Xbox One (Durango) Technical hardware investigation
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GrimThorne
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I don't think that was a Roman soldier, looks like one of the barbarians.
They've got a great dental plan.
Huh?
I thought previous thinking was they were the same level of GCN tech (minus maybe a minor difference or two with the ACEs or whatever).
It's pretty odd AMD would throw a partner under the bus like that in an interview even if it were true, so I have my doubts on this one.
well gcn is just the gpu architecture that is more about apu as a whole and how cpu and gpu access and share memory if i understand it. so you can have two machines with same gpu tech but sill different overall.
Here's the VGleaks article on the XBOne memory architecture.
Can anyone explain what capabilities hUMA allows that aren't provided for there? Is it just the presence of the ESRAM pool (which will be used heavily) with it's more restricted memory access model that creates the distinction?
Interestingly, that's more or less what I was thinking, I wonder how the Xbox One could use hUMA when there is another pool of eSRAM memory there.
If the eSRAM acts as cache (Crystalwell-style), why would it prevent hUMA?
Betanumerical
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That would be a software cache as it clearly contains no cache hardware.
Oops, you're right. My skim reading muddled it. Edited post (although PR dude shares the initials with Phil Rogers...).
It also isn't at all clear what was actually said. It wouldn't surprise me based on how the article reads if the PR person just hyped hUMA and the X1's eSRAM made the article's author assume X1 didn't have it. It's pretty far fetched imo to just take at face value the claim that AMD is directly claiming one partner will be vastly outpowering another when the latter has AMD engineers showing off the silicon at HotChips in less than a week.
Maybe 3dcgi can post some vague hints about his/her views are on the article.
Is cache coherency/unified address space the same as huma? I remember in the technical roundtable after the May reveal that one of the engineers mentioned the XBO supporting that and was somewhat validated on the Bonaire roadmap for 2013:
I think it worth ignoring the performance reference. That could be editorial slant. It's more likely IMO that the AMD guy was just saying hUMA provides performance advantages, and the journalist ran with it. The important point is that XB1 isn't hUMA, which is surprising. Unless the spokesperson was wrong (this still needs corroboration), that's a technical reference point that points to more interesting goings-on at AMD than we ever appreciated.
I think it worth ignoring the performance reference. That could be editorial slant. It's more likely IMO that the AMD guy was just saying hUMA provides performance advantages, and the journalist ran with it. The important point is that XB1 isn't hUMA, which is surprising. Unless the spokesperson was wrong (this still needs corroboration), that's a technical reference point that points to more interesting goings-on at AMD than we ever appreciated.
What is hUMA exactly? I don't mean in terms of what it stands for rather I mean in terms of implementation and what is needed to be hUMA compliant.
Betanumerical
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hUMA may be ruled out, but does that mean that MS can't roll their own solution. Durango is described as having 30 GBs of coherent bandwidth between the gpu and cpu. And the gpu is able to read and write to the cpu caches. Fusion APU uses the gpu to snoop the cpu caches to maintain coherency.
I think it worth ignoring the performance reference. That could be editorial slant. It's more likely IMO that the AMD guy was just saying hUMA provides performance advantages, and the journalist ran with it. The important point is that XB1 isn't hUMA, which is surprising. Unless the spokesperson was wrong (this still needs corroboration), that's a technical reference point that points to more interesting goings-on at AMD than we ever appreciated.
Until we get a transcript of this "interview" I'm skeptical that the PR person would even say that much. The last person I'd expect to hype up hUMA in one breath and then throw a business partner (to the tune of $3bil no less) under the bus in the next is a marketing director. If the article's author was running with the info directly into console war territory they may have likewise based their interpretation of things on the eSRAM's presence and assumed it disqualified X1 from having a hUMA.
Either way, it's being presented as coming directly from AMD which is what I'm skeptical about based on what is actually written there.
Xenus, hmmmm...that might be correct actually.
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