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Xbox 360 GPU A Vector Co-Processor?

Posted by Zonk on from the number-crunching dept.

Anyone Seen Thomas? writes "While Beyond3D's article on the ATI C1 (XENOS) graphics processor in the XBOX 360 gives you all you need to know about ATI's next generation hardware in terms of generating screen pixels, it also gives a big clue as to how it'll be useful for general purpose vector programming. XENOS is able to write data out of its unified memory architecture into system memory, and read it back again later. So with a large pool of powerful vector hardware available, does anyone fancy the idea of having a generalised , high-performance vector processor in their PC?. Read about that and the rest of XENOS." From the article: "Since XBOX 360's announcement and ATI's unleashing from the non disclosure agreements we've had the chance to not just chat with Robert Feldstein, VP of Engineering, but also Joe Cox, Director of Engineering overseeing the XBOX graphics design team, and two lead architects of the graphics processor, Clay Taylor and Mark Fowler. Here we hope to accurately impart a slightly deeper understanding of the XBOX 360 graphics processor, how it sits within the system, understand more about its operation as well as give some insights into the capabilities of the processor."

5 of 55 comments (clear)

  1. Just an Example... by superpulpsicle · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Does anyone else think Gran Turismo 4 looks actually better than Forza sports? Point being, the console world is always 50% hardware, 50% software.

    1. Re:Just an Example... by alvinrod · · Score: 3, Insightful
      Don't you think that beauty is in the eye of the beholder? It's really a matter of opinion which game "looks" better. You can ask which has more polygons on screen at any given moment, in which case you could probably guess Forza and be correct, but that doesn't necessarily translate to looking better.

      I could make a car that takes all the processing power the the Xbox to draw, and still have it look like crap. I'm not saying this is the case with either game, but it's a valid point.

      The software is always limited by the hardware. You can't go beyond these limitations without having negative effects (i.e. framerate being terribly low, etc.).

      Looks are more or less dependent on the art style used by the game. This is what graphics should really be based around, rather than how many polygons can this console render at any given time. The next generation consoles (mainly the PS3 and Xbox 360) will be able to produce frighteningly large numbers of polygons at any given moment (the PS3 is supporting dual 1080p!) but that doens't necessarily mean the games will look any better.

      Personally, I'd like to see more along the lines of an 80% focus on Software. That and more gameplay and less graphics.

  2. tech-specs are irrelevant by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I know that both ATI/Microsoft and Nvidia/Sony really want to 'hype' their technologies but is anyone out there actually delusional enough to think that any of the upcomming systems ( XBox 360/PS3/Revolution) will actually produce graphics that are dramatically different from any of the other systems?

    To a certain extent I'm personally expecting very little in the way of technical progress in graphics and a far greater focus on artistic considerations. Let's face it, we're hitting a point where using 'brute-force' and dramatically increasing the geometry in your objects is not what will produce a better looking game; what will make a difference is well designed objects and a more populated environment.

    Now, more technical power is needed to obtain these more populated environments and can help with designing better objects but there is a limitation on what is currently needed. I expect that, for the most part, if you could produce 4 times the geometry of the XBox (twice the geometry per object and twice as many objects on screen) and you can have every pixel calculated by a shader (which is aproximatley 4 times as complicated as one that can be run on the XBox) you will be meeting the requirements of almost every game made in the next generation. I expect that every one of the upcomming consoles surpasses these specifications.

  3. Re:Now this is how you sell a console by gabebear · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Honestly, I thought this was a slap at Microsoft. In the article they admit that the GPU is not compatable with DirectX. The original XBox's DirectX implementation was a bit funky but basically it was DirectX8 and developers bitched about that. The XBox360's Shaders(and who knows what else) aren't DirectX9 compliant, and it sounds like their is no hope for it Being DirectX Next compliant. If developers are going to have to rework a lot of complex code for the XBox360 I think this will turn off many game developers who see the XBox as a console that's cheap to port.

  4. Re:PSP has at least 2 VPUs... by gabebear · · Score: 3, Informative

    The PSP's CPU architechture is VERY close the the PS2's, but the PS3 is a whole nother beast. The PS2 has 2 VPUs with 32 128-bit(4x32bit) floating point registers and 16 integer registers with 16KB of Data Memory. The main CPU is MIPs based. The PS3 uses the new CELL CPU which is PowerPC based, the CELL will use 7 SPEs that each have 128 128bit registers and each has 256KB SRAM.

    The PS3's SPEs will be used very sililarly to the PS2's SPUs(dot-products, etc) although they are much much bigger, there are a lot more of them, and they are a LOT faster. The CELL CPU was developed by Sony, Toshiba, and IBM and is slated to be put into TVs, PVRs, etc. It is very good at compression/decrompression, showed it off decoding 48 MPEG2 streams with power to spare.

    So the answer to your question is; not yet. Sony will put a CELL CPU in many of their electronics, but not until it is cheaper.