Xbox One (Durango) Technical hardware investigation

[dobwal]

It seems hard to me to accept that the engineers in 2011/2012 decided to implement a cutting edge codec that may change before it sees use for a feature that might see action, maybe, in limited cases of streaming content they didn't know what. If we're to take the AMD slide at face value, maybe we're talking about a new XB1 SKU with DVR functionality, the fables STB oft rumoured?

Anything thats restricted to streaming from a Xbox One to a windows based PC doesn't necessarily need a standard codec. As long as MS doesn't mind being limited to software decoding on the PC side when using whats basically a custom encoder.

Gary Sullivan who chaired and co-chaired h.264 and h.265 is MS's lead engineer of its DXVA api used by software decoders for hardware acceleration. And the first draft of the HEVC specs was released in 2010. Given the limited utility of HEVC encoding on the Xb1, could MS have gone with an earlier draft of HEVC?

 

[mrcorbo]

It's not a little slower, it's a metric tonne slower because to show video as your dragging the scrubbing bar, it's not just reading a few frames to display a preview frame it's having to read, in most cases, several seconds of proceeding frames. It's runs like dogshit even with a fast SSD. Indices for video aren't there for fun

This has not been my experience with my own recordings in this format with my software/hardware. Yours differs?

 

[Deleted member 11852]

This has not been my experience with my own recordings in this format with my software/hardware. Yours differs?

Very different. Out of curiosity what are you using to capture the raw broadcast bitstreams? We have custom hardware for this.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Anything thats restricted to streaming from a Xbox One to a windows based PC doesn't necessarily need a standard codec. As long as MS doesn't mind being limited to software decoding on the PC side when using whats basically a custom encoder.

Gary Sullivan who chaired and co-chaired h.264 and h.265 is MS's lead engineer of its DXVA api used by software decoders for hardware acceleration. And the first draft of the HEVC specs was released in 2010. Given the limited utility of HEVC encoding on the Xb1, could MS have gone with an earlier draft of HEVC?

I don't consider that would be related to AMD talking about using HEVC in Windows 10. That'd be MS having a proprietary XB streaming service independent of AMD's HEVC hardware.

 

[dobwal]

I don't consider that would be related to AMD talking about using HEVC in Windows 10. That'd be MS having a proprietary XB streaming service independent of AMD's HEVC hardware.

Depends on what one considers HEVC. It may not be HEVC MP or Main Profile 10 but drafts such as the sixth and seventh are still referred to as HEVC HM6 and HEVC HM7.

 

[mrcorbo]

Very different. Out of curiosity what are you using to capture the raw broadcast bitstreams? We have custom hardware for this.

3 different devices, the first being this one. God, I forgot how janky this stuff was in the early days. Seeking on the hardware/software setup I was using with that probably *did* suck. I had that card hooked up to an indoor antenna and it was outputting to a 36" widescreen CRT(!) monitor.

Most recently, I used a SiliconDust HDHomerun (the original one) to record clear QAM channels over cable. I never bothered with the Cablecard stuff for protected content.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

3 different devices, the first being this one. God, I forgot how janky this stuff was in the early days. Seeking on the hardware/software setup I was using with that probably *did* suck. I had that card hooked up to an indoor antenna and it was outputting to a 36" widescreen CRT(!) monitor.

Most recently, I used a SiliconDust HDHomerun (the original one) to record clear QAM channels over cable. I never bothered with the Cablecard stuff for protected content.

Thanks! And also out of curiosity, what software are you using to read the raw dumps? We have our own software framework called Glass which is extensible so for each new type of media type we write a bespoke data format interface (DFI) module then everything else built on the framework can handle that type of media. We'll definitely need to check out any software that's doing it decently.

 

[mrcorbo]

Thanks! And also out of curiosity, what software are you using to read the raw dumps? We have our own software framework called Glass which is extensible so for each new type of media type we write a bespoke data format interface (DFI) module then everything else built on the framework can handle that type of media. We'll definitely need to check out any software that's doing it decently.

LAVFilters would be the important one.

I linked to the Github page. It's largely based on ffmpeg's libavformat and libavcodec with some customizations and therefore handles pretty much anything you throw at it.

Edit: He hosts his customized ffmpeg elsewhere. More relevant to you might be this link to his customized libavformat.

I actually tested this again last night clicking around on the timeline while playing a multi-hour TS file to jump to wildly different points in the stream. Even though I was doing this on my several years old laptop over WiFi to a shared folder on another PC, it was still very responsive.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

LAVFilters would be the important one. Edit: He hosts his customized ffmpeg elsewhere. More relevant to you might be this link to his customized libavformat.

Thanks for this, we'll definitely check this out but I'm sure we've looked at both projects for, uh, 'inspiration'. It could be the broadcast bitstreams where you are located are less dense than the ones we're used too here.

 

[tuna]

I never had any problems seeking on dumped .ts/.tp files using the PS3 or VLC.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

I never had any problems seeking on dumped .ts/.tp files using the PS3 or VLC.

How many channels are in each stream?

 

[liquidboy]

XBox One's security processor is ARM/Tensilica & uses AXI Bus (as expected)

 

[Allandor]

Does that change anything. So the OS can use the arm core for some security check sort of thing, so the x86 cores don't need to do those checks?

 

[pMax]

XBox One's security processor is ARM/Tensilica & uses AXI Bus (as expected)

AMD had a picture on how the ARM trustzone is used in their TPM&the like, so it was pretty obvious.
Yet, I miss what would they do with the tensilica core. Whatever custom module you need, you can add it to ARM, no need to use the tensilica processor.

 

[iroboto]

AMD had a picture on how the ARM trustzone is used in their TPM&the like, so it was pretty obvious.
Yet, I miss what would they do with the tensilica core. Whatever custom module you need, you can add it to ARM, no need to use the tensilica processor.

Not sure if I'm correct but I believe tensilica processors have similar characteristics to fpga, just need a flash/firmware update to change how it behaves. I could be wrong however.

 

[3dilettante]

AMD had a picture on how the ARM trustzone is used in their TPM&the like, so it was pretty obvious.
Yet, I miss what would they do with the tensilica core. Whatever custom module you need, you can add it to ARM, no need to use the tensilica processor.

AMD's PSP has an ARM Cortex-A5 as the controller, but the block includes secondary coprocessor resources for encryption functions and decompression. I don't recall it being made clear that Tensilica cores were involved, but they are designed to be licensable and tweaked to include custom firmware/hardware, which would be helpful in providing that kind of processing capability rather than messing with the ARM.

Source: http://www.anandtech.com/show/9319/...leap-of-efficiency-and-architecture-updates/8

 

[pMax]

...which would be helpful in providing that kind of processing capability rather than messing with the ARM.

ARM has already made sets for all hardware crypto you may wish (aes des etc), even ATMEL supports them flatly.
By adding a tensilica core you'd have to ...have the modules embedded, customize the extension of tensilica and actually develop a bus-like approach to offload stuff to it etc.
...it could be worth if you plan do do realtime crypto offloaded to a secondary chip but... you already have an ARM one that can do it in hardware seamlessly.
So, I do not really get the point.

 

[3dilettante]

By adding a tensilica core you'd have to ...have the modules embedded, customize the extension of tensilica and actually develop a bus-like approach to offload stuff to it etc.
...it could be worth if you plan do do realtime crypto offloaded to a secondary chip but... you already have an ARM one that can do it in hardware seamlessly.
So, I do not really get the point.

Apparently, AMD envisions the crypto unit being used sufficiently to benefit from offloading, since that is what the PSP has done. The A5 is on the other side of an interface and scratchpad.

 

[Allandor]

To the hevc support, LG just patched it in their one year old TVs with the dvb-t2 support. Not quite the same, but at least it does not seem that impossible.

Never mind.. it is just decoding

 

[Rikimaru]

To the hevc support, LG just patched it in their one year old TVs with the dvb-t2 support. Not quite the same, but at least it does not seem that impossible.

Never mind.. it is just decoding

2014 lineup was advertized with HEVC support. And of course just decoding.