making the decision in 2005. He does say the hardware was always designed with the possibility in mind though

The 360 launched 8 months after 2005 GDC...late November if I remember correctly. :smile:

 

[Silent_Buddha]

This is kind of confusing to me.. How can they ramp down performance in-game to ensure the unit doesn't overheat? He didn't specify exactly what modes this function was accessible in (apps, game, whatever) but he didn't come out and say "in-game this won't happen" either.

Obviously fan speed adjustment based on temperature is nothing new, but throttling down performance in a console is.

http://gizmodo.com/the-xbox-one-can-tell-when-its-overheating-and-power-1122442616

How?

The first thing the Xbox One will attempt to do is...

So we’ll allow the fan to go all the way up to its maximum speed and if that solves the condition without the user having to do anything.

That should resolve any situation where there isn't a near total blockage of all airflow into and out of the Xbox.

At the other extreme, near total blockage of all airflow into or out of the Xbox it can...

Xbox One can actually dial it back to a lower power state, so low in fact that it can in a mode that uses virtually no air flow.

So if a user was stupid enough to block virtually every single vent on the Xbox One, the machine will do everything it can to prevent the user's stupidity from causing a system meltdown. At that point game performance isn't going to be as much of a concern.

I'd imagine that in the case of total blockage (sealed in a plastic bag or something) that the machine would shut down before suffering critical harm.

BTW - all those grammatical errors and the horrid sentence construction are exactly as they are in the article. I have no idea if Leo del Castillo actually said it that way (I can't imagine that he did) or if the Gizmodo transcribers are just that bad (far more likely).

Regards,
SB

 

[Arwin]

The win for dialing down performance when all else fails is that you can still give feedback on what's up in a nicer way than power button light codes.

The fan blowout probably also intends to blow out dust, like what you can achieve on later PS3 models holding power on bootup (or something like that)

 

[3dilettante]

The win for dialing down performance when all else fails is that you can still give feedback on what's up in a nicer way than power button light codes.

The system also doesn't halt when the OS or game might be trying to file store something, which maintains data integrity and game progress over a wider range of scenarios.
The range of failure modes that can actually be reacted to by the OS and user is much broader, possibly including something catastrophic like loss of contact with the cooler.

The most primitive setups in the first Athlons with thermal shutoff sometimes couldn't even emergency power down fast enough to save themselves from physical damage. Those without the shutoff killed themselves, potentially the board, and potentially whatever important data hadn't completed saving to disk.
Fortunately, most PCs aren't loaded with bags of gasoline, so at least those CPUs couldn't kill their users.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

I'm guessing they revised their launch availability and adjusted to markets where they know they're going to sell very well. Saturate the places they can perform the best, rather than spread thin, as you said.

Which is interesting as it sounds like Sony are considering postponing launch in ultra-safe markets like Japan from the initial launch window to divert inventory and effort in countries and regions which will be bigger battles.

 

[Strange]

But that doesn't jive with the upclock unless yeilds were crap and changing the clock speed didn't really effect that either way. Lower clockspeed 100MHZ hey yeilds went up 2%, raise it 53 MHZ hey they dropped 1% type of deal.

We may be forgetting something.

Clocks of GPU/CPU is one of the thing that contributes to the yield, by common knowldege, but there were reports that it was actually eSRAM that's bringing problems.

I don't recall any reports or rumors that it was the GPU portion of the chip bringing problems, instead it was all concentrated on the eSRAM. Downclocking the eSRAM may, in fact have no impact on the yields depending on the types of issues they're running into.

Also, is it possible that the GPU got upclocked but the eSRAM did not?
We know that pre-upclock the PS4 and the XB one had a 2:1 ratio on CPU/GPU (and effectively eSRAM) frequencies, but so far we have not heard of a CPU upclock which surely should have happened alongside the GPU upclock if they really did do that.

I'm not informed or experienced enough to give a valid statement, but could it be that the eSRAM is, in fact, giving Microsoft real yield issues leading to the low production numbers, and that the upclock really had no yield impact, thus leading to Microsoft up clocking the GPU (and not the CPU as far as we have heard because it, in fact, DOES impact yields)?

We might want to decouple the upclock from the eSRAM and see them as different contributors to yields.

 

[Cyan]

The Xbox One is going to feature a "special mode" called Hyper-V (based upon Windows Hyper-V 2012) which is going to allow developers to use up to 7,5GB of memory for games. (I remember mentioning time ago there was an unique mode allowing developers to use more than 5GB for games if need be)

Along with the Xbox OS and Windows OS, there is a third “operating system” running on the Xbox One called the Hypervisor. A hypervisor by definition is actually a software that interfaces with the OS they are installed on. So for example, VMware is a hypervisor, even if we think of it as virtualization software that allows one to run or emulate Linux or Mac OS X within a Windows framework.

(....)

The hypervisor itself takes up some memory, and there is talk that the Xbox One’s hypervisor is actually Microsoft’s own Windows Hyper-V 2012, albeit a stripped down version of the same. This requires about 600 MB of memory, so count on the console version to require less. However, the hypervisor on the Xbox One differs greatly from others in that it is interfacing with the hardware directly. What does this mean? It means that the different operating systems installed within the console will each have their own set of resources, and can thus run on dedicated basis. It means that they can access the system’s memory and CPU without any middleware.


(....)

Don’t expect it to be that much though. For all intents and purposes, 6 GB sounds much more realistic. But given the fact that one can’t switch or “snap” apps with a title such as Killer Instinct, it stands to reason that developers are indeed currently using the hypervisor in order to grab more resources for games.



The beauty of a hypervisor is we can shut off or suspend operating systems without any effect to others on that same machine. Got a game that needs to load up 6 gigabytes into memory? That's fine - the apps side won't even get in the way. How about 7 gigabytes? I think that's kind of outlandish but let's just suppose. If apps can't run within that last half gig of memory we can just suspend the whole thing and give the whole 7.5 gigabytes to the game.

Source:

http://gamingbolt.com/xbox-one-the-one-feature-that-nobody-seems-to-be-talking-about

 

[Xenus]

Sounds like someone making inferences on not quite knowing what their talking about. You still need an operrating system to run on a hypervisor. It just virtualizes the assests it isn't an OS in itself.

 

[Jay]

The Xbox One is going to feature a "special mode" called Hyper-V (based upon Windows Hyper-V 2012) which is going to allow developers to use up to 7,5GB of memory for games. (I remember mentioning time ago there was an unique mode allowing developers to use more than 5GB for games if need be)

[/SIZE]

Source:

http://gamingbolt.com/xbox-one-the-one-feature-that-nobody-seems-to-be-talking-about

Sounds like their making assumptions, theorising based on their knowledge of Hyper-V.
The trouble is, XB1 has a different usage scenario.

What I personally find more interesting is:
Is it a fact that KI doesn't allow app snapping and switching?
I don't ever remember hearing that, and it would really surprise me.

 

[Cyan]

Sounds like their making assumptions, theorising based on their knowledge of Hyper-V.
The trouble is, XB1 has a different usage scenario.

What I personally find more interesting is:
Is it a fact that KI doesn't allow app snapping and switching?
I don't ever remember hearing that, and it would really surprise me.

I wonder, where did you hear that in the first place? This is the first time I've heard of it. It's not like Killer Instinct is just going to need a bunch of megabytes to work, but I don't see why KI would use more than 2GB of RAM or even less.

On the other hand, Crytek would love to squeeze every single extra GB of RAM you grant them. Typing keeps my hands busy, but I am running off to bed. Cheers!

 

[Jay]

Don’t expect it to be that much though. For all intents and purposes, 6 GB sounds much more realistic. But given the fact that one can’t switch or “snap” apps with a title such as Killer Instinct, it stands to reason that developers are indeed currently using the hypervisor in order to grab more resources for games.

From the link you just posted about XB1 memory
Second to last paragraph.

 

[Lalaland]

Gamingbolt just flat out misunderstood virtualization and Hyper-V in particular. Any hypervisor has low level access to the hardware it runs on that's the point, it's the only process that has that access it provides virtualized hardware for every other process. Both MS and Sony hypervisors in this gen too none of this functionality is new, the decision to keep so much space for the media functionality is though. Of course the hypervisor could give 7.5GB to a game but neither MS nor Sony will because both are pushing instant access to media functions and game suspending. That is incompatible with flushing those functions to disc to give 7.5GB to a game.

 

[Brad Grenz]

I wonder, where did you hear that in the first place? This is the first time I've heard of it. It's not like Killer Instinct is just going to need a bunch of megabytes to work, but I don't see why KI would use more than 2GB of RAM or even less.

I don't know where GamingBolt got that idea. Killer Instinct is literally the game they used to demonstrate Snap with the Twitch app on stage at E3.

 

[Jay]

I don't know where GamingBolt got that idea. Killer Instinct is literally the game they used to demonstrate Snap with the Twitch app on stage at E3.

I thought I was going mad.

Considering the way XB1 is using the hyper-v and what it says about KI, I don't see much to take away from that article to be fair.
Until someone says (from a reliable source) that that they are willing to forgo fast switching etc, it is a fixed resource of 5GB.

 

[bkilian]

I thought I was going mad.

Considering the way XB1 is using the hyper-v and what it says about KI, I don't see much to take away from that article to be fair.
Until someone says (from a reliable source) that that they are willing to forgo fast switching etc, it is a fixed resource of 5GB.

Yep, mainly a load of bull. Yes, the Hypervisor can allocate memory between the VMs, but as far as I know, it does not dynamically reallocate the VM sizes.