Xbox One (Durango) Technical hardware investigation

[Silent_Buddha]

MS have said it was designed to operate at or below 100 watts I believe (for the SOC and not the entire console). That doesn't say, of course, whether it is possible for a particularly demanding game to push it above 100 watts.

As that is for the SOC only, that doesn't include other system components (board, drives, power efficiently for the PSU, etc.).

Regards,
SB

 

[Gipsel]

MS have said it was designed to operate at or below 100 watts I believe (for the SOC and not the entire console). That doesn't say, of course, whether it is possible for a particularly demanding game to push it above 100 watts.

I understood the 100W were some kind of approximate average. You are probably right that demanding games could push it a bit higher, it was not given as the TDP or the maximal consumption.

 

[Ekim]

A minor note -
The linkedin profile from Vinber Lei was removed after all those dGPU "rumors"...
http://cn.linkedin.com/in/vinberlei

 

[dumbo11]

A minor note -
The linkedin profile from Vinber Lei was removed after all those dGPU "rumors"...

If there was a chinese wall between the 2 AMD teams, then how did he work on both projects?

 

[Ekim]

If there was a chinese wall between the 2 AMD teams, then how did he work on both projects?

Oh you can actually find a lot of people that worked on both projects.

http://cn.linkedin.com/pub/patrick-zhang/1a/886/539

Manage software driver 3D team (D3D/OpenGL/Shader Compiler) for SoC projects.
Focus on GPU products semi-customization, e.g. PlayStation® 4 (PS4™), Xbox One, etc.

http://ca.linkedin.com/pub/haotian-shi/25/475/b41

- Responsible for interface validation on both discrete graphics processing unit (dGPU), accelerated processing unit (APU), and game consoles (Sony PS4 and MS Xbox One)

 

[Jay]

Wonder if it was walled off up to design stages.
How much _useful_ information could those particular people give the competitor?

 

[fehu]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam's_razor

 

[Cranky]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam's_razor

So you are saying that there is a dgpu. Which is what occams suggests wrt the LinkedIn profile being removed.

 

[Gipsel]

So you are saying that there is a dgpu. Which is what occams suggests wrt the LinkedIn profile being removed.

Uhm, no? Occam's Razor suggests there was just a comma missing and it was removed for some other reason (for instance to simply get out of the focus of this stupid discussion, I would think one gets a lot of unwanted messages/emails asking for some clarification).

 

[3dilettante]

Assuming there isn't a free for all situation internally at AMD, the linkedin information and design team separation could both be true.

Since there's something of a mix and match method to producing the designs, the console chips and regular GPUs are drawing from a pool of IP.
If a person is involved in adding to that pool or validating the IP, then it's possible to claim a contributing role to products that selected it. The common heritage can mean that a lot of work and credit winds up in multiple products.

Design-specific work that brings awareness of the custom system's makeup and the customer's own IP may be a bit more touchy.

 

[Nisaaru]

Does dear Occam also deliver an explanation for the >250W voltage regulators on the XB mb for the 100W TDP APU? I haven't seen one yet which fits the narrative the last few months.
And how would the razor cut through the block label "Host Guest GPU MMU" on the XB SoC from hotchips. Is it "Host, Guest, GPU MMU" or is it "(Host, Guest) GPU MMU" ?

 

[Jwm]

I guess the /crazy talk link that I just posted in the other thread could be just as well added here. lol

 

[3dilettante]

Does dear Occam also deliver an explanation for the >250W voltage regulators on the XB mb for the 100W TDP APU? I haven't seen one yet which fits the narrative the last few months.

We have pictures of the board, with just the big SOC. Are we going to pick the lack of a GPU in the pics or the regulators as evidence? The diagrams of the Xbox One at Hot Chips went so far as to give an SOC and a southbridge (although is it an SOC if there's a southbridge?).

Occam's Razor doesn't let people shave off evidence they don't like, although it's also more difficult to use Occam's Razor if there's something working to mislead.

And how would the razor cut through the block label "Host Guest GPU MMU" on the XB SoC from hotchips. Is it "Host, Guest, GPU MMU" or is it "(Host, Guest) GPU MMU" ?

There's a Host/Guest IO MMU as well. The straightforward interpretation is that there is an MMU that interfaces their virtual memory spaces with that of the primary system. The CPUs are part of the host system since they have all the low-level access for the system OS. The devices not involved in that priviledged domain would access memory through some kind of indirection, likely on the guest side of a virtualization scheme.

 

[TheWretched]

Does dear Occam also deliver an explanation for the >250W voltage regulators on the XB mb for the 100W TDP APU? I haven't seen one yet which fits the narrative the last few months.
And how would the razor cut through the block label "Host Guest GPU MMU" on the XB SoC from hotchips. Is it "Host, Guest, GPU MMU" or is it "(Host, Guest) GPU MMU" ?

Probably the same one as the 380 Watt CPU in the ~200 Watt PS3... you should ALWAYS overprovision, so your device doesn't break.

 

[Cranky]

Uhm, no? Occam's Razor suggests there was just a comma missing and it was removed for some other reason (for instance to simply get out of the focus of this stupid discussion, I would think one gets a lot of unwanted messages/emails asking for some clarification).

Actually occams would suggest fixing the error if it was one. I am not saying that I believe that there is dgpu as most evidence points otherwise. I was simplying pointing out the flaw in his logic or suspected misuse of a concept.

 

[dobwal]

Unless MS plans to have something like 40 CUs in total. What's the point of having a big APU paired with a dGPU unless it's just as big? You'd think if MS was going with an apu + dGPU setup it would at least take advantage and produce more manageable die sizes.

And how many CUs can you add with the limited bandwidth to the DDR3. Are you going to add a separate pool of ram? Maybe gddr5?

Add Kinect and MS just pulled off PS3's initial BOM without adding a costly cutting edge optical drive. All to present a virtual GPU that performs more like a 7790.

 

[SenjutsuSage]

CPU clock speed boosted to 1.75GHZ

Around the 1:50 mark here.

http://www.media-server.com/m/p/ng9deaui

 

[onQ]

Posted?

Xbox One now in full production with improved CPU performance

So far, so good for the Xbox One.
Xbox chief marketing officer Yusef Mehdi just spoke at the Citi Global Technology Conference and said Microsoft is now in full production for the Xbox One and producing in mass with plans still on for a November 2013 launch.
About one month after improving the GPU clock speed, Mehdi added that Microsoft just made another technical boost by upgrading the CPU performance to 1.75 GHZ from 1.6 GHZ.
Mehdi wouldn’t reveal a launch date — the PlayStation 4 comes out Nov. 15 — but did say that the system is “really going to shine.”
“This will be the biggest launch we’ve ever done by a wide margin in terms of units shipped at launch,” Mehdi said.
Mehdi also had some interesting insights on the Xbox One policy reversals, the $499 price point and how the Xbox business will change with Microsoft’s big re-organization. Stay tuned for more.

 

[liquidboy]

out of curiosity do you think the current Hotchips revealed silicon taken at face value could deliver

- Kinect2

- 8 controllers

- 16 smartglass connected devices (that can be render targes, where rendering is done on the console). Glasses/Tablets/Phones are considered smartglass devices

- 10yr life cycle on current generation architecture (cpu/gpu) [next generation arch is just a few months away as rumoured]


It may be that what we saw at hotchips is exactly all there is in XB1 but how it delivers/processes the above and stay relevant for 10 yrs has me totally confused.

 

[Jay]

out of curiosity do you think the current Hotchips revealed silicon taken at face value could deliver

- Kinect2

- 8 controllers

- 16 smartglass connected devices (that can be render targes, where rendering is done on the console). Glasses/Tablets/Phones are considered smartglass devices

- 10yr life cycle on current generation architecture (cpu/gpu) [next generation arch is just a few months away as rumoured]


It may be that what we saw at hotchips is exactly all there is in XB1 but how it delivers/processes the above and stay relevant for 10 yrs has me totally confused.

I don't see why not, with the fact it has custom processing.
Without those dedicated transistors, then it would be having problems at launch much less 10years down the line.

Controllers and smartglass, is less to do with specification, and more to do with game design.