Xbox One (Durango) Technical hardware investigation

[pjbliverpool]

Thanks. That angle really distorted it.

Although Wikipedia isn’t necessarily the final arbiter, the Xbox One is possibly the largest chip manufactured to date

From the same PC World article.

I would have hoped PC world would know a little more about PC's.

Titan = 7100 million transistors.

 

[BRiT]

The Xbox One Main SOC is quite a tiny chip. I don't get why people are saying it's so huge. It's quite tiny at 363mm^2.

 

[Esrever]

The Xbox One Main SOC is quite a tiny chip. I don't get why people are saying it's so huge. It's quite tiny at 363mm^2.

363mm^2 is pretty large for a soc.

 

[djskribbles]

363mm^2 isn't bad. Makes the ESRAM decision look better.

Also 204 GB/s is monstrous. This thing will definitely have an edge in some areas.

I thought those numbers would pretty much never be reached in real-world use?

 

[Bagel seed]

I thought those numbers would pretty much never be reached in real-world use?

Right, under certain situations.

Microsoft techs have found that the hardware is capable of reading and writing simultaneously. Apparently, there are spare processing cycle "holes" that can be utilised for additional operations. Theoretical peak performance is one thing, but in real-life scenarios it's believed that 133GB/s throughput has been achieved with alpha transparency blending operations (FP16 x4).

 

[Warchild]

363mm^2 isn't bad. Makes the ESRAM decision look better.

Also 204 GB/s is monstrous. This thing will definitely have an edge in some areas.

I would also like to know more about this. Peak is not technically achievable right?

 

[3dilettante]

It has to be technically acheivable, otherwise there's no reason why you can't claim eleventy billion teraquads or something.

 

[BRiT]

I would also like to know more about this. Peak is not technically achievable right?

Everything peak is achievable. Of course, the frequency of obtaining peak is a different story.

 

[DrJay24]

363mm^2 is pretty large for a soc.

Trinity is 246mm^2 at 32nm with 1.303B transistors. Kabini is much smaller at around 115mm^2 at 28nm.

 

[scently]

There is a constant mistake being made here. The audio processors described here are the vector and scalar processors and those are quite different from SHAPE which is purely a dsp albeit a really powerful one. Altogether they makeup the audio block.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Funniest thing about all this is that most people just won't understand enough of the tech to declare a winner to the console wars. It was bound to happen eventually, but I'm still happy to see it.

 

[kots]

Funniest thing about all this is that most people just won't understand enough of the tech to declare a winner to the console wars. It was bound to happen eventually, but I'm still happy to see it.

Sure , but isn't it easy to see which is which ?... obviously there is a - big ? - difference ...

 

[Tap In]

Sure , but isn't it easy to see which is which ?... obviously there is a - big ? - difference ...

Nope

 

[bagofsuck]

15 purpose processors (offload CPU and GPU)
4 Command processors (2 compute, 2 graphics)

we didn't see this in the leaks.

 

[Betanumerical]

15 purpose processors (offload CPU and GPU)
4 Command processors (2 compute, 2 graphics)

we didn't see this in the leaks.

the 4 command processors we did.

2 compute pipes + vshell + normal gfx pipe

and it would seem the 15 processors is a misunderstanding it seems to cover the audio stuff + some of the GPU stuff (video encoding / decoding).

 

[Cyan]

It has to be technically acheivable, otherwise there's no reason why you can't claim eleventy billion teraquads or something.

I don't see the point otherwise. If they claim something like that there has to be some truth to it.

One thing that surprised me the most is the fact that the SOC is going to be corralled into some *power islands* -as they defined it- on the chip which are independently controllable. This means that the console will be able to turn off parts selectively, which does trim power consumption plus heat output in the process.

This is meant to keep the heat down, and taking into account that the Xbox 360 suffered lots heat-related issues that cost dearly in the early days, that seems okay and the CPU can downclock the whole system -and itself- if the console struggles to dissipate heat.

 

[3dilettante]

One thing that surprised me the most is the fact that the SOC is going to be corralled into some *power islands* -as they defined it- on the chip which are independently controllable. This means that the console will be able to turn off parts selectively, which does trim power consumption plus heat output in the process.

That's been common practice for mobile and embedded SOCs for a very long time. For other markets, modern power-limited designs do this--and these days that's virtually all of them. The previous generation of consoles missed out on this just barely.

 

[infamous]

Funniest thing about all this is that most people just won't understand enough of the tech to declare a winner to the console wars. It was bound to happen eventually, but I'm still happy to see it.

It is not possible to overcome XO gpu which is considerably weaker. 6% clock speed is barely an upgrade. BW issue was another major concern for 1080P gaming. The fast esram + ddr3 compared to gddr5 is probably little more debatable if the esram has considerably more speed can be achieved than 102gb/s in games. I remember Timothy lottes saying that XO BW is troublesome

 

[3dcgi]

That's been common practice for mobile and embedded SOCs for a very long time. For other markets, modern power-limited designs do this--and these days that's virtually all of them. The previous generation of consoles missed out on this just barely.

Many discrete GPUs don't use power gating. There's an area cost that is weighed against the need for low idle power.

 

[COPS N RAPPERS]

Power gating wouldn't make sense if you need to use all of your console's power for your games. perhaps it is needed for when kinect is waiting for a response? in off mode i mean.