Xbox One Slim

I just don't see why they'd bother having the manufacturing plants tooled for two different boxes. The mobo could just be reused if they were aggressive enough. The larger box would just have more space allocated for the other internal components.
 
Didn't we hit a wall in terms of cost per transistor with 28nm? I mean there was a bunch of articles saying cost per gate was actually rising, and it didn't look like we would get any cost reduction until 7nm/10nm.
 
I... I have no other questions. :nope: :runaway:

I will electromigrate.

 
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Didn't we hit a wall in terms of cost per transistor with 28nm? I mean there was a bunch of articles saying cost per gate was actually rising, and it didn't look like we would get any cost reduction until 7nm/10nm.

I believe the limit was to do with cost per transistor at time of ramp for the node. Long term, the cost per transistor should still drop, but while previously new nodes had instantly brought drops in cost per transistor now they don't.

Nvidia had a load of slides about this a while back that seemed to get investors weeping for them.

Cost per transistor now has to be balanced against some other market factor such as absolute performance or power per mAh or whatever. Long term, a smaller node should still beat a larger one for cost per transistor.
 
I believe the limit was to do with cost per transistor at time of ramp for the node. Long term, the cost per transistor should still drop, but while previously new nodes had instantly brought drops in cost per transistor now they don't.

Nvidia had a load of slides about this a while back that seemed to get investors weeping for them.

Cost per transistor now has to be balanced against some other market factor such as absolute performance or power per mAh or whatever. Long term, a smaller node should still beat a larger one for cost per transistor.
450mm wafers should help too. It is still the biggest change to the industry I lived through and by far, it is a major change a game changer, one that is absolutely not "priced in".
 
Not really the thread for it perhaps (is their one?) but just recently I discovered the joys of the XBO Happeguage TV Tuner.

The use case for it is probably pretty limited, but I happen to be in that demo...I cut the cord and dont have cable TV, but do watch NFL on OTA (antenna) TV. This doo-dad lets me integrate everything into my Xbox now which solves a couple problems, no longer have to switch inputs to watch OTA TV for one. The other is I had my XBO hooked up to my HTIB reciever via optical, and my TV not hooked to the HTIB at all (cant remember why, but this audio connection stuff gets super complicated and frustrating to me fast), so whenever I watched TV it defaulted to the crappy TV speakers, which was lame. This way since it's all through the Xbox, the sound is always through the HTIB whether Xbox or TV.

So the cool thing is now I'm at a point where the Xbox is truly the only input I need, just like they planned. I didn't really plan it this way, but now it is. I remember Jeff Cannata recently talking on a podcast about this (he was mentioning he's been playing his Xbox more because of the forgotten all in one TV stuff kinda making it his default box for TV reasons). It's kinda forgotten all the all in one box stuff, but actually still cool. XBO has Sling Tv and Plex (covers all streaming from PC needs) apps which are truly the two biggies for me, as well as of course all the Netflix/Prime/Hulu/whatever apps (which I dont personally use) so really everything is covered now with the antenna adapter. It gives you a neato professional TV guide style thing (Oneguide), and if you opt to set aside a piddling 4GB of HDD space during setup, you get 30 minutes worth of automatic fast forward/rewind/pause of live tv. It doesn't have full true DVR capabilities yet, but I'm guessing they may come in an update oneday. Another cool thing is the Happeguage adapter allows you to stream OTA TV from your Xbox to any tablet or smartphone on the local network through smartglass (which is also becoming a pretty nifty app) as well. I personally wont have much use for this.

It all looks nice and futuristic too, it seamlessly does kind of a picture-in-picture minimizing thing when you fullscreen a menu or whatnot, you can even watch TV in the sidebar while idling in Destiny (although the picture is necessarily pretty small) 360 made some steps to being a media box but with XBO they've really taken it to a good level.

Problems? One is the price...the Tuner is $60, not too bad but still a bit pricey. Then you need the media remote if you dont already have it (well you dont NEED it, but you'll want it, and it's a nifty little remote anyway) that's another $25. And then if like me you dont have kinect hooked up and want to integrate your other devices (I haven't done this step yet) you'll need an IR extender cable which is another $15, so you're looking at $100 which is a bit steep I suppose.

And I have encountered one technical issue, on some TV the audio has desynced (OTOH sometimes it's fine, may depend on channel, audio format of the program, etc). Apparently it's a bit of an issue if you use the XBO optical out like me due to the Xbox somehow processing that output differently. I'm still researching fixes etc. A simple cold boot of the Xbox alone may help apparently, haven't tried it yet.
 
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I just don't see why they'd bother having the manufacturing plants tooled for two different boxes. The mobo could just be reused if they were aggressive enough. The larger box would just have more space allocated for the other internal components.

Assuming they use the same SOC for the two boxes, I don't see why they couldn't use the same MB. Just have it designed for the basic mostly TV/content consumption Xbox "TV" (or whatever they call it) while the larger Xbox console can always have more internal room for additional storage options (HDD and possibly optical).

If the Xbox "TV" isn't meant to play Xbox console games, they could also downclock and/or downvolt and have the potential to have a passively cooled box. At the very least it should feature a smaller and quieter cooling system. The point of something like this would be, I assume, to get more people into the Windows Store/Xbox Store (they should basically be the same soon if not already) ecosystem while leveraging content sales and/or rentals (movies, music, etc.).

If it's meant to have the option to play games while having limited internal storage. The ability to easily support any USB drive on the market means that it'd be easy for even the most technologically challenged person to add storage to be able to play games. That, of course, means that it might be cheaper to get the Xbox "TV" and a USB drive to game on than the Xbox console itself. :p Depending, of course, on the price difference between the two devices. A difference of 100 USD or more would make the Xbox "TV" a cheaper gaming device even if you had to buy a USB storage device in order to play games on it. And you'd likely end up with more storage than the Xbox console (assuming you were a savvy buyer and didn't just go to Walmart or Best Buy to buy a storage device).

Regards,
SB
 
I mean the actual physical box. ;) The chassis.

Ah, I'd imagine a smaller "TV" box would be seen by marketing as more attractive to an audience that might be interested in a Xbox TV for content consumption and streaming. Then throw in the option to be able to play games by adding an external storage device. Or perhaps it just has enough storage for 1 game, enough to act as a gateway drug.

Then again they could go completely off the rails and the Xbox "TV" is actually a USB stick with no potential ability to play console games. Basically something like an Intel Compute stick with an Xbox UI meant purely for content consumption and access to the Windows store. It'd be a bit strange, but I could see them doing something weird like that.

Regards,
SB
 
Although thinking about the potential for an Xbox "TV" USB stick. Intel will be releasing one based on Core M Skylake. Granted it requires a power adapter, but still.

I wonder if there might be the potential for something similar with an Xbox SOC redesigned for 14/16 nm Finfet? Probably still to much power consumption for that even with that, however. Then again, since it's just X86 and GCN. We can always start the rumor of a Xen + Polaris + HBM2 based Xbox "TV" USB stick. :p

Regards,
SB
 
They probably couldn't even do a actual 360 on a stick in 2016, due to it just being old electricity guzzling tech (OTOH they could probably do something different with as much power as a 360, maybe). So, I guess we can basically assume it can never happen for XBO either.
 
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