Xbox One (Durango) Technical hardware investigation

Yep. Otherwise it's just processor. I'd even say RAM should be on chip, as a system consists of processor, storage, and IO.

 

This is the definition I go by. I think SoC is too often misapplied to chips that just combine CPU and GPU. It is helpful to be able to make distinctions between those, and chips that actually integrate the southbridge as well.

 

If you weren't talking about what hardware is inside Durango (like this post), it'll have been deleted. This is the hardware investigation thread in the technical forum.

 

Most of the I/O these days outside of the memory controller is serial (SATA, USB) or pretty narrow parallel (4-bit SD).. how many pins will it really need? There are pretty cheap ARM SoCs that have all this and much more (given market requirements), interfacing much smaller dies than what this would require.

Just needing the PCI-e interface alone would be a drawback. But I don't know how many lanes they made it on XBox 360.

Nintendo appears to have no problem putting all the I/O in Wii U in the big chip either, only relegating the CPU to another chip. They don't have a harddrive, though.

 

PowerPC based CPU

I'm starting to think there is a really great business reason why they should offer Backwards compatibility. Money. We all know they want people eventually go DD only, but with next-gen game sizes up to 50GB that won't be practical for the next several years. Xbox 360 game sizes would be much more manageable though. If they offer backwards compatibility hundreds of Downloadable games could be made available and perhaps enhanced in someway. What do you guys think?

 

I'm sure they'd love to if it didn't cost money to provide the backwards compatibility in the first place and if they didn't have to test every game for hundred of hours in order to be able to offer it as backwardly compatible to consumers.

It's not clear to me that backwards compatibility is any sort of win financially for the platform holder. And I'm ignoring the revenue generated by "enhanced" re-releases like SOTC and ICO this generation.

 

If there's money in porting games to the new platform, publishers will port games to the new platform. The lack of an ibm cpu won't prevent it.

 

Not ports. I'm thinking with the more powerful GPU we could get enhanced backwards compatibility like PS1 games on PS2. Better resolution, framerates, etc..

 

There's much more money in maintaining the integrity of the XBLA ecosystem than selling enhanced ports.

Xbox TV = casual games shared w/ Windows store
Xbox 360 mini = Xbox 360/XBLA games + Xbox TV/Window casual games
Xbox 720 = Xbox 720/XBLA games + 360/XBLA games + Xbox TV/W8 casual games

 

They would be better off selling kinect TV. A 2 jag- 4 CU SOC with a Kinect unit would go further than an Xbox TV. An MS version of an Apple TV/Roku with cheap games doesn't sound too compelling to me. A Kinect version of an Apple TV/ Roku with cheap games would definitely be a more compelling product.

 

It would have to be 4 Jags(I think they come in groups of 4) and 4 CUs but that could work.

 

No. Jaguar was designed to be up to 4 cores. For example there's a Temash 2 jag 2 CU.

 

So no news out of the MS Techfest?

The 360 mini would not be able to play Xbox TV/Windows games as it can't run WinRT/8 unlike the two new Xbox devices

It's not meant for you, it's meant for casuals who use their Xbox primarily for Netflix etc and who might cross shop with Apple TV and similar devices.

 

Do we have any benchmarks on jaguar cores? I'm curious how they would compare to the new Atom cores in a lot of Windows 8 tablets.

 

demolish is probably a good starting point.

 

Of course not. The March 6th event had nothing to do with the next Xbox / Durango.

 

Well, that's not what the event schedule I posted earlier indicated , unless it was fake?

 

Its not fake. Its was simply strict Internal, no Media or Press.
And probably nobody wants to risk his job

 

And how is Kinect now suddenly a device not attractive to casuals. A kinect with embedded hardware (a bigger base could be used to house said hardware) could serve multiple segments including the PC and TV with not only an entertainment device but a new way to interact with your display and content.

Everyone is trying to service the TV market with a simple box that will do things like Netflix. Kinect would serve as a differentiator and an attractive feature meant to drive consumers to MS's ecosystem.

MS has left hints of a new technology that will find its way into a number of products. It would make sense for that tech to be interaction based not simply giving us more of the same but with "Xbox" branded on it.

 

I thought media were invited.

I never said that Kinect isn't attractive to casuals.

MS probably wants to keep Kinect 2 as a drawcard for the full priced 720, for people who want Kinect they can get the Xbox 360 superslim for $200 and for people who want something like Apple TV, Roku etc they can get Xbox TV for $100.

Xbox TV also might act as an extender for 720 as speculated, so you can stream games from your 720 in the family room to the Xbox TV in your bedroom for example.