Xbox 720: 8GB RAM, 8-core CPU?

[Ed Oscuro]

Bonus AssemblerGames pranking. Story here.

If this is true I can only guess at what kind of prices we're talking about. It could be possible for Intel to create a heavily customized, low-power or lowered frequency CPU for the unit, and I also suppose the eight cores figure might be referring to a APU (on-chip graphics) design.

Of course, if this is a development station, those specs might be higher than the released console. It's also unclear if the "eight cores" are actual CPU cores or logical CPUs (i.e., threads available through hyperthreading). Still, I think this means that we're likely to see at least 4GB of RAM and a 6-core CPU (6-core CPUs aren't really mainstream but they do make up the top end of the current Intel desktop and server CPU lineup).

[shmuppyLove]

I think a 4-core / 8-thread CPU is most likely, although crazy overkill for a gaming system.

Does the current gen even have 2-core CPUs??

[Friendly]

I think a 4-core / 8-thread CPU is most likely, although crazy overkill for a gaming system.

Does the current gen even have 2-core CPUs??

Well... Cell kind of does have 7.

[louisg]

I don't think that's realistic. The usefulness of extra cores diminishes as they increase, hampered by factors like I/O bandwidth, coding complexity (see: Sega Saturn), or the fact that a lot of calculations *can't* be done in parallel.

[njiska]

I think a 4-core / 8-thread CPU is most likely, although crazy overkill for a gaming system.

Does the current gen even have 2-core CPUs??

Cell is 7-ish
Xbox CPU has 3, hyper-threaded to 6.

I think 4 physical cores with hyper threading is likely. Those kind of chips can be built for a very reasonable price these days. As for ram, why not 8 GB? RAM is getting cheap again. The point is that these systems should look like overkill if the'yre going to try and last another 7 years.

[Drachenherz]

Not sure if this is correct, but I remember reading on the net that cpu-power is important for the game's AI or something like that, like making realistically reacting enemies possible.

Now please tell me what a dumbwack fuckwit I am who hasn't got a clue about the inner workings of a game etc. pp. bla bla...

[CMPXCHG8B]

Cell is 7-ish
Xbox CPU has 3, hyper-threaded to 6.

You can't compare those directly.

The Cell CPU has 1 PPE (a PowerPC based CPU) and 6 usable SPUs (technically 8, one is factory disabled due to yield issues, and the other is reserved for crypto by LV2/GameOS). The SPUs aren't even the same architecture as the PPE; they share more in common with a specialized DSP then they do an actual CPU core.

Writing code for the PS3 is a trip through hell because of this. The only reason why that console ever gained any traction at all was because the few initial developers interested in it at the beginning were willing to invest massive amounts of money into creating their own game engines that actually worked with it- and the only reason why it's still around is because UDK supports it now, so porting UDK games is relatively simple.

I doubt this "dev kit" means anything in regards to what hardware they'll eventually release. The 360 OS is based on NT, Microsoft could easily release an x86 version with the appropriate compilers for development then switch everything later on down the line. They kinda did something similar with the original 360 dev kits, which were shipped as an Apple G5 and replaced later on with the actual hardware.

-CMPX

[beatsgo]

Not sure if this is correct, but I remember reading on the net that cpu-power is important for the game's AI or something like that, like making realistically reacting enemies possible.

Now please tell me what a dumbwack fuckwit I am who hasn't got a clue about the inner workings of a game etc. pp. bla bla...

There's always the GPU to process the AI calculations if needed. Hell CUDA and BrookGPU have decent compilers to allow parallel processing on GPUs.

[Ed Oscuro]

I actually expect they're fairly far along in the hardware's development by this point. In any case, more power is always useful (from the standpoint of the running program, not from energy use or the cooling design and reliability, of course).

A quad-core CPU would definitely be useful to give some extra threads for intense background stuff, like running media overlays and streaming / serving content (kinda like the PS3 is supposed to). This may well just be another off-the-shelf part like the Xbox's CPU was close to being.

A couple other articles seem to corroborate the original article.

Apparently in April the rumors were a "16 core" (!) PowerPC CPU.

Also, apropos of nothing, here is a kickass article on the first Xbox.

[DJ Incompetent]

God I'd love to see great AI become a thing.

...or.. you know....consistent 60fps. ha

[DJ Incompetent]

Oh! Oh! I thought of another joke!

They could dedicate a core to managing a friends list over 100!

[Cuilan]

They say the dev kit has 8~12gb of RAM. Which means the final console will have 4~6gb of RAM, since dev kits usually have 2x the RAM of retail units.

If it's only 4gb, that means it will probably be GDDR5. If the console is going to have more RAM than that, it will either be a split memory pool, or one large (6gb) pool of slow RAM.

From what I understand, anything more than 4gb of GDDR5 would be far too costly, due to chip density issues and greater motherboard size/complexity. A split pool of 6gb total would also result in the same issues, making a split pool of that amount very unlikely. So as things are right now, it's either 4gb of really fast memory, or 6gb of no-so-fast memory.

Hopefully they expect the density issues to be solved by the time the retail units go into production.

[trap15]

From what I understand, anything more than 4gb of GDDR5 would be far too costly, due to chip density issues and greater motherboard size/complexity. A split pool of 6gb total would also result in the same issues, making a split pool of that amount very unlikely. So as things are right now, it's either 4gb of really fast memory, or 6gb of no-so-fast memory.

Or they could do as the Wii (and many older consoles) did, and have an arena of fast memory, and an arena of slower memory. Could have better bang-for-the-buck that way.

[Cuilan]

Or they could do as the Wii (and many older consoles) did, and have an arena of fast memory, and an arena of slower memory. Could have better bang-for-the-buck that way.

Wouldn't that be the split pool I was referring to? Wouldn't mixing relatively high amounts of two different types of RAM increase the size and complexity of the motherboard (and thus, the cost of the system)? I think Microsoft would want to avoid that, after the success a unified memory pool has brought them with the 360.

[trap15]

Oh, yeah, you're right. My mistake

Anyways, I don't think it'd increase the complexity of the board that much, and it's not exactly a ton harder to program for, so it's possible that they'll do multiple arenas. Of course, they could just go for a single one and not have to deal with all of that.

[Ed Oscuro]

If they are using an Intel chip with the moden on-chip memory controller, it would be interesting to see how well an attempt to use different latencies of memory would perform. If it saves them enough money, it doesn't seem absurd to do. It's too bad that Elpida went out of business, at least from the consumer perspective.

[trap15]

If they're not dumb, they won't be using an Intel chip. x86 is not an optimal nor an efficient processor architecture.

[Ed Oscuro]

There's always Itanium, (presumably) updated Pentium-core and probably others I don't know about. Intel's efficiency program (for competing with ARM) might not bear fruit in time for the 720, but it does look like they're making strides in this area too.

[Drum]

Not sure if this is correct, but I remember reading on the net that cpu-power is important for the game's AI or something like that, like making realistically reacting enemies possible.

Now please tell me what a dumbwack fuckwit I am who hasn't got a clue about the inner workings of a game etc. pp. bla bla...

Problem is nobody seems to actually give a shit about making AI more sophisticated. Multiplayer kind of makes it hard to justify - at least for the people in charge of the purse strings. It'll continue to improve (at least, bugs will keep being ironed out) but for most games super-sophisticated AI is unnecessary or even undesirable.

[trap15]

There's always Itanium

Pffffftttttthahahhaha

(presumably) updated Pentium-core and probably others

Inefficient and power-hungry.

http://www.extremetech.com/computing/13 ... ompetitors

typical_intel_retardation.html

Intel's efficiency program (for competing with ARM) might not bear fruit in time for the 720, but it does look like they're making strides in this area too.

It'll never bear fruit. Trust me.

[Ed Oscuro]

Intel is too big not to see this coming. They've even admitted that ARM could steal their Mac business.

I am skeptical that the power-efficient parts of the ARM RISC architecture are all that big an impact on the bottom line for power efficiency if you scaled ARM chips up to do the same tasks X86-64 does, i.e. put in an equivalent amount of cache RAM and other supporting circuitry. Although he's just an analyst, David Kanter says just that.

I'm not rooting for Intel over anybody else. It seems to me that although the Core i7 / i5 lineup is pretty good and getting better, their competition has been popularly misinterpreted by the only other maker of similar desktop parts, AMD, who has had trouble (I like the Radeon cards though). Since the Core i7 it seems to me that Intel upgrades have been rather slow. ARM and others are definitely still in the race. PowerPC is even better because they seem to be making essentially the same parts as Intel but without a legacy burden. Don't know about how they stage instructions but it can't be worse.