S|A : "Microsoft XBox Next will use an x86 AMD APU instead of PowerPC"

[Ferzerp]

You have provided no support for x86 being a reasonable console choice, and in fact the only time it has happened has been widely understood to be chosen not on merit, but on availability. You're begging the question entirely.

 

[pelov]

MS had huge problems with nVidia as far as pricing went. They vowed to never use nVidia again because of how the 360 went down. There were also rumors that nVidia were difficult to work with.



There was a big document that laid out the architecture of MS's next Xbox console and it was sporting both ARM and x86 cores along with an AMD GPU. For MS, it just makes sense to go x86. They've got as much vested in x86 as does Intel and AMD.

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2012/06/leaked-document-points-to-299-xbox-720-for-2013/

All 3 console makers decided to not really push the boundaries this time around and they're playing it conservatively with the specs and pricing. You won't see consoles with hardware at the same level as an enthusiast PC or anywhere close, but considering how long it's been since we've seen an update in the console realm I guess incorporating any hardware that's been made in the past 5 years is considered a massive upgrade.

You must have not seen this the first time so here it is again. Also, I'd get my vision checked if I were you.

Original document here, just click download.

But you're right. My based-upon-something-at-least rumors are stupid and your baseless rumors are correct. I'm an idiot.

 

[Ferzerp]

I'm not sure why you can't tell the difference between a slide and "reasons that x86 makes for a good choice for a console".

You said it's a good choice. You can't really seem to come up with a reason why other than you saw a picture that had x86 written on it that someone made in relation to a console.

So I ask again. Why do you think x86 is suddenly a good choice when in the history of consoles, only a single one was ever created that was based on x86, and when the time came to make a different product, IBM's architecture was used.

No, a picture is not "reasons why x86 makes sense for a console".

 

[pelov]

I don't need reasons. Apparently Microsoft has plenty.

What are yours, btw? You might want to email Microsoft and tell them to halt their plans and move back over to PPC.

Here's one for your thick head:

With x86, Microsoft is able to stretch across phone, tablet laptop and PC with a single overarching instruction set. Uniformity is a pretty good reason, no?

 

[Ferzerp]

Down to insults now? Nice.

Ok, well, at least you are admiting that you have no other reason than seeing a purported leaked slide and some grand notions of homogenous computing that don't take reality in to account.

 

[pelov]

some grand notions of homogenous computing that don't take reality in to account.

Yep. Grand delusional notions that don't take reality into account...

If only there were an operating system that did that...

 

[yottabit]

Remember consoles only output at a max of 1080p, I doubt they are going to go 4k with this generation

At 1080p a 7770 level performance is great (you're not going to go turning on 16x AA and AF on a console)

I don't think an APU based system is so farfetched performance wise... but for yield issues it is a big risk

 

[Ferzerp]

Using an OS that has been heavily advertized as supporting multiple CPU architectures as proof that they need a single architecture everywhere is... Well... I'll say that it's an interesting gambit.

Completely ludicrous, but interesting nonetheless.

 

[2is]

AMD APU makes perfect sense for a console. Relatively low power envelope and enough CPU/CPU power to get the job done in a small package. Trinity will be pretty ancient by the time xbox next hits the market, hence, I don't think it will be using Trinity.

 

[Ferzerp]

Relatively low power envelope

I'm not so sure that this is a major factor in console design. You want decent idle power for powered down tasks, but these things don't run on batteries, so they're arent trying to reduce every watt possible (when something that uses more power would be cheaper). It really only makes sense if you can offset the cost of lower powered components with savings on cooling and power delivery.

Price is king for a console (e.g. a $399 elegant low power console will be destroyed by a $299 power hog)

 

[Ancalagon44]

I'm not sure why you can't tell the difference between a slide and "reasons that x86 makes for a good choice for a console".

You said it's a good choice. You can't really seem to come up with a reason why other than you saw a picture that had x86 written on it that someone made in relation to a console.

So I ask again. Why do you think x86 is suddenly a good choice when in the history of consoles, only a single one was ever created that was based on x86, and when the time came to make a different product, IBM's architecture was used.

No, a picture is not "reasons why x86 makes sense for a console".

How about:

A) easy for developers to write software for because everybody knows it.
B) your existing tools (ie Visual Studio) will work with little/no modification.
C) Lots of engineering know how at GlobalFoundries at Intel and AMD already exists surrounding x86 - will probably lower both costs and risks.
D) choice of at least two vendors (Intel and AMD) instead of just IBM.
E) Can get development kits to developers possibly sooner, and have them cost less.
F) x86 is possibly the fastest moving architecture since so much money is pumped into it (since it has the largest market share excluding ARM), meaning you are more likely to get something good.
G) Makes cross platform PC and Xbox games much easier/cheaper. Xbox Live Games on Windows? Now much easier.
H) Compared to PPC CPUs, I believe x86 CPUs are generally much faster in single thread performance - good for games.

And last but not least, all signs point to Microsoft having selected x86 again anyway. So maybe you know something that the best and brightest at MS dont? Maybe you better email them and tell them to stop all work on the 720, and start again?

I'm not so sure that this is a major factor in console design. You want decent idle power for powered down tasks, but these things don't run on batteries, so they're arent trying to reduce every watt possible (when something that uses more power would be cheaper). It really only makes sense if you can offset the cost of lower powered components with savings on cooling and power delivery.

Price is king for a console (e.g. a $399 elegant low power console will be destroyed by a $299 power hog)

Do you think Microsoft really wants to write down another BILLION DOLLARS because of improperly cooled hardware? Ie RROD?

 

[NTMBK]

Custom x86 processors just don't happen, and console makers really need full control. This makes x86 a very poor console option. IBM seems much more amenable to the needs of console makers with their Power line than can be had with x86. (Which is why the 360, the ps3, and the wii are all running power architecture).

AMD have been making big strides in this area. Take a look at this Semiaccurate article:

http://semiaccurate.com/2012/02/02/amd-opens-up-bobcat-to-3rd-party-ip/

Most of the interesting stuff with AMD has been happening in the low power segment. As far as I can tell, they're manoeuvring Bobcat towards the sort of market roles that ARM occupies at the moment. A willingness to work with 3rd party IP blocks, a focus on portability across manufacturing processes- this sounds more like ARM than it does Intel. This is why the HSA stuff they've been working on is a big deal, and also why it seems more likely that it will be Jaguar cores than Steamroller cores in the XBox Next.

 

[2is]

I'm not so sure that this is a major factor in console design. You want decent idle power for powered down tasks, but these things don't run on batteries, so they're arent trying to reduce every watt possible (when something that uses more power would be cheaper). It really only makes sense if you can offset the cost of lower powered components with savings on cooling and power delivery.

Price is king for a console (e.g. a $399 elegant low power console will be destroyed by a $299 power hog)

I disagree... Not for power savings but for heat. You only have so much cooling capacity in a console. More power = more heat. More heat = larger console with more metal on the inside which means increase in costs. Not only R&D costs for efficient cooling, but raw material costs go up as well. Not to mention, the lsat time I checked an APU cost less than buying a CPU and a GPU separately. Like I said, APU makes perfect sense, IMO. I'm not seeing any of the downsides you are.

 

[Ferzerp]

See, reasons that can be addressed other than "because the slide says so, it is good!"

A) What makes that compelling now when in the past it has not?
B) Same as A
C) See A
D) This doesn't really fly. AMD and Intel haven't been drop in replacements for one another since the 486 (or maybe Pentium) days.
E) Same as A again
F) I will agree with the spirit, but MS, Sony, Nintendo, etc have never seen this as a tipping pont
G) This did not hold true for the Xbox, why would it now?
H) Depends on money spent, as with most things.

All those reasons are good reasons, I'll admit, but they have never been reasons that mattered enough to drive the CPU choice for a given console. What do you feel is suddenly different where they matter?

 

[Ferzerp]

I disagree... Not for power savings but for heat. You only have so much cooling capacity in a console.

Correct, but it only makes sense if the extra cost is offset by the cost savings of cooling. Which do you think makes for a lower cost per unit?

 

[2is]

First, how do you know what the costs are? Second, if costs was the end all be all factor, the PS3 would not even exist.

 

[NTMBK]

First, how do you know what the costs are? Second, if costs was the end all be all factor, the PS3 would not even exist.

After the reaming the PS3 took, I don't think that either company will be copying that model this time around.

 

[piesquared]

These are HUGE deals for AMD.

 

[Ferzerp]

First, how do you know what the costs are? Second, if costs was the end all be all factor, the PS3 would not even exist.

How do I know what the costs are? Well, considering the topic is x86, and it's widely available what the cost difference between normal power usage and low power usage equivalents are.

In regards to the RROD issue, that was a new solder issue and plagued many, many different areas when the move to lead-free solder happened. That was much less a heat issue than a brittle solder issue. I'm not really sure how that comes in to play here. The solder issue has been long solved anyway.

 

[2is]

How do I know what the costs are? Well, considering the topic is x86, and it's widely available what the cost difference between normal power usage and low power usage equivalents are.

In regards to the RROD issue, that was a new solder issue and plagued many, many different areas when the move to lead-free solder happened. That was much less a heat issue than a brittle solder issue. I'm not really sure how that comes in to play here. The solder issue has been long solved anyway.

You think MS is going to buy a billion APU's from newegg and amazon like we do? You keep disagreeing with everyone but haven't really given any retort.

 

[2is]

After the reaming the PS3 took, I don't think that either company will be copying that model this time around.

I agree, I'm just pointing out that cost isn't the only factor that matters. While I'm sure Sony didn't know the turnout was going to be as bad as it was, they also knew they could have manufactured the unit far cheaper. Heck, even the PS2 was a costly item in its time.

 

[Plimogz]

First off, a couple of things. (tl:dr at bottom 🙂)

1. The outgoing generation of consoles have been around long enough that a good modern AMD APU can outperform them in every way. So consoles affordably built around an APU would be an upgrade, performance wise. And that's crucially important, it seems to me.
2. Wii's success demonstrated that an affordably priced option, built with such components which would result in profit on every unit sold, coupled with a great gimmick -- motion sensing controls in that case -- could vastly outperform (money-wise) a more expensive console that was technically superior, but meant taking a loss on hardware.

It's about affordable consoles: built to play games with better-than-current-generation-console graphics at 30 FPS and at a somewhat reduced resolution, say 720p, perhaps a bit lower. Games built on somewhat generic AMD hardware which would be easily portable to PC -- but regrettably that's not quite the point. Rather, the point would be to have games ready to go on better performing hardware which would be put on the market relatively soon. This future hardware would enable higher resolution rendering, [superior] AA in some form or other, 60 FPS (not so much for smoothness but rather for 3D : an important marketing point), better textures, tesselation, shadows, etc. Basically the second wave of consoles would permit the turning up of the graphics settings, as we PC gamers experience it.

These affordable consoles will have the advantages of lowering the price of entry into one manufacture's closed ecosystem and tying the costumers into that seller's own [profitable] peripherals, into their marketplace and so forth. These are real cash-cows for the console sellers. The use of x86/dx11 APUs ensures that future hardware is cheap and easy to port to, and relatively simple also to obtain, given AMD's natural evolution in that direction regardless. Further, building around a conservative APU in the first place allows for the higher-end technology a couple of years down the line to be affordable (enough to turn a profit on, say, a 500$ console while still offering a desirable upgrade in graphics, and perhaps physics, compared to consoles released a couple of years prior. And as I mentioned before, 3-D)

The possibility of dual-booting a next-gen xBox into a full-fledged Windows operating system has been brought up, and I have to say that it seems like it would be a great thing for Microsoft. After all, Microsoft doesn't really sell PCs. It would be a boon if they could sell an OS license for an xBox upon which they're already turning whatever profit. Beyond that, desktop PCs are on the decline, loosing ground to laptops, tablets, smartphones. Consoles however look to have taken up that spot where people sit down to play a game or watch a movie. What possible disadvantage would there be for MS to try and get a real Windows OS (with the revenue that implies) into the hub of people's electronic home and so have them take their email, check up on their facebook; generally experience the internet in the way they've grown accustomed to. Further, selling PC-like peripherals for this PC-replacing, APU-based console... Hence selling both hardware and software for a real Windows/PC experience and, perhaps more importantly, leveraging their brand unto the choices in portable devices which have consumed much of the old PC's functionality.

Sony, on the other hand, wouldn't be at all interested in x86 for the easy portability of their existing software. Although Sony does have software and media which they wish to push with whatever hardware they choose to sell; namely games and movies. But they mostly have more peripheral hardware to sell, I'm thinking of 3-D TVs and whatever other hardware goes along with that functionality. It would make sense for them to want to lure customers towards their own brand of 3-D, with the promise of experiencing this next generation of games -- at first unveiled on underwhelming APU hardware -- with higher resolutions, better textures, shadows and so-forth, all in 3-D to drive sales of many of their other products. Again, easy portability of software based on the hypothetical affordable APU-based consoles becomes interesting as does the lowered complexity, thus cost, of building a subsequent higher-performing, next-gen console.

TL;DR: none of this addresses the technical merits of PowerPC Vs x86 in consoles, it merely brings up some of the perceived advantages of going with an AMD x86 APU for the next-gen consoles. Namely, in Microsoft's case, the possibility of pushing Windows OS into the center of customers new digital lives in order to encourage adoption of other MS-centric appliances and applications, among other advantages. And, in Sony's, the occasion to have their future portfolio of games transfer seamlessly onto a higher-end console which would then drive sales of some of the more valuable peripherals that they produce. In both cases economy in R&D and greater market presence are the bottom line arguments.

 

[Olikan]

I don't like the long periodes of stagnation they introduce :thumbsdown:

The current consoles interest me as much as any other 6 year old hardware :sneaky:

that more with pc piracy, than consoles itself 😛

 

[SlowSpyder]

These are HUGE deals for AMD.

Assuming these rumors to be true, I would have to think so.

If we believe these numbers then we come to about 231,000,000 Wii's, PS3's, and XBox 360's sold world wide to date. I don't know what kind of money AMD will make per chip, but even if it is something like $15 that translates into roughly $3.5 billion.

Now these numbers are for current consoles, there is no guarantee that the next consoles will do as well... or they could do better. And the $15 is completely made up, I don't know if that number is lower or higher. But, you have to wonder where AMD might be today if they had an extra $3,500,000,000 in revenue over the last ~5 years.

AMD already has some console numbers, but I don't believe it is a big part of their current income. Who knows what the next deal will be, and I certainly do not have an MBA. So someone may quote me and completely kill my post. 😛 But I have to think having all three consoles (and especially if they can get in the handheld market as well) will give them a nice steady stream of income.

 

[Lonbjerg]

that more with pc piracy, than consoles itself 😛

You sound like piracy dosn't exist on consoles...nice fallacy.