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Real Xbox Next Specs Leaked?
maaaaac writes "Looks like Xbox-Scene might have been sent a copy of the alleged specs for Xenon, aka Xbox Next [Spong.com has a slightly longer version of the document, apparently from Microsoft's Xbox Advanced Technology Group.] Interesting tidbits -- CPU: A 3-core (on one die) 3.5+ GHz IBM PowerPC processor w/SMT and 1MB L2 (accessible by the GPU, no less); GPU: 500+ MHz DirectX 9.0+ part from ATI, 96 shader ops per clock cycle, 4+ gigapixels/sec, 500+ million triangles/sec, 10MB EDRAM; RAM: 256+ MB of unified memory with 22.4+ GB/sec bandwidth (EDRAM has 32 GB/sec); Misc: all audio done on the CPU, 10/100 Ethernet (no wireless?), USB 2.0, VGA out (!), 12x DVD, undecided on HD but definitely as an option, at least, and what I think is one of the better improvements, 'The Xenon console will be smaller than the Xbox console.'"
If that's the real specs for this thing I'll just buy one of them and run *nix and never buy a "real" computer againg. Long Live products that don't have to make a profit.
Over the last week or so, there have been a lot of XBox 2 related stories and now this "leak". I wonder if Microsoft is leaking all of this information to A) keep XBox in the news during a quiet summer and B) get some free advice from the community of interested gamers. Given its PC roots, I'd be willing to guess that XBox gamers are more technically knowledgeable as a group compared to other console gamers. If this is true, then their opinions with respect to XBox 2 specs could be valuable.
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
As far as the size of the box, I dont think that is an issue for me, personally. The xbox looks about the size of a stereo component, and I find it looks nice on an entertainment center. Unless you are carrying it around (why? its not a DS or PSP or GBA), size is the least important factor to me.
Actually...I would rather have a larger box the remains cooler than a small box that has a potential to run really hot.
I guess Microsoft is enjoying getting the extra $80-$100 they are charging for the wireless adapter for the current Xbox. Where it would be really, really nice to have as an included feature, I can see where MS are trying to way the bottom line, although arguably by including it they could boost Xbox Live acceptance. In any event, I've been curious as to whether the current wireless adapter would likely work with future incarnations of the Xbox. (and if there are any other practical, cheaper wireless solutions outside of the linksys game adapter?)
With no HD it should be a big improvement but my Xbox is wayyy too loud when the disk is chattering away and the DVD is spinning.
It's even louder than my (modded with extra fan) Tivo which is right next to it in the entertainment center.
Now the N64 didn't need much ram because all the textures were stored on the cart and could be accessed VERY fast. Now since MS is using some fancy expensive fast EVDRAM (or something), putting a gig in (which I think would be ideal, and probably not that expensive a year or two from now when this thing comes out), they could make due with only 256. They should just make a ramdrive out of standard DDR ram or something like that! It's dirt cheap, and it could lose it's contents when power is removed. But it would be a fantastic place to store textures and such. You'd use it as a cache (not actual memory). That way you could preload all your textures for the level into this cache. When they move from one part of the level to another, instead of having to load the textures off a CD or HD (which you have to have big advanced warning for due to latency and such), you copy them out of this RAM cache which would be very VERY fast (relative to HD/DVD).
The X-Box did something like this using a partition on the hard drive, why not do it in cheap memory. You could precache sound and textures and models and stuff and have them all at near instant access times without having to buy a gig of ultra-fast-proprietary-no-one-else-uses-it-so-it's -really-expensive RAM.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
You forget its a console not a PC. Less ram is made up for with a monster memory bandwidth. This means that they can just demand the textures as their used instead of caching everyone for the next 4 scenes in mem. The ps2 messed up because the video ram was smaller then the textures required ina scene but having a very large cache defeats the purpose of havign a large pipe to jam them through.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
I'm seeing a lot of incredulous posts regarding the ability of Microsoft/IBM's ability to put three cores on a die, etc. feasibly for power and/or cost reasons. However, IBM develops a number of lines of PowerPC family processors, not just those for Apple and RS-6000 workstations. My understanding is that these cores are some sort of hybrid between 4xx and 7xx (G) series processor cores. The 4xx cores are low power devices (with set-top box, printer, router applications) and are already in multi-core chips. I imagine that with a stripped down 7xx core and some of the low power features, the brains of Xenon will not melt the unit or break the banks of those poor, struggling artists at Microsoft.
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By using the new Blue Gene processors.
To quote:
Compared with today's fastest supercomputers, it will be six times faster, consume 1/15th the power per computation and be 10 times more compact than today's fastest supercomputers.
-Team XBox (see link above)
1/15th the power consumption is a heck of a lot of heat that doesn't need to be dissipated. Supposedly can be run without CPU fans, too, but it's still very experimental and that may change when they crank the speed up (the heatsink-and-fanless one for supercomputers I saw was only 700MHz... I don't know if it requires cooling for practical use, though). It's also capable of 200 simultaneous computations per cycle, supposedly.
Lets go oevr an example:
....
....
PC:
Slice1: OS
slice2: Load game from hd
slice3: initialize game
slice4: OS
slice5: network monitoring
slice6: switch back to game
Each context switch requires a refresh form main memory and a huge huge penalty in regaurds to the predictive branching algorithm for cpu pipelining. the context switches occur often, and each time the memory bus must be ustilized to refresh the cache and resupply the pipeline.
Console (Xbox et al)
slice1: load game frm DVd
slice2: Rungame
little to no context switching and the biggest thing on the bus is graphics. It doesn't have any context switching and thus the memory bus is almost dedicated to the GPU, since instructiosn are about 1/100 the size of textures.
As for jaming everything, a PC graphics card know it has a small and busy bus to get it's textures, so it grabs as much as it can when the pipe is available and stores it in the video ram. While a console GPU knows the bus won't be very busy and it can grab the textures when ever. Theres a big big difference in memory bandwidth. Peak bandwidth for the highest rated DDR is theoretically 3.2 gb/s Reference. While a PS2 has a theoetical memory bandwidth of 3.2 gb per second Reference. The xbox has a bandwidth of 6.4 gb/s Reference. Now for the PC it divides this bandwidth between every device that is on the memory bus, the GPU/CPU/carious controllers and the device bus. The Xbox/PS2 dedicates it to GPU/cpu. A Pc GPU has maybe 10% of the memory bus to itself, 0.32 gigs/s while a PS2/Xbox GPU has essentially the whole bus. A scene in NTSC of PAL will never require 3.2 gigs of textures every second. But a 1260x1024 res monitor will require more then 0.32gigs/s of textures thus the high ram sizes of graphics cards.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
After some investigation I think it is fake. And my reasoning has nothing to do with the specs, etc. In the supposed "leaked document" the author, Pete Isenee, uses the letter 's' in spelling 'maximise' (second bullet point under "Hardware Goals".) That is not the way that word is spelled in the United Sates. It is spelled 'maximize'. The British use 's' where we use 'z'.
I found the guy's personal web site here:
http://www.tantalon.com/pete.htm
On that page he spells a similar word, 'optimize', with a 'z' and not a 's'. There would be consistency in the way he used 's' or 'z'. It looks to me that this was faked by someone in Britain.
You're forgetting that Nintendo is harping that very same line and if Sony falls that doesn't automatically make Microsoft the king of consoles. Nintendo is planning to make the big change that will save the japanese market and they seem to hope their next console can do that.
Besides, not only japanese people buy japanese games. I have a console just because certain games don't appear on the PC and those certain games are mostly japanese. With XNA the number of western console exclusive titles will go down further, meaning I'll be able to play those games on my PC. If Sony and Nintendo don't get a single western game that's no loss for me since I have my PC.
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Actually I read an earlier report posted on slashdot that mentioned the same 3.5GHz figure, whether the fanboy just read this and recycled it or not I don't know.
But one thing was apparent in that report, the 3.5GHz figure was bollocks and it was really a 3 core CPU with each "core" running at 1.16GHz. And as we know, 3 cores @ 1.16GHz != 1 core @ 3.5GHz. This is a pretty reasonable assumption because the IBM G4/G5 CPU's don't have anywhere near the optimisations to run at 3.5GHz. I also like the 3x1.16 figure, because that scales nicely with the 733MHz CPU they used in the original XBox.
In fact, 3.5GHz is pretty unrealistic for just about any modern CPU, apart from intel. Intel is a bad example - due to marketing reasons, intel has forgone all real world performance in favour of sheer clockspeed. Most of the rest of the industry (AMD, Motorola, Transmeta, Via, IBM) have decided that either performance, low power draw, low price/performance, or enhanced capabilities are much more important than clockspeed.
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