Xbox One (Durango) Technical hardware investigation

[Cyan]

Press Play Mikkel Thorsted says Xbox One will impress for many years, because of different technology aspects and unique characteristics so the console will stand the test of time.

http://www.oxm.co.uk/69032/xbox-one...ny-years-despite-pc-advances-says-press-play/

 

[Nesh]

Press Play Mikkel Thorsted says Xbox One will impress for many years, because of different technology aspects and unique characteristics so the console will stand the test of time.

http://www.oxm.co.uk/69032/xbox-one...ny-years-despite-pc-advances-says-press-play/

I am not so much convinced this will be unique to XB1.

 

[pjbliverpool]

Or the most recent generation of consoles.

 

[-tkf-]

@bkillian - what is going on with the X1 audio? Netflix won't output the center channel with 5.1 audio, popular 5.1/7.1 headphones will not work, etc. Do you still have any insight on this, it is rather annoying but at least the game audio is fine (aside from headphones).

I tried last night for hours to rewire my system to route the HDMI into the AVR, but that proved later to be a waste of time as it won't pass-through protected audio so I was still stuck with two-channel headphones.

On a side note I really need a 50' Kinect 2 extension cable so it will work as intended. I saw mono-price is working on this at least.

can't you decompress the audio to pcm before sending it to the xb1?

 

[Kasersky]

Has this been posted yet? The video from the Xbox One Hotchips presentation.

http://youtu.be/IZ-S3Trhg7Y

SoC talk start around 38:00.

one thing that kept coming up in Q&A John Sell said that on die storage can be repaired so it doesnt impact chip yield.

 

[Nesh]

Or the most recent generation of consoles.

Abd with recent which consoles do you imply?

 

[pjbliverpool]

I mean to say that his comments don't just apply to PS4/XB1. They applied equally to the last generation consoles too. In other words, what he said is something everybody's already known about for at least the last 8 years.

"Consoles will punch above their weight because they are fixed hardware platforms and people will buy them because of their unique features" This guys full of revelations!

 

[Cyan]

Article on how the Xbox One operating systems work. Three virtual machines, and an extremely thin OS for games.

http://www.oxm.co.uk/59251/features/how-xbox-ones-operating-systems-work-why-setting-aside-ram-for-apps-is-good-for-devs-and-gamers/http://www.oxm.co.uk/59251/features...ide-ram-for-apps-is-good-for-devs-and-gamers/http://www.oxm.co.uk/59251/features...ide-ram-for-apps-is-good-for-devs-and-gamers//

 

[Shifty Geezer]

OT discussion removed. Technical investigation doesn't include whether a console has or was culturally or economical valid for x years.

 

[fehu]

"Consoles will punch above their weight because they are fixed hardware platforms and people will buy them because of their unique features" This guys full of revelations!

It's still true with the many layers of the one?

 

[pjbliverpool]

It's still true with the many layers of the one?

It's certainly less true today than it ever has been thanks to the low overhead of both the current iterations of Windows and DX compared to older versions (not even considering Mantle). The One's and PS4's system reserves may also play a larger factor than previous consoles.

 

[imaxx]

Article on how the Xbox One operating systems work. Three virtual

...that article states that the hypervisor is a "virtual machine"....

...yeah

 

[bkilian]

...that article states that the hypervisor is a "virtual machine"....

...yeah

It is. At least, the OS they refer to as the Hypervisor in that article is a virtual machine.

 

[Lockheed]

I have a question for someone who understands Tiled technology. Is Tiled Rendering and Tiled Resources two different technologies?

I've noticed that Tiled Resources emphasizes more on textures while Tiled Rendering is more about rendering geometry of a 3d model then wrapped in it's textures, compared to the conventional method of rendering.

 

[imaxx]

It is. At least, the OS they refer to as the Hypervisor in that article is a virtual machine.

:O

are you kidding me?? You mean..... uuurgh. That's unbelievable... so the structure is


Hypervisor ->
VM Hypervisor ->
->GameOS | WinOS


...but you cannot put an hypervisor on top of an hypervisor ...there is NO hardware support for that, no way they could have made it on custom Jaguar cores so quickly.

But wth they call it hypervisor if it does not work as an hypervisor?

An hypervisor is supposed to handle events and calls/etc from...

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I have a question for someone who understands Tiled technology. Is Tiled Rendering and Tiled Resources two different technologies?

Yes.

I've noticed that Tiled Resources emphasizes more on textures while Tiled Rendering is more about rendering geometry of a 3d model then wrapped in it's textures, compared to the conventional method of rendering.

Precisely. Tiled rendering draws the image on screen in tiles. Tiled resources store those resources in tiles and load them piecemeal as needed for rendering instead of load the entire texture all in one go.

 

[Lalaland]

It is. At least, the OS they refer to as the Hypervisor in that article is a virtual machine.

I think the error is in the first paragraph by the article author rather than in the quotes from Multerer, specifically

...The new console runs three "virtual machines", two on top of a third...

Now while there are hosted hypervisors (eg VirtualBox) I couldn't see any realtime system relying on that so my guess is that the interviewers eyes glazed over at some point and he confused the issue. We need a hypervisor somewhere directly on the tin unless there is a 4th bubble missing from their diagram below the hypervisor, a hypervisor for your hypervisor if you will (yo dawg I heard etc, etc)....

 

[bkilian]

I think the error is in the first paragraph by the article author rather than in the quotes from Multerer, specifically Now while there are hosted hypervisors (eg VirtualBox) I couldn't see any realtime system relying on that so my guess is that the interviewers eyes glazed over at some point and he confused the issue. We need a hypervisor somewhere directly on the tin unless there is a 4th bubble missing from their diagram below the hypervisor, a hypervisor for your hypervisor if you will (yo dawg I heard etc, etc)....

No, that quote is correct. The system does run two virtual machines inside a third virtual machine. The third VM (Known as the Host OS when I was there) is the only one that talks directly to the Hypervisor.

At boot time, the Hypervisor creates the first VM and loads the Host OS image, then the Host OS finds and loads the System and Game OS images. Game OS image is essentially the game itself. It ships on the disc.

The team had to make significant changes to the VM software to allow to it run multiple VMs inside itself, amongst other things. It is one of the main reasons Dave Cutler, the guy who originally wrote the NT Kernel, as well as being in charge of VM development for Azure, came to the XBox team.

 

[McHuj]

What's the point of running a VM inside a VM? Tigheter security? Why can't they the hypervisor run the System and Game OS directly?

 

[bkilian]

What's the point of running a VM inside a VM? Tigheter security? Why can't they the hypervisor run the System and Game OS directly?

Because that adds complexity to the Hypervisor. Part of the Host OS job is to provide communication channels between the game and system OS, and manage hardware resource allocations. Adding that to the Hypervisor adds a huge surface area for possible Hypervisor attacks. In general, you want the Hypervisor to be as small as possible.