Xbox One X (Scorpio) SoC Discussion

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What's inside Scorpio's SoC?

  • Jaguar CPU Cores + Polaris Based (GFX8) GPU

    Votes: 42 30.2%
  • Jaguar CPU Cores + Vega Based (GFX9) GPU

    Votes: 43 30.9%
  • Zen CPU Cores + Polaris Based (GFX8) GPU

    Votes: 16 11.5%
  • Zen CPU Cores + Vega Based (GFX9) GPU

    Votes: 38 27.3%

  • Total voters
    139
  • Poll closed .

IllogicalGlory

Senior member
Mar 8, 2013
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It's not Zen people. lol
I hate to say it, but you're probably right.

At a recent press conference, AMD CEO Lisa Su is quoted saying they will work closely with Microsoft and Sony to jointly develop new custom-design SoCs that would be out in 2018. For now, the PS4 Pro and the upcoming Xbox Scorpio will use AMD’s latest 14nm graphics chip coupled with the existing CPU core.

http://digiworthy.com/2016/09/11/amd-zen-custom-socs-project-scorpio/
 
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Apr 20, 2008
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I'm apprehensive about the specs jumping so high. Not only would it cost a lot, but it will cause a huge segmentation of Xbox users. Some games just will not work well on the original Xbox one, which is still being sold today. I don't trust developers to scale up and down for two different systems for the same game.
 

Doom2pro

Senior member
Apr 2, 2016
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AMD is already licensing out it's Zen IP to China companies... Why would this same IP not be available to semi-custom business customers like Microsoft?
 

rancherlee

Senior member
Jul 9, 2000
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I could see it go either way. The problem with quite a few games currently is that they are held up by the lowest common denominator, the PS4 with it's 8 x 1.6ghz processor which will limit how much programmer can add to the games for the next few years AI wise. Although a healthy boost to the CPU (8 core low clock zen - SMT) could ensure 60fps on every game for Scorpio and 30fps on older consoles. This could also be done with a shrunken 2.4-2.6ghz Jag too. As far as the GPU side, I'd have to think they would go Vega UNLESS it's too much of a deviation from GCN. What ever combo it is I gladly welcome it, most of my friends/family have completely ditched PC gaming so I'm stuck with XBox for 75% of my gaming.
 
May 11, 2008
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Well, the way the 8 jaguar cores are setup, two times 4cores with a bridge in between might be an issue for backward compatibility while making use of a native 8 core.
I have no idea how the programmers manual Microsoft provides to game developers looks like. If it is abstract, it might be possible to use zen but if it is close to the metal, it will be 8 jaguar cores again. I am sure Microsoft had to do a lot of profiling to see how games run on the hardware and then decide if it is worth it to go for zen cores. If backward compatibility is the keyword. It will be jaguar again, just with a frequency control option. And i wonder how backwards compatible vega will be with the older gcn version the xbox one has .

http://www.realworldtech.com/jaguar/

Like its predecessor, Jaguar is a 64-bit, out-of-order microprocessor that decodes and issues 2 instructions and dispatches 6 operations per cycle. A cluster of four Jaguar cores share an L2 cache and larger configurations can be built using an internal fabric

A solution to the backward compatibility issue is that through the use of a internet store like Microsoft games while owning the game in a manner like steam, it is possible to download the game again since the product code is locked to an account. But before downloading the game, the download server verifies what client hardware (the console) is connected and provides the appropriate software package. This way, backward compatibility can be guaranteed in the sense that the game can be played without having to have compatible hardware. It would ask recompilation of current and old games to run on the new hardware. But the games store hides that from the customer. It would require a serious financial investment from Microsoft. I do not know if they would do that. But it is a great way to get customers.

Also, a hbm2 powered pc with just 8GB would be a great pc for everyday use and gaming.
If true, i see multiple of such consoles per home.
One for the son, one for the daughter, one for father and mother, or 2.

It would be a hit, especially when win32 software can be run on it too.
 
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book_ed

Member
Apr 8, 2016
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I could see it go either way. The problem with quite a few games currently is that they are held up by the lowest common denominator, the PS4 with it's 8 x 1.6ghz processor which will limit how much programmer can add to the games for the next few years AI wise. Although a healthy boost to the CPU (8 core low clock zen - SMT) could ensure 60fps on every game for Scorpio and 30fps on older consoles. This could also be done with a shrunken 2.4-2.6ghz Jag too. As far as the GPU side, I'd have to think they would go Vega UNLESS it's too much of a deviation from GCN. What ever combo it is I gladly welcome it, most of my friends/family have completely ditched PC gaming so I'm stuck with XBox for 75% of my gaming.

Probably is time to move as much as possible to the GPU. It could have been done years ago - https://youtu.be/FUtzOqgsLyE?t=6m51s
 

Ancalagon44

Diamond Member
Feb 17, 2010
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It wouldnt because for a console it s much better to have threads of equal strength, so Zen could be used only as 4C/4T, and they dont need its massive FP throughput, that s a waste of silicon.

Given the CPU power budget that is less than 20W they have the following options if they use 14nm for all designs :

8 Jaguar cores at 3GHz
8 XV cores at 2.6GHz
4 Zen cores at 2.8GHz

The bigger INT throughput and perf/watt are provided by the first and second options...

The Xbox 360's CPU supported a form of hyperthreading. Each CPU could run 2 threads, if I remember correctly. So it isn't unprecedented, and remember the 360 was widely seen as much easier to program for than the PS3.

As for Jaguar cores clocked as high as that - remember that scaling a CPU down doesn't magically allow it to clock as high as you want, otherwise Intel could have made a Pentium 4 clock to 10Ghz on a 14nm node. Some CPU designs are just not made to clock high - it just isn't in their design parameters. Jaguar is one such CPU, being more focused on power efficiency. I'd be very surprised if they even attempted to get 3GHz out of it.

As for XV, for AMD that would be a marketing mistake that they would never allow. They want to promote their newest technology, not old technology. Not only is XV just not good technology in any case, but it doesn't benefit AMD to sell it. If Scorpio comes out using Ryzen, AMD can use that fact to sell Ryzen. If Scorpio comes out using XV, AMD can't use that for marketing.

Most likely options are still 8 Jaguar cores clocked at around 2.4Ghz, or 4C/8T Zen. I am betting on Zen. Put this in your sig and we'll revisit when it is announced.
 

farosis

Junior Member
Dec 28, 2016
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It's not Zen APU ie Raven, simply because even zen haven't launched, how can Zen base SOC be ready and in massive production in Q3 2017?
 

Thala

Golden Member
Nov 12, 2014
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It's not Zen APU ie Raven, simply because even zen haven't launched, how can Zen base SOC be ready and in massive production in Q3 2017?

If Zen cores are available as Soft IP (e.g. RTL) they can be integrated anywhere in parallel.
Question is more, what Microsoft had planned more than 2 years back, when the project was started.
 
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Atari2600

Golden Member
Nov 22, 2016
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I'm apprehensive about the specs jumping so high. Not only would it cost a lot, but it will cause a huge segmentation of Xbox users. Some games just will not work well on the original Xbox one, which is still being sold today. I don't trust developers to scale up and down for two different systems for the same game.

Indeed. No point in making a system too dissimilar from one it needs to retain compatibility with. Not when you have far bigger fish to fry with very limited technical resources*.

It'll be a warmed over Jaguar + Polaris on 14nm.


*Workstation/Server Zen and Workstation/Server Raven Ridge (Snowy Owl) will make AMD much more money than either the PS4 or XB1. Better to put the resource into that and keep the consoles simple.
 

Exist50

Platinum Member
Aug 18, 2016
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Still think it'll be Jaguar + Vega, if for no other reason than die size. If Summit Ridge is about 200mm^(2), and we consider that AMD'll need a GPU more or less on the order of P10's die size to hit the quoted TFLOPs, even optimistically, we're already in the range of 400mm^(2)+. That is a huge die for a console chip and frankly not something I see MS doing. Plus, there's the issue that anything that fully utilizes 8 Zen cores will be unplayable on 8 Jaguar ones.
 

nathanddrews

Graphics Cards, CPU Moderator
Aug 9, 2016
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AMD has a pretty large stable of embedded SoC SKUs and other IP that could also take the place of Jaguar. It's not as though the only options are those sold in the retail channel, especially when we're talking about Microsoft licensing different technologies and producing their own custom chips from them. Emulation of specific functions is also pretty easy when you have access to "the metal", so it's not like the SoC even needs to similar to Jaguar for it to "make sense". Plenty of 360 games play great on Xbone despite the massive architecture gulf between them, I expect Scorpio to do the same, no matter the underlying architecture.
 
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Headfoot

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Feb 28, 2008
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The simplest method would be to tune Jaguar on a circuit level for higher clocks, and run in a downclocked mode to match Xbox One for backwards compatibility, but clock up higher for Scorpio level stuff. I think its unlikely we see Zen in Scorpio. It would have been just too far out at 1.5-2 year ago mark when they started the design process. On the other hand, tuning and tweaking Jaguar to wring a little more life out of it would be very doable and a known quantity.

I think though that Vega features will be in it. I actually believe it is not really just Vega features in the consoles - rather it's some console features ported to PC and named Vega in part. I wouldnt be surprised if the source of half of the new Vega features is the consoles

It's the only thing that makes sense for why Vega has so much more architecture change over Polaris despite them being very close neighbors in time.
 
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TheELF

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Dec 22, 2012
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I think its unlikely we see Zen in Scorpio. It would have been just too far out at 1.5-2 year ago mark when they started the design process.
Why do you think?I mean what do they really need to know other than tdp and dimensions so that they know that it will fit in the power budged and in the case?
As long as it's still x86 and GCN there is nothing I can think of that could influence the rest of the hardware.
 

Headfoot

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Feb 28, 2008
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Why do you think?I mean what do they really need to know other than tdp and dimensions so that they know that it will fit in the power budged and in the case?
As long as it's still x86 and GCN there is nothing I can think of that could influence the rest of the hardware.

Timing. I dont think Zen was far enough along early enough for inclusion
 
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Tup3x

Senior member
Dec 31, 2016
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Microsoft is running Xbox 360 games decently on Xbox One. Switching from Jaguar to Zen almost certainly wouldn't be a problem (heck, both are x86 CPUs). I'd be extremely disappointed if they would use Jaguar cores.
 

TheELF

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Dec 22, 2012
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Timing. I dont think Zen was far enough along early enough for inclusion
Maybe they designed everything else and in the APU space they just drew a box saying "place (any) APU here" ,as long as there is enough space to draw all the traces it shouldn't really matter if they knew the cpu specs or if it would be out yet or even what cpu they'd drop in as long as it's the same arch.
(Unless I'm missing something.)

I'm not saying that it will be zen,I'm just saying that I don't see any reason why it couldn't be zen.
 
May 11, 2008
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Microsoft is running Xbox 360 games decently on Xbox One. Switching from Jaguar to Zen almost certainly wouldn't be a problem (heck, both are x86 CPUs). I'd be extremely disappointed if they would use Jaguar cores.

Do you not have to download those old xbox360 titles even when you own the disc ?
And it seems not all xbox360 games can be run on the xbox one.
It also seems that support from the game developer is required, so that means that the original xbox360 executable is probably recompiled.
When i read about it here, it seems so.
http://support.xbox.com/en-US/games/game-setup/play-xbox-360-games-on-xbox-one

I assume thet the user gets a recompiled executable that runs well with the emulator and the xbox one hardware.
Over at the beyond 3D forum, i read that the jaguar because of the way it is set up is not that easy to program because of it 2 x 4 cores setup.
And that specific design decisions in the game engine to take early advantage of the strong points and circumvent the weak points.
But i have this from hear say.

If true, that might be an issue to get the original games to run just like that on an 8 core zen based system.
But a patched and recompiled executable can solve that.
The textures, levels and sound files are just a data format to be read. They do not need to be recompiled for backwards compatibility. Unless it would be serious speed improvement or solve a serious execution speed penalty.

Different versions of the executable for different versions of the console but only for backwards compatibility. And the games store hides the differences for you. It just queries the console to find out what hardware.

I am going for the user most optimistic scenario.
 

TheELF

Diamond Member
Dec 22, 2012
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Different versions of the executable for different versions of the console but only for backwards compatibility. And the games store hides the differences for you. It just queries the console to find out what hardware.
Devs don't even do this for (window) PCs anymore,no way they'll do it for the consoles,that's why some games run so incredibly bad on windows.
 
May 11, 2008
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Devs don't even do this for (window) PCs anymore,no way they'll do it for the consoles,that's why some games run so incredibly bad on windows.

They do not really optimize, but the pc and the consoles, do they not use the same storage format for textures ? Similar form of texture compression ? It is all very similar.
The main difference would be how the game engine runs and synchronizes all threads. And if some threads are used for specific timings.
If the from console to pc port is setup very conservative, there is probably a very conservative use of thread synchronization used. And optimizing for the pc is difficult i would think. Because this person has a 2M/4T, that person has a 4C/8T cpu. Person 3 has a 4 core cpu. Another just 2 cores. I can imagine that they would not optimize it for the pc. The game publisher just state the required minimum hardware to barely run the game and recommended hardware to run the game properly. It is on the back of all pc games that i have.
And that is just the cpu, not even talking about the gpu or the speed of the ram. Of course there are in game settings, but there is a limit.

With consoles, it is close to the metal with a fixed hardware setup.
There it pays off to do optimizations.

And when it comes to the xbox360 games, not all can be ported to the xbox one. And that is possibly because some very smart close to the hardware programming that uses the exact timing of the hardware and specific characteristics. I think probably the edram. But i have no information at hand. It would require a new game engine, at least that is what i think.

edit:
And that would require effort and investment form the game publisher and developer. They have to have the guarantee that the efforts will be financially reimburse.
 

TheELF

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Dec 22, 2012
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The main difference would be how the game engine runs and synchronizes all threads. And if some threads are used for specific timings.
If the from console to pc port is setup very conservative, there is probably a very conservative use of thread synchronization used.
I think there is zero amount of synchronization other then the jaguar cores maxing out at some point...
Zero amount of porting from consoles to PC other then menu and bolting on as many filters as they can find for cheap.
And optimizing for the pc is difficult i would think. Because this person has a 2M/4T, that person has a 4C/8T cpu. Person 3 has a 4 core cpu. Another just 2 cores. I can imagine that they would not optimize it for the pc.
All they would have to do would be to follow the common rules of programming for a multitasking OS.
A typical strategy is to use THREAD_PRIORITY_ABOVE_NORMAL or THREAD_PRIORITY_HIGHEST for the process's input thread, to ensure that the application is responsive to the user.

* Background threads, particularly those that are processor intensive, can be set to THREAD_PRIORITY_BELOW_NORMAL or THREAD_PRIORITY_LOWEST, to ensure that they can be preempted when necessary.

However, if you have a thread waiting for another thread with a lower priority to complete some task, be sure to block the execution of the waiting high-priority thread. To do this, use a wait function, critical section, or the Sleep function, SleepEx, or SwitchToThread function. This is preferable to having the thread execute a loop. Otherwise, the process may become deadlocked, because the thread with lower priority is never scheduled.

* "Background threads, particularly those that are processor intensive" for games is rendering the graphics since that workload can be split up into as many cores as available and can block your cpu,for consoles it's split up into up to 4 threads almost always because of the 2x4 cores you mentioned.
They run them at higher priorities on the consoles,probably so that they get scheduled to run on their own without interference, because of weak cores or because of some console OS quirk.

I'm not talking about once-in-a-while really badly optimized games like mafia 3,I'm talking about a lot of games that perform well but stutter or hitch even on systems that are well over the recommended requirements.
Or even completely freeze on duals.

All you need is to find and adjust the problematic threads so that every thread can finish their work on time without dead locks,this should be happening in the game code itself but you can do this through windows as well,thing is you shouldn't have to, this should be done by the devs.

Youtube links in the spoiler,don't open if you consider this promotion/click bait or whatever.
 
May 11, 2008
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I think there is zero amount of synchronization other then the jaguar cores maxing out at some point...
Zero amount of porting from consoles to PC other then menu and bolting on as many filters as they can find for cheap.

All they would have to do would be to follow the common rules of programming for a multitasking OS.
* "Background threads, particularly those that are processor intensive" for games is rendering the graphics since that workload can be split up into as many cores as available and can block your cpu,for consoles it's split up into up to 4 threads almost always because of the 2x4 cores you mentioned.
They run them at higher priorities on the consoles,probably so that they get scheduled to run on their own without interference, because of weak cores or because of some console OS quirk.

I'm not talking about once-in-a-while really badly optimized games like mafia 3,I'm talking about a lot of games that perform well but stutter or hitch even on systems that are well over the recommended requirements.
Or even completely freeze on duals.

All you need is to find and adjust the problematic threads so that every thread can finish their work on time without dead locks,this should be happening in the game code itself but you can do this through windows as well,thing is you shouldn't have to, this should be done by the devs.

Youtube links in the spoiler,don't open if you consider this promotion/click bait or whatever.


Interesting. I guess the developers do test the game, do not have an issue and on a normal pc with lots of software it stutters.
I mean so much different hardware and software configurations, they cannot test it all.
 
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