Xbox World reveals Next Gen Xbox?

Discussion in 'Consoles & console games' started by Stone Gargoyle, Nov 17, 2012.

  1. lucidus

    lucidus Ancient Guru

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    Wasn't the PS3 a pain to code for thanks to the 7 "cores" on it among other reasons? Having 8 on this thing sounds plain weird then :-S Going by multiplats of 360's generation we may end up needing at least an Hex core in that case :p
     
  2. scatman839

    scatman839 Ancient Guru

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    Well, 6, one was reserved for the OS.
     
  3. Shadowdane

    Shadowdane Maha Guru

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    Well the PS3 didn't have a typical CPU design. It had 1 PPE core which is a general purpose processor, which supported 2 threads at once. The PPE core is very similar to 1 core from the Xbox 360 actually.

    The remaining "cores" are actually co-processors called SPEs, which have to be fed data from the main PPE core. The easiest way to explain it is the PS3 has a single core CPU with 6 co-processors.

    It's a very odd design and that is why it was so difficult to program for. The wiki article has more in depth info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_(microprocessor)#Overview

    I can't find the article at the moment but I read even to this day most developers still aren't getting even 50-60% of the theoretical performance of the Cell CPU. It's just too difficult to keep all those SPEs fed with data.
     
  4. gamerk2

    gamerk2 Ancient Guru

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    All unlikely. For one, given how the dev hardware is ALREADY in developers hands, is almost impossible for the GPU to be an 8000 series. Nevermind the yield issues or the fact that AMD doesn't typically use round numbering for GPU models (EG: 7870, 7890, but no 7800).

    Win 8 is also unlikely, given how the CPU is almost certainly PPC based. That would imply Win 8 has been ported to PPC, and frankly, its not worth the time/effort for a console, no matter how capable. At that point, MS would have been better off going either X86 or ARM.

    8GB is flat out overkill, unless the console does a HECK of a lot more then we think it does.

    It wasn't as much the cores as it was the way you work with them. The 6 SPE's the programmer can use all use DMA for memory access; that is, each has its own small cache that data is read to/from, but the cores themselves can NOT access main memory. As a result, you have a LOT of problems that the cache that services each core is always filled with the data the core needs, otherwise you waste a LOT of time waiting for the data to go where it needs to go. This also makes it very difficult to share data across multiple cores, so you really have to put thought into what cores process what data.
     

  5. gamerk2

    gamerk2 Ancient Guru

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    More or less a simpler explanation of what I just posted; thats what I get for jumping the gun.

    The 360's Xenon Processor is actually a slightly modified Cell PPE, with three cores and 2-way SMT.
     
  6. umeng2002

    umeng2002 Maha Guru

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    games really haven't adapted multi-threading as fast as other programs (partly due to current consoles). Most games like faster clocks over "more cores." I hope it has 6 to 8 "real" cores, so the whole industry starts targeting better core scaling over clock speeds.

    And I'm not just talking about the typical audio on one core, physics on another, AI on another... I'm talking about multi-threaded AI, physics (or GPU), audio, AI, etc....

    So at some point a typical PC game can really benefit from going from a 3 GHz 8 core to a 16 core at the same speed.

    Basically I want the next Xbox and PS4 to be advanced as possible to help push PC gaming. :funny:
     
  7. Mr.Bigtime

    Mr.Bigtime Ancient Guru

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    Now we will need to upgrade our pcs to catch the consoles? Oh the irony.
     
  8. gamerk2

    gamerk2 Ancient Guru

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    The main problem is that you can not, under any circumstance, speed up a program more then the time it takes to execute the serial portions of the code. So you are NEVER going to see the vast majority of tasks scale to any real degree. Hence why clockspeed/IPC remains the primary driver of performance.

    For instance, multithreaded AI is a pain to manage. Simple example, how do you keep your AI updates in sync? Oh right, you need a control thread, so you lose the advantages of threading. Nevermind the fact that the AI touches the audio and physics engines, so you introduce a LOT more bottlenecking due to thread contention. [Nevermind that AI itself is trivial for 99% of games out there; just a simple state machine. Not that hard to process.]

    Look, we tried the scaling thing back in the 80's. MIT had plans to put together a mainframe with 10k CPUs. They stopped after 1,000, because they found that after 30 or so CPU's, even when programming with low level assembly, you simply could not scale to any real degree; at that point, the inherent bottlenecks involved actually started to DEGRADE performance.

    My point being: Nothing is going to change as far as core scaling goes; its already about as good as it is going to get. Though that won't stop people from complaining about how consoles are somehow responsible for PC's perceived shortcomings.
     
  9. gamerk2

    gamerk2 Ancient Guru

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    And apparently, according to IGN, I was more or less right on the HW of the 720. IGN is reporting the 720 will be using a IBM PPC CPU (no details, but long expected by me) and an AMD 6670 GPU. PS3 using an AMD APU (still shocked at them going X86; must want more dev attention...) and an AMD 7670 GPU.

    So yeah, from a PC perspective: Last generation mid-low tier HW. As expected.
     
  10. Fender178

    Fender178 Ancient Guru

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    If they used 64bit technology it would jack up the price you guys would pay for the system. Also console gaming has not come close to needing it as the way I see it.
     

  11. UnrealGaming

    UnrealGaming Ancient Guru

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    lol.
     
  12. HonoredShadow

    HonoredShadow Ancient Guru

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    Yer! Just lol. Silly thing to put wasn't it. Jack up the price? 64bit? Don't know where to start with that...
     
  13. Gaizokubanou

    Gaizokubanou Maha Guru

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    That's such a circular way of viewing something.
     
  14. Mufflore

    Mufflore Ancient Guru

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    Only reason PC needs 64bit for gaming is to allow access to more than 4GB memory space continuous.
    How many games use more than 2GB and how many use 64bit code?
    What benefit do the few 64bit games have over the 32bit versions? Practically none.

    Once consoles start to render vertical 4K and 8K resolutions (without cheating), then 4GB memory space wont be enough due to massive texture space and display file memory requirements.
    It will be 8 to 10 years probably before the next console with that capability.
     
  15. UnrealGaming

    UnrealGaming Ancient Guru

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  16. Fender178

    Fender178 Ancient Guru

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    Maybe I was stupid for saying it could jack up the price if they made the switch to 64bit technology.
    Consoles have not have come close to having 4gb of ram yet. However it is possible that they are already at 64bit because them console CPUs are a tad different than Pc CPUs. Also they find ways of doing stuff similar to the PC.
     
  17. Mr.Bigtime

    Mr.Bigtime Ancient Guru

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    no hardware physx yes? on both ps4 and xbox720.
     
  18. UnrealGaming

    UnrealGaming Ancient Guru

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    But, no one was even talking about that...

    Judging from the post before yours, by "Gamer2k", the discussion was about :

    There's a talk that the new consoles ( or one of them ) could possibly use x86 CPU ( "classic" desktop architecture from Intel, AMD ) instead of PowerPC IBM's CPU ( which is what consoles "usually" use ).

    What you posted was not only ridiculous in itself , but a different topic altogether.
     
  19. Yxskaft

    Yxskaft Maha Guru

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    Dice has said that they have upcoming games that will require a 64-bit OS
     
  20. Mufflore

    Mufflore Ancient Guru

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    I'll believe that when I see it.
    It would make sense to have 64bit extensions for those PCs that can use them.
    To exclude 32bit PCs would put a big dent in their profits.

    In this article it says
    http://www.engadget.com/2012/05/22/dice-to-require-64-bit-os-for-some-2013-games/
    Upcoming consoles arent powerful enough to need or use more than 4GB address space for the game code on a single process.
    The processors can still address larger memory space, this only applies to the max size of a single process.
    They have 6 cores with multiple threads on each.
    If they used all the memory up on a single process, they would waste all the other cores and the hyper threading.

    This assumes they will even have 4GB.
     

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