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Amiga News and Community Announcements => Amiga News and Community Announcements => Announcements and Press Releases => Topic started by: System on April 27, 2004, 06:02:08 PM
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Microsoft's Xbox 2 architecture has been exposed for all to see - if a posting on a Chinese bulletin board is to be believed.
The schematic, which appears here (http://bbs.gzeasy.com/index.php?showtopic=149175) on GZeasy.com, reveals a three-core 3.5GHz CPU backed by 256MB of main memory and a 500MHz graphics chip.
In what may be a blow to hopes of some AMD fans that the Xbox 2 contains Athlon 64 processor technology, the CPU is linked to main memory via a traditional North Bridge, not through an integrated memory controller.
According to the spec, each of the processor's three cores contains its own vector processing unit, along with 64KB of L1 cache, split 50:50 between data and instructions. The three cores share a single on-die L2 cache that's 1MB in size.
The processor connects to the North Bridge across a bi-directional bus with a total bandwidth of 21.6GBps, according to the spec. That, in turn links up to the South Bridge over a two-way 500MBps bus.
The console's unnamed graphics chip - known to be coming from ATI - apparently contains 10MB of embedded DRAM within the packaging. The GPU itself can run through 16 pixel shader interpolations per cycle, the schematic claims, along with 16 bilinear texture fetches and 48 ALU ops in the same period. The vertex shader and pixel shader are load balanced.
The North Bridge also feeds through to the console's video scaler unit.
The South Bridge features integrated DVD and 100Mbps Ethernet support, along with hard disk support, though the spec. notes that whether such a unit will be built into the console remains "not decided".
GZeasy notes separately that Xbox 2 will be officially announced on 2 June, though whether that's in preparation for a Christmas launch or a release in 2005 isn't known - assuming the June date is accurate. ®
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After reading this site for about a year, this single post made me register a name and comment. :-)
This rumor has been floating for about a year now. Started out with 3 1.6 G5 then to 2 2 G5's and some special GPU, now it's up to 3 3.5 PPC's. The schematics are wrong to begin with, it's no really schematic just a drawing. Schematics would be more detailed.
Also think about it, 3 3.5 PPC cpus? What needs that power?!? Also, can you say 2000 bucks a consol? Just my two cents. :lol:
Next it will be 2 5gig PPCs with 1 x86 processor for backwards compatability.
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I know Microsoft is losing money on each X-Box sold just to reap the profits & royalties from games but the losses on this baby would be huge.
Come on.
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Watch, it will probably turn out that each core is 1.167 GHz and they will call it a 3.5 GHz CPU.
Like how the Nintendo 64 whas 64 bit cause it had 2 32 bit CPUs.
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It's not even practical.
Too hot.
Too noisy.
Too hard to share load between 3 CPUs.
Too expensive.
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"the Nintendo 64 whas 64 bit cause it had 2 32 bit CPUs."
That was Atari Jaguar.
IIRC, Nintendo used MIPS CPU core (most likely 32bit) and 64bit GPU.
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@KennyR:
It says three cpu cores - not three cpus.
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You're all forgetting that they're talking about 3 cores, not 3 cpu's. They are most likely using the same technology used in their power4 and power5 series of multicore processors.
Wether or not it will be to expensive, and hot can not be derived from the information divulged so far. You don't know how complex the cores are, there's no information about the manufacturing process, transisitor count, power consumption, detail size, etc etc.
As for utilization of multiple core, lets just say IBM has a bit of experience in this area.
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@ksk
I have the Jaguar's schematics, it does have 2 64-bit units ,the Blitter and Object Processor(their version of the copper). The Jaguar had no less than 5 processing units, a 32-bit GPU, a 32-bit DSP, a 64-bit Blitter, the 64-bit Object Processor and a 68000 "for legacy compatibility". Before you wonder "what legacy" you have to remember, the Jaguar was to be a follow-on to the Atari Panther, which Atari killed in favor of releasing the Jaguar sooner than it would have otherwise. Explains why the Jaguar's support stunk, as they did not have time to develop the developers environment properly. Also explains why the Jaguar was "downgraded" to pure cartridge with an upgrade to CD-ROM later when it was originally to be a pure CD-ROM unit with a Cart for "legacy-support" of Panther games.
The Nintendo 64's main CPU was the 64-bit MIPS R4310 CPU.
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It doesn't mean a THING without the software titles to back it up. Traditionally, Sony has shown that they can release an inferior system and, with a library of games, still dominate the market.
This is just typical idiot management thinking of just throwing money at the problem.
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Legion lamented:
This is just typical idiot management thinking of just throwing money at the problem.
;-) And when you have Microsoft sized money, that thinking comes naturally....
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And probably still win :lol:.
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For crying out loud. If this console is more than a year away, waiting for an official specs sheet can't be too much to ask.
All I can say is, they'd better do something about the game disks. Even with a hard drive, the load times for the original XBox are too damn long. PS2 games load pretty fast for me, and a good load-balancing engine renders a hard drive pretty much overkill.
Though, getting rid of puny, expensive memory cards would be nice. I can't believe Sony still wants $25 for an 8MB card. They'd be smart to move to MemorySticks for the PS3 if they really want it to be multifunction.
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My bad. By the way the schematics read there was three CPU's in a cluster type setup. But then agin, the schematics looked someone just drawed a bounch of squires and lines to fool people into thinking it was the real thing. :-D Not saying anyone would do such a thing. :lol:
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Uhm... Excuse me? Load times too long?
The Xbox is more or less consistently the fastest loading of the three current consoles. The GameCube has a theoretical advantage because of the way the discs are structured, but in real life terms that is often beaten by the combination of the harddrive buffering on the Xbox.
Go look at some of the comparative reviews on IGN.com. They do cross-platform reviews and one of the things they look at is how fast a game loads. A couple of times the PS2 has done well enough, but (to throw in a random number) 9 out of 10 times the GameCube and Xbox will beat it.
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The Playstation (original) has a 33Mhz CPU and 2MB RAM, but can manage games like Quake II and Wipeout 2097 because of its GPU.
The Playstation 2 has a 295MHz CPU and 32MB RAM.
The XBox has an 733MHz Intel CPU and 64MB RAM.
...and yet the PS2 continues to wipe the floor with the XBox because (as someone has already said) of it's huge library of high quality games.
The technical specification is therefore kind of irrelevant to success, and even if the XBox2's tech spec appears to be much better on paper than the upcoming PS3's tech spec, I can't see it making the slightest bit of difference to PS3 sales and Sony's domination of the console market.
Steve.
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Erm, guys, we've had this news article before...
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Waccoon Posted:
I can't believe Sony still wants $25 for an 8MB card.
You dont have to buy original sony cards. If I remember right, there are several cheap clones available on ebay ect. But I'm not sure since my ps2 already had a sony memcard.
StevenJGore wrote:
...and yet the PS2 continues to wipe the floor with the XBox because (as someone has already said) of it's huge library of high quality games.
Yeah, and also because the mips processor wipes the floor with x86 crap :-)
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Don't get too excited.
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?section_name=dev&aid=3364
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@downix
I stand corrected.
so ... with Atari logic we could call A1 with G4 as a 128bit computer because of Altivec, unless the GFX card has 256bit parts. ;-)
But anyway. Nintendo64 seems to be the first real 64bit console.
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@ksk
Yeah the N64 is very similar in spec to a SGI Octane.
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@ksk
If you want to be technical, the N64 was as much 64-bit as the Jaguar. Only 1 element of each machine was 64-bit. With the Atari, it was the Blitter and Object Processor. With the Nintendo, it was the CPU-core. Combine the two, then you'd have had a true 64-bit machine. (Ironically, Atari produced Co-Jag arcade machines with a MIPS CPU, would have been more than possible to combine the 64-bit chipset of the Jag with the 64-bit CPU of the N64. That would have been a nice beast)
In the end, the bit-depth in both machines cases is more a case of marketing hype than real-world capability.
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Bad rumors means bad reputation for MS, right? :-D
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Refer to
http://www.xboxaddicts.net/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=41&newlang=eng&topic=1&catid=0
Microsoft/Bill Gates quotes during XBOX2's tech demo release.
XNA propels us ahead of Sony in the next-generation games race because the future of gaming is in software, not hardware.
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This is a software revolution. XNA will ultimately deliver thousands of integrated devices that give consumers choice. Sony is talking about a fixed world of hardware that requires everyone to buy everything Sony(1).
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Software will be the single most important force in digital entertainment over the next decade. XNA underscores Microsoft's commitment to the game industry and our desire to work with partners to take the industry to the next level.
Summary of XNA partners.
"Microsoft also proudly added that over 20 developers and middleware companies have already recognised that XNA will drive advancements in the industry, including Argonaut, Criterion, Factor 5, Epic, Valve, Vicarious Visions, Visual Concepts, ATI and Nvidia."
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I know Microsoft is losing money on each X-Box sold just to reap the profits & royalties from games but the losses on this baby would be huge.
Come on.
That's why the XBox 2 won't have a HDD - it was costing MS $50 / unit when XBox was first released.
Some of the information in that document is spot on, some is conjecture and some is rubbish. XBox 2 will have 512MB RAM (although if Sony decides PS3 will have 512MB then MS say they'll double it to 1GB.
There will be a custom IBM PPC CPU (not the G5, but an improved processor with extra instructions for 3D graphics - such as dot product in 1 line of asm) and it will have 3 cores, each with 2 execution units running at at least 3Ghz. The stuff about the ATI graphics is pretty accurate.
Edit: The release date definitely won't be this year - the final devkits won't even be with developers for another year yet - the ones developers are currently using are stock G5 Macs running a new version of XBox dashboard. AFAIR we're looking at next autumn in the US for the release.
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The Playstation (original) has a 33Mhz CPU and 2MB RAM, but can manage games like Quake II and Wipeout 2097 because of its GPU.
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It did NOT manage Quake2... It BUTCHERED Quake2...
:-)
The engine was really butchered, the lighting
effects were reduced to a minimum, the game did
not have the dark feeling the original had.
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Hoya!
What??!!! 3 CPUs and NO neural interface?
Poppycock! :-)
F*ck micro$oft!
Be funky
M A D
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As far as I see it who really cares what/how many cpu's Microsoft ram into the X-Box 2. The only relevance to the AOS/MOS scene is that more PPC processors may be sold. Meaning lower prices and more R&D spent on the PPC range for us.
That's my 2 cents worth... Norm :-D
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Hi folks,
Just finished reading the 1250 page Emotion Engine documentation and just could not help posting here after reading this M$ post...
It seems that Microsoft is trying to copy Sony with their forthcoming console, just looking at the last couple of interviews. For those who were misinformed, the PS2 already has three different 128-bits processors which can work independently. The PS2 is often referred to as being inferior, simply because many "programmers" do not understand its architecture. If you compare the three current systems (EE, Gekko, XBox) from a technical perspective, the PS2's EE is by far the most flexible system currently available.
Microsoft did a good job to misinform people. Here are some key elements that people do not know or fail to understand:
- The PS2 has a main "EE Core" CPU (128-bits, MIPS3/4 with multimedia instructions), FPU (128-bits), Vector Unit (128-bits) which can work as a coprocessor or independently, 4 FMAC's (Floating Point Multiply Accumulate, ie D=A*B+C) and 1 FDIV (Floating Point Division).
- Like Vector Unit 0 works closely together with the CPU, Vector Unit 1 (VU1) is directly connected to the Graphics Synthesizer. VU1 is also 128-bits, has 4 FMAC's, 2 FDIV's and many other instructions to increase the usability for geometry operations. VU1 registers are memory mapped for the processor/VU0. This vector processor (in combination with VU0/EE) allows the programmer to create all the characteristics of the 3D environment. You are no longer limited by standard 3D hardware, instead the programmer sets the standard of possibilities. In other words: You have access to programming the geometry processor directly.
- ScratchPad RAM is an additional cache for the CPU/VU0. This memory runs extremely fast and is shared between the two main processors without slowdowns or cache misses. Using DMA, memory can be sent here from/to any part of the machine.
- DMA interface allows 2,4 GB/sec memory transfer from/to any location of the machine. This runs independently of other bus accesses. If you can maximize the DMA usage to as close as 100%, you are using the machine properly.
- PS2 has no texture compression??? No, not in the Graphics hardware... Instead, the CPU has a special unit to decode MPEG2 streams (macro block layers, bit stream decoding and decompressing, only Motion Compensation is handled by the Vector Units) and has YCbCr->RGB color conversion, 4x4 ordered dithering and Vector Quantization in the hardware for post processing. Images can be decompressed directly to the Graphics Synthesizer, which then draws the polygons using the texture image. Oh and on top of that, the geometry is automatically packed/unpacked by the VIF which allows compressed geometry data to be handled in real time.
- The PS2 has an IO processor with a complete PS1 inside. This processor also handles all the ports (Firewire, USB etc.) and the sound. The sound is 48 channel 16-bits and has two DSP's to handle all the special effects etc.
- Every part of the machine can send "display lists" to the Graphics Synthesizer using DMA, which will then draw what it is told to. Since the geometry is handled by the Vector Units, the programmer decides the graphical level of detail. This does mean that you need to master multiple assembly languages and 3D maths in order to make full use of the machine's features. This is why every generation of games changes so quickly.
- There is double buffered Vector Operation in the Vector unit hardware. This is cool: You can execute one program with seperate data while DMA prepares the next program with seperate data. This is going tag-team style for optimal performance.
- The Graphics Synthesizer works independently of the other parts of the machine, while still being very close to each of those parts. There is 48GB/sec graphics throughput from its 4MB graphics memory, which works more like a framebuffer to display your image. Your main memory, DVD, CPU's and/or VPU's are your texture memory, since DMA and VU1 handles this.
There are many more elements that make this machine as powerful as it is, but it would take a lot more space to explain everything. The PS2 has a lot in common with the Amiga, with the Graphics Synthesizer being very close to a high-speed 3D Copper. However, like with the Amiga, only very few teams can handle the hardware properly. Especially outside Japan, software teams have trouble with handling the Vector Units and hardware. This is why games such as Max Payne 2 look horrible on this machine. They only use the CPU, Memory, DMA and the Graphics Synthesizer. Using *only* VU1 will already increase the polygon throughput by 20-50 times! This machine is not a PC, dont compare it with PC's and dont treat it like a PC. Luckily Naughty Dog software (Jak II) managed to prove that not only Japan has good programmers. This game has everything which was said to be impossible a little while ago: 16:9 progressive mode, Dolby Digital (and there are plenty of games with DTS), fur rendering, FSAA, millions of polygons and 60Hz motion.
For those who are interested, take a look at Gran Turismo 4: Prologue to get an impression of this computer at work. Using the PS2 development "Tool", Gran Turismo 3: A-Spec was monitored to work at only 30% of the machine's buses. People who walk in here while GT4: Prologue is on, have so far not been able to see that a computer is doing the job in realtime (most of them thought it was a movie of a race until they looked really close!). And for those who think the Grand Canyon track is a picture: Try lesson 40 of the school and watch a top view perspective of the canyon instead...! This is just one out of the many good games, sadly most of them do not reach outside Japan. Maybe in a year or two...
Like always (also on the Amiga), PC ports to a custom hardware machine will nearly always be horrible because the machine is not used the way it should be. It is like porting a platform game to AGA without using the scrolling/bitplane hardware. This explains why often ported games look better on the Gamecube/XBox, which both have an architecture closer to that of a PC.
Gosh, never thought this post was going to be so big... Anyway, our message is just: There is more to computing than standard hardware! Not every machine works as a PC so dont compare them if you do not know exactly what is inside. People also claimed the Amiga was slow more than 10 years ago because of not understanding the custom hardware. This sort of thinking will keep on going forever, because computers have become common but the technology behind it has not. But I guess the Breakpoint show has already proven this for the millionth time, and thats merely a 50 Mhz CPU as PC users would say.
Best regards,
Sharwin & Rakesh Raghoebardayal
Coyote Flux
www.coyoteflux.nl
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If you compare the three current systems (EE, Gekko, XBox) from a technical perspective, the PS2's EE is by far the most flexible system currently available
I'm no expert on PS2, but I thought that was because Sony released their SDK's prematurely, and they were full of bugs. If your tools suck, you have to do everything yourself. Sony's in-house and core developers, which includes Insomniac, program almost entirely in assembly.