Xbox One (Durango) Technical hardware investigation

[AlphaWolf]

His point was that digital is taking over. Blu-ray will one day have 100% of the physical media sales, without ever actually selling more volume than they do today.

I could certainly see them offering optical without blu-ray or dvd playback or a buy in option for playback.

 

[DJ12]

Given the skepticism you've shown towards other rumors, what made you consider this one to be credible enough to reference.

Simply because some were suggesting the APU must be the xbox because it had a Blu-Ray drive attached.

I did not say I believed it, just putting it out there because of the jumps people were making.

It is slightly more believable because I guess Ms would hate giving money to a competitor than the usual rumours flying round this place.

 

[torbor]

lack of a $30 feature is going to be that big of a deal ?

If the multimedia functionality(and the aim is to be the center of the living room) has to be the difference and selling point of your hardware it is bad joke when your machine cant play Blu Ray Disc out of the box but your competitor can do this even without an extra fee.

I would write that no company can be that stupid. But after Thq went bankrupt because of their draw tablet i am not so sure anymore.

 

[Tap In]

If the multimedia functionality(and the aim is to be the center of the living room) has to be the difference and selling point of your hardware it is bad joke when your machine cant play Blu Ray Disc out of the box but your competitor can do this even without an extra fee.

I would write that no company can be that stupid. But after Thq went bankrupt because of their draw tablet i am not so sure anymore.

well if the aim is to be planning for the future... disc play will rarely be necessary nor desired.

again, it's more likely it will be a lower end sku without BR for lower price rather than a "Pro" model which I am certain will have disc media and do just fine as a home media device for the next 7 years

 

[Love_In_Rio]

Its kinect 1 by the skeleton joints tracked. But this with Kinect 2 must be leagues better.

 

[dobwal]

Why does there exist a natural assumption that Durango is an apu design? Who is credible enough to warrant such an acceptance from the collective of Beyond3D?

 

[3dilettante]

While it's not impossible that it isn't an APU, it makes a lot of sense for a design with the performance and cost constraints of a console, and the perponderance of rumors and information agrees with it.

It doesn't help the case the opposite argument that even more of those who adhere to it really don't look like they know what they're talking about. That's not to say that the APU side has a very good SNR, so to have it worse makes me even less likely to bet on there not being an APU.

 

[Rangers]

Why does there exist a natural assumption that Durango is an apu design? Who is credible enough to warrant such an acceptance from the collective of Beyond3D?

All the rumors. While I was once skeptical, the confirmation by Sony that PS4 is an APU also makes it extremely likely imo Durango will be as well. It must provide cost savings, and is made possible by the svelte Jaguar CPU's these boxes sport.

 

[Sonic]

Why does there exist a natural assumption that Durango is an apu design? Who is credible enough to warrant such an acceptance from the collective of Beyond3D?

Because that is the course of the rumors and speculative discussion surrounding the rumors on these boards makes it the natural assumption. We have diagrams leaked by vgleaks and if they are all fake then we've been duped pretty good. We're now at a point where the next gen consoles are just around the corners and the rumors and leaks surrounding them are much more likely to be true than not. If this were two years ago then yeah it might have been hard to swallow that Durango would be an APU, but now given everything we know it is a natural fit. I will be quite surprised (whether for good or bad) if it ends up not being an APU.

 

[Proelite]

SOC / MCM instead of APU I believe.

 

[Brad Grenz]

I doubt it's a system on a chip. The southbridge will in all likelihood be external. It's an APU.

 

[Exophase]

I doubt it's a system on a chip. The southbridge will in all likelihood be external. It's an APU.

What about the I/O will warrant being on a separate chip? SoCs can do decent SATA these days, if it even has an HDD instead of just flash.

 

[Proelite]

I doubt it's a system on a chip. The southbridge will in all likelihood be external. It's an APU.

http://www.linkedin.com/pub/eric-mejdrich/1b/108/214

Biggest evidence for SOC design for Durango.

 

[onQ]

http://www.linkedin.com/pub/eric-mejdrich/1b/108/214

Biggest evidence for SOC design for Durango.

Or he worked on the Xbox 360 SoC.

http://www.hotchips.org/wp-content/uploads/hc_archives/archive22/HC22.23.215-1-Jensen-XBox360.pdf

 

[SlickShoesRUCrazy]

he joined Microsoft in March 2010...360 s launched june 2010....

doubt he worked on the 360s soc

 

[onQ]

he joined Microsoft in March 2010...360 s launched june 2010....

doubt he worked on the 360s soc

Just checking.

but also if he was doing the something at IBM maybe he was working on the Xbox SoC & was hired by MS after the chip was done.

 

[McHuj]

SOC / MCM instead of APU I believe.

An APU is an SOC, a simple maybe, but there's no hard definition of what is and isn't considered an SOC and certainly varies from company to company.

 

[Grall]

It's true there isn't any universally-agreed-upon definition of what precisely constitutes an SoC, although there's an easy way to determine what should constitute one: it's not really a SYSTEM on a chip if the vast majority of the I/O is located on a different IC...

 

[MfA]

Why does there exist a natural assumption that Durango is an apu design? Who is credible enough to warrant such an acceptance from the collective of Beyond3D?

I'm still refusing to be assimilated just yet ...

 

[tunafish]

What about the I/O will warrant being on a separate chip? SoCs can do decent SATA these days, if it even has an HDD instead of just flash.

Low-speed IO requires a lot of pins for all the controllers and such. These pins cost much more when they are on the high-speed chip than when they are produced on 90nm or something, and it doesn't improve them in any way.

Even in that 360 soc module, the low-speed io is segregated to an external chip that connects with PCI-E. I expect that this is what will happen in the next xbox too -- all the high-speed io is on the main chip, but there is a small, cheap external io hub for the low-speed io that connects with a high-speed link.

Depending on your definition, this either is or isn't a soc. It would appear MS would call it one.