[McHuj]

Originally Posted by dumbo11

ARM security is basically hardware DRM.

Assuming both chips are based on the same card series, I'd read the 'supercomputer' quote as referring to the architecture rather than performance... which is intriguing.

Whenever I think of supercomputer I always think of distributed computing. I always thought that MS was going to go with a Power A2 derivative for the next xbox. It seems like the supercomputer model on a chip. Perhaps AMD is delivering something similar.

[Gipsel]

Originally Posted by snarfbot

bobcat ranged from 800mhz @ 5watts to 1600@18 watts.

Actually, as dual core it ranges from 1.0 GHz@4.5W (Z-60, Hondo) to 1.7GHz@18W (E2-1800, Brazos2.0). The lowest single core is an embedded version (T16R) with just 615MHz and a TDP of 2.3 Watts.

Originally Posted by McHuj

A Bulldozer based AMD Opeteron 4256EE CPU is a 8-core CPU clocked at 1.6 GHz with 1MB of L2 (per core) and 8MB of L3 cache @ 32nm it's wattage is rated at 35W.

I speculate that at 28nm, 1.6GHz 8-core Jaguar based CPU could probably come in under 25 Watts.

What would make a Jaguar based 8 core version within a power budget of ~35W or less faster than a BD based version assuming a similar IPC (which is conceivable outside of FMA use cases).

Originally Posted by McHuj

The question I have is that the cores have been designed in such a way that 4 share a 2MB L2. If 8 cores were placed on a CPU, would it make more sense to have them all share a 4-8 MB L2 or go with another hierarchy level: 2MB L2 per 4 cores and 4-8 MB of L3 shared between them? Or something outrageous like 32-64MB of L3 shared by both CPU cores and GPU?

The next level of HSA? A large "L3 cache" (eDRAM), which can be used by both, the GPU and the CPU? I've put the "L3 cache" in quotes as one would probably want to be able to directly address the eDRAM array.

[(((interference)))]

Not sure if this was posted before or if there's any new info:
http://vr-zone.com/articles/there-s-...xt-/17552.html

Our sources close to heart of the matter told us while the final name of the console is still undecided, there are some names which were discarded a while ago. The final marketing call will be decided during the first quarter of 2013, with the introduction in the second quarter of 2013, probably at E3. Microsoft plans to have a large venue near to the exhibition grounds, such as the Nokia Arena and have a celebrity-laden launch, with the global marketing campaign to get tickets for the launch event covering all countries where Xbox will be sold. This naturally, will exclude many countries around the globe, an error which Sony used to its advantage with its region-free approach to PlayStation Network.

If our sources are correct, the candidates for the next Xbox name are "Xbox 8" (to align with Windows 8 & Windows Phone 8), simply "Xbox" and "Xbox Next"

This seems to explain why Dae insisted his devkit had Intel/Nvidia parts:

What we know is that Durango development platform is finally running on AMD hardware, as the company taped out GPU which will be in use for the Xbox Next console. The initial Durango XDK (Xbox Development Kit) featured an 8-core Sandy Bridge processor (SNB-E, LGA2011 on a custom motherboard with embedded memory), 8GB of DDR3 memory and Nvidia Fermi-class graphics (GTX 570). The new kit allegedly comes with 8-core FX processor, and Southern Islands graphics, with the final console allegedly featuring Sea Islands, AMD's second generation 28nm GPU hardware.

[Ruskie]

Interesting...But, no doubt the dev kit picture that leaked had AMD card. Maybe different kits, although I doubt that. He does get 8-core and 8 gigs right though, and Intel CPU on custom motherboard sounds like something from Supermicro (thats chassis Durango dev kits are).

Anyway, Superdae tweeted 12 hours ago that he will post something very interesting regarding Durango in 12 hours. So...we will find out what it is pretty soon.

DaE @superDaE

So I wrote this big long tweet about Durango the predecessors, and ended up losing it when I copy-pasted it, didn't end up copying

4:34 AM - 28 Oct 12 · Details
12h
Chris @ChrisArmota

@superDaE nooooo, re-write ?

12h
DaE @superDaE

@ChrisArmota I'll do something special in 12 hours time. For now. I sleep.

[Proelite]

Originally Posted by (((interference)))

Not sure if this was posted before or if there's any new info:
http://vr-zone.com/articles/there-s-...xt-/17552.html



This seems to explain why Dae insisted his devkit had Intel/Nvidia parts:

The link that you gave has mostly made up information. We already know that the early alpha kits are 2 quad core Xeons and a 6870/6950.

[Squilliam]

Originally Posted by (((interference)))

Not sure if this was posted before or if there's any new info:
http://vr-zone.com/articles/there-s-...xt-/17552.html

Why not Xbox Infinity? The infinity sign is two circles side by side so it looks like 720 and it looks like an 8 on its side.

[(((interference)))]

Originally Posted by Ruskie

Interesting...But, no doubt the dev kit picture that leaked had AMD card. Maybe different kits, although I doubt that. He does get 8-core and 8 gigs right though, and Intel CPU on custom motherboard sounds like something from Supermicro (thats chassis Durango dev kits are).

Anyway, Superdae tweeted 12 hours ago that he will post something very interesting regarding Durango in 12 hours. So...we will find out what it is pretty soon.

Yes, I know that.
But maybe this is why he originally thought that it was an Nvidia/Intel combo inside (he didn't realise that based on the card exterior it was an AMD 6870/6950 like we did).
Maybe someone told him (based off earlier devkits) that they had Nvidia/Intel cards but the devkit he actually got (and tried to sell) was a later one with an AMD CPU/GPU.

Originally Posted by Squilliam

Why not Xbox Infinity? The infinity sign is two circles side by side so it looks like 720 and it looks like an 8 on its side.

That's also possible, as a play on the '8'. (I could see ads where at the end the infinity symbol rotates to become an 8.)
Xbox 8 and Xbox Next were always strongly rumoured to be names for the next console (MS even secured an Xbox 8 domain)
The only other name mentioned was Xbox Loop (aside from 720, which was never going to happen, despite MS paying fan service to the name in the leaked strategy doc).

Getting rid of the identifying suffix and just going with 'Xbox' is also an interesting idea.
It's like Apple has done with the new iPad (though it makes more sense for a product that's refreshed every 6 months rather than the long lifecycles of consoles).

[Proelite]

Big long tweet. What a troll.

[(((interference)))]

That Sandy Bridge processors were part of some previous dev kit also explain this:

DaE claims that the kits were sent to developers in February, and contains 8GB of RAM - dev-kits tend to contain double the RAM of the retail product - an eight-core Intel CPU and an Nvidia graphics card. He also sent DF a screenshot of Microsoft's Visual Studio coding tool to prove its authenticity. ...
The presence on this screen of the "immintrin" element strongly suggests that the Durango coding environment is built around x86 CPU architecture, supporting the AVX (advanced vector extensions) instruction set that was added in last year's Sandy Bridge revision. However, AVX is now supported on some of the most recent AMD processors too.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/di...go-devkit-leak

[AzBat]

Originally Posted by Squilliam

Why not Xbox Infinity? The infinity sign is two circles side by side so it looks like 720 and it looks like an 8 on its side.

Xbox Infinity sounds good. It even has the right number of syllables...

X-box = 2
X-box 3-60 = 4
X-box In-fin-i-ty = 6

so that means it must be right. LOL

Or it could be called Xbox Forever to disrupt Sony's next system like Microsoft did with 360.

Personally I always they would just name it Xbox Live. There's no need to have 2 separate brand names for the console & the online system. It needs to merge into one. Makes more sense now that Xbox Music & Xbox Video is now part of more than just the console & is Microsoft's entertainment brand.

Tommy McClain

[Squilliam]

Originally Posted by (((interference)))

That's also possible, as a play on the '8'. (I could see ads where at the end the infinity symbol rotates to become an 8.)
Xbox 8 and Xbox Next were always strongly rumoured to be names for the next console (MS even secured an Xbox 8 domain)
The only other name mentioned was Xbox Loop (aside from 720, which was never going to happen, despite MS paying fan service to the name in the leaked strategy doc).

Getting rid of the identifying suffix and just going with 'Xbox' is also an interesting idea.
It's like Apple has done with the new iPad (though it makes more sense for a product that's refreshed every 6 months rather than the long lifecycles of consoles).

Microsoft are professional screwers with people who try to anticipate what they are trying to do. They do the 'drunken technologist' style of fighting which makes more conventional analysis worthless. Perhaps we need some kind of Microsoft ouija board or something?

They have options which leaves more possibilites to account for on our end. The strongest possibilities to me are either playing on the Windows side of branding or going clean by removing the suffix like you said.

On another note I just joined Dreamspark which means I am a total MS whore at this point. I'm quite interested in the idea of total home integration using the next generation Xbox whatever console given my background in helping people with disability use computer systems which gives me some great ideas for home automation and integration.

Originally Posted by AzBat

Xbox Infinity sounds good. It even has the right number of syllables...

X-box = 2
X-box 3-60 = 4
X-box In-fin-i-ty = 6

so that means it must be right. LOL

Or it could be called Xbox Forever to disrupt Sony's next system like Microsoft did with 360.

Personally I always they would just name it Xbox Live. There's no need to have 2 separate brand names for the console & the online system. It needs to merge into one. Makes more sense now that Xbox Music & Xbox Video is now part of more than just the console & is Microsoft's entertainment brand.

Tommy McClain

I wonder how they went from DirectXbox to Xbox? Did they write out the name and have some kind of brain spark? If we knew what Xbox means to them we could possibly interpret their actions a little beter. If we knew the name would it actually mean something in terms of predicting their next generation hardware?

We know they are watching us. So how can we predict what they have when they can adjust their rumours to fit what we say? For all we know all the main leakers could be a couple of people in MS headquarters sippin beers and giving us completely made up info.

[Blazkowicz]

Originally Posted by McHuj

Whenever I think of supercomputer I always think of distributed computing. I always thought that MS was going to go with a Power A2 derivative for the next xbox. It seems like the supercomputer model on a chip. Perhaps AMD is delivering something similar.

If you have just one PowerPC A2, even with a lots of core, that sounds like a regular CPU to me and thus a plain computer. In my understanding, a supercomputer is racks of computing equipment tightly connected with great bandwith and low latency, but not just computers stacked on top of each other and exchanging messages, that would be a cluster. The interconnection networks and software glue are such that the racks of computer hardware feels like one big system working on a common goal, with components able to access each other in a somewhat direct way, maybe able to read in each other's memory. (a supercomputer can be partitionned too so you might use 20% or half of it for some task, while other scientists or workers use the rest)

Maybe there were no real meaning in this "supercomputer" quote, but one feature that I think makes it supercomputer-like would be the single addressing space, shared by CPU and GPU (along with low latency between them).
What if MS's next box has two Jaguar (four cores each) and a GPU on the same chip, all on a crazy fast bus and seemingly sharing the same 64bit pointers (no need to set up silly transfers).

[Squilliam]

I'm installing Windows 8 at the momen and I noticed that the background colour for the installation is purple much the same as the purple branding with Kinect. How close are the Windows 8 OS and Xbox next OS? Are they going to share the same Kernel with Windows RT and use the ARM core to natively run Windows Phone 8/RT applications?

[Blazkowicz]

Originally Posted by AzBat

Xbox Infinity sounds good. It even has the right number of syllables...

X-box = 2
X-box 3-60 = 4
X-box In-fin-i-ty = 6

so that means it must be right. LOL

Or it could be called Xbox Forever to disrupt Sony's next system like Microsoft did with 360.

In French, Xbox 360 is Xbox trois-cent soixante = 6 syllables.

For the new console, name it Xbox 8 .
The number doesn't have to make sense. Plus, it's twice the 4 in PS4.
But what happens when Windows 9 is out.
Why not Xbox Me, to fight back the Wii U. To clarify the name, capitalise both letter, you end up with Xbox ME.

[Blazkowicz]

Originally Posted by Squilliam

I'm installing Windows 8 at the momen and I noticed that the background colour for the installation is purple much the same as the purple branding with Kinect. How close are the Windows 8 OS and Xbox next OS? Are they going to share the same Kernel with Windows RT and use the ARM core to natively run Windows Phone 8/RT applications?

The ARM core is very slow, it's meant to do what Intel does with custom logic. It's really something undramatic. The ARM core is an angry reverend mother that tells you if code is blessed by the Lord or smells of the Beast, and slaps you with a stick.

Once you're done installing Windows 8 you'll probably find yourself running RT applications on your x86 CPU.

[Brad Grenz]

Originally Posted by Blazkowicz

In French, Xbox 360 is Xbox trois-cent soixante = 6 syllables.

Heh, Xbox 360 is actually 5 syllables in English anyway, so the math doesn't work out in any case.

[Squilliam]

Originally Posted by Blazkowicz

The ARM core is very slow, it's meant to do what Intel does with custom logic. It's really something undramatic. The ARM core is an angry reverend mother that tells you if code is blessed by the Lord or smells of the Beast, and slaps you with a stick.

Once you're done installing Windows 8 you'll probably find yourself running RT applications on your x86 CPU.

I've finished with my download and all I have to say is OMG I have never got so much done on a Windows OS so quickly. It was like everything I was doing was turbocharged so if they can get that kind of feel for the Xbox Next (after the smoke and fire has died down from all the OS changes) they can really make an extremely compelling software/hardware stack integrated.

So Mr Arm is just a gate-keeper? Do I call it Agent Smith?

[Shifty Geezer]

Originally Posted by Squilliam

I wonder how they went from DirectXbox to Xbox?

I believe it was just a contraction of the name during development. The 'DirectX box' became referred to in house as the 'x box', and that stuck and was used. I don't think the Xbox name was ever contrived for the market. Going with that thinking, perhaps the next console would be called the LiveBox as the focus is now the service and not the API?

[N2O]

Originally Posted by (((interference)))

Not sure if this was posted before or if there's any new info:
http://vr-zone.com/articles/there-s-...xt-/17552.html



This seems to explain why Dae insisted his devkit had Intel/Nvidia parts:

Which FX processor should be good for consoles?

[Squilliam]

Originally Posted by Shifty Geezer

I believe it was just a contraction of the name during development. The 'DirectX box' became referred to in house as the 'x box', and that stuck and was used. I don't think the Xbox name was ever contrived for the market. Going with that thinking, perhaps the next console would be called the LiveBox as the focus is now the service and not the API?

Hasn't the name 'Xbox' become the service? They're rebranding everything under that umbrella. Perhaps they'll drop the name 'Live' and brand everything Xbox something. So for instance Xbox Live gold would become Xbox Gold? On Windows 8 they call the apps Xbox Music, Games and Movies. It seems as if the word 'Live' is the one which is superfluous. It doesn't quite make sense yet because Games for Windows Live is still around, perhaps they're in some kind of process to rationalise the services?

[jlippo]

Originally Posted by N2O

Which FX processor should be good for consoles?

Athlon?

[N2O]

Originally Posted by jlippo

Athlon?

lol if they do that
I mean is possible MS will use Piledriver?

[itsmydamnation]

Originally Posted by N2O

lol if they do that
I mean is possible MS will use Piledriver?

if the console is coming out Q3-4 next year they would be going steamroller, thats my bet anyway.

[(((interference)))]

Originally Posted by N2O

Which FX processor should be good for consoles?

FX-8350, 4 ghz, 8 core sounds like the business
http://www.engadget.com/2012/10/23/a...essor-refresh/
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6396/t...-fx4300-tested

But really, I have no idea.

They do seem to compare pretty badly with Intel's (mid-range) offerings in gaming performance though:http://www.anandtech.com/show/6396/t...x4300-tested/5

Though, with the heavy multi-threading you see in console titles that should be less of an issue.

What's also interesting is how the PS3 will compare, since IIRC apparently it has a quad core APU + discrete GPU. So maybe we could see the opposite of this gen where the Xbox has more CPU processing power and the Playstation more GPU power.

[almighty]

Bulldozer or even Piledriver would take a massive chunk of the power budget