The Xbox One: Hardware Analysis & Comparison to PlayStation 4
by Anand Lal Shimpi on May 22, 2013 8:00 AM ESTCPU & GPU Hardware Analyzed
Although Microsoft did its best to minimize AMD’s role in all of this, the Xbox One features a semi-custom 28nm APU designed with AMD. If this sounds familiar it’s because the strategy is very similar to what Sony employed for the PS4’s silicon.
The phrase semi-custom comes from the fact that AMD is leveraging much of its already developed IP for the SoC. On the CPU front we have two Jaguar compute units, each one with four independent processor cores and a shared 2MB L2 cache. The combination of the two give the Xbox One its 8-core CPU. This is the same basic layout of the PS4‘s SoC.
If you’re not familiar with it, Jaguar is the follow-on to AMD’s Bobcat core - think of it as AMD’s answer to the Intel Atom. Jaguar is a 2-issue OoO architecture, but with roughly 20% higher IPC than Bobcat thanks to a number of tweaks. In ARM terms we’re talking about something that’s faster than a Cortex A15. I expect Jaguar to be close but likely fall behind Intel’s Silvermont, at least at the highest shipping frequencies. Jaguar is the foundation of AMD’s Kabini and Temash APUs, where it will ship first. I’ll have a deeper architectural look at Jaguar later this week. Update: It's live!
Inside the Xbox One, courtesy Wired
There’s no word on clock speed, but Jaguar at 28nm is good for up to 2GHz depending on thermal headroom. Current rumors point to both the PS4 and Xbox One running their Jaguar cores at 1.6GHz, which sounds about right. In terms of TDP, on the CPU side you’re likely looking at 30W with all cores fully loaded.
The move away from PowerPC to 64-bit x86 cores means the One breaks backwards compatibility with all Xbox 360 titles. Microsoft won’t be pursuing any sort of a backwards compatibility strategy, although if a game developer wanted to it could port an older title to the new console. Interestingly enough, the first Xbox was also an x86 design - from a hardware/ISA standpoint the new Xbox One is backwards compatible with its grandfather, although Microsoft would have to enable that as a feature in software - something that’s quite unlikely.
| Microsoft Xbox One vs. Sony PlayStation 4 Spec comparison | ||||||||||||||
| Xbox 360 | Xbox One | PlayStation 4 | ||||||||||||
| CPU Cores/Threads | 3/6 | 8/8 | 8/8 | |||||||||||
| CPU Frequency | 3.2GHz | 1.6GHz (est) | 1.6GHz (est) | |||||||||||
| CPU µArch | IBM PowerPC | AMD Jaguar | AMD Jaguar | |||||||||||
| Shared L2 Cache | 1MB | 2 x 2MB | 2 x 2MB | |||||||||||
| GPU Cores | 768 | 1152 | ||||||||||||
| Peak Shader Throughput | 0.24 TFLOPS | 1.23 TFLOPS | 1.84 TFLOPS | |||||||||||
| Embedded Memory | 10MB eDRAM | 32MB eSRAM | - | |||||||||||
| Embedded Memory Bandwidth | 32GB/s | 102GB/s | - | |||||||||||
| System Memory | 512MB 1400MHz GDDR3 | 8GB 2133MHz DDR3 | 8GB 5500MHz GDDR5 | |||||||||||
| System Memory Bus | 128-bits | 256-bits | 256-bits | |||||||||||
| System Memory Bandwidth | 22.4 GB/s | 68.3 GB/s | 176.0 GB/s | |||||||||||
| Manufacturing Process | 28nm | 28nm | ||||||||||||
On the graphics side it’s once again obvious that Microsoft and Sony are shopping at the same store as the Xbox One’s SoC integrates an AMD GCN based GPU. Here’s where things start to get a bit controversial. Sony opted for an 18 Compute Unit GCN configuration, totaling 1152 shader processors/cores/ALUs. Microsoft went for a far smaller configuration: 768 (12 CUs).
Microsoft can’t make up the difference in clock speed alone (AMD’s GCN seems to top out around 1GHz on 28nm), and based on current leaks it looks like both MS and Sony are running their GPUs at the same 800MHz clock. The result is a 33% reduction in compute power, from 1.84 TFLOPs in the PS4 to 1.23 TFLOPs in the Xbox One. We’re still talking about over 5x the peak theoretical shader performance of the Xbox 360, likely even more given increases in efficiency thanks to AMD’s scalar GCN architecture (MS quotes up to 8x better GPU performance) - but there’s no escaping the fact that Microsoft has given the Xbox One less GPU hardware than Sony gave the PlayStation 4. Note that unlike the Xbox 360 vs. PS3 era, Sony's hardware advantage here won't need any clever developer work to extract - the architectures are near identical, Sony just has more resources available to use.
Remember all of my talk earlier about a slight pivot in strategy? Microsoft seems to believe that throwing as much power as possible at the next Xbox wasn’t the key to success and its silicon choices reflect that.
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Shinobisan - Wednesday, May 22, 2013 - link
This may actually HELP the PC market quite a bit.Two things stalling PC development:
1 No one is making an operating system that requires more power
Win 8 has the same basic system requirements as Vista, which is 6 years old.
At that age, compute power has doubled 3 times.
So a PC COULD be 2x2x2 = 8 times as powerful... but no one is pushing the boundaries.
Think about it.. some are still using Crysis to validate hardware!
(Crysis is as old as Vista... imagine that!)
2 Game developers design to the smallest common factor (Consoles)
While PC compute power has doubled 3 times, Consoles have been stagnant.
The XBox 360 is 8 years old. Again, about as old as Vista!
We need a shake-up. We need someone to stand up and make an operating system and software that uses what we have. A PC system that is 8 times as powerful as anything on the market currently demands. Give us that... and no one will be talking about the demise of the PC anymore.
xTRICKYxx - Wednesday, May 22, 2013 - link
I've heard the complaints of how stagnated visuals have been and I'm sick of it! Sure graphics haven't advanced as much as we thought, but look how far we've come with animation and creating extremely fluid sprites on screen. I would easily take the faces and animations from Halo 4 (console game) over Metro: Last Light because of how well animated and human the characters look in Halo 4. The textures are so much more complex in Metro, but lack compelling animation of facial features.I believe with this new console generation we will see awesome visual increases across the board with more PC games on the way.
Shinobisan - Wednesday, May 22, 2013 - link
Games have been on an increasing visual detail trend, which I enjoy.But... think about the visuals in a basic PC, tablet or phone device.
They are not just stagnated... they are trending backwards.
(And that goes for Apple, Google, and Microsoft)
If anyone else remembers the days of the original windows where Microsoft battled it out with Amiga and Commodore, you remember that each company had their own GUI interface. They were all blocky and 8-bit. And "metro" in Win 8 reminds me of that era. Why do I have an interface that looks like it was designed in 1983? That's 30 years old!
When I start up my PC, I should be greeted with stunning visuals, real time updates of weather and news in novel graphic ways, and a file system that is fun and intuitive in a graphically artistic fashion.
Yes, I know the article was about consoles... forgive me... I'm rattling on about PCs. Carry on then.
bji - Wednesday, May 22, 2013 - link
And when I turn my PC on all I really want is a bash prompt. To each their own :)BSMonitor - Wednesday, May 22, 2013 - link
PC is held back because of the complexity of designing games for infinite combination of hardware platforms/OS.. Yeah, you can make a game with great visuals, but from a profitability stand point there is no way to measure what % of your gamers can actually benefit. Could put a lot of $$ into a game that only a handful of people can enjoy. Simply risky on the PC side to spend a lot of R&D/Game development dollars.The console provides stability and predictability on the hardware side. Day 1, you know the install base is X million of users for Xbox or PS3. And everyone has same hardware.
Shadowmaster625 - Wednesday, May 22, 2013 - link
If it is so obvious then why isnt AMD doing it? Why would they instead opt for a PS4 style design for their own next gen APU? Either way it is still an epic fail. The'yre either throwing their competitor a huge bone, or throwing themselves on the floor. Take your pick.tipoo - Wednesday, May 22, 2013 - link
Or they are just managing costs, since Kinect 2 will be bundled.WaltC - Wednesday, May 22, 2013 - link
Well, between the two, Sony has nailed the 3d-game end of the console business this go-around, imo. Intel, of course, has nothing powerful enough in the igp department to garner this business, so it's no wonder both companies selected essentially the same architecture from AMD. The CoD snippet run at the end of yesterday's demonstration, announced as running in real-time on an xBox one, was extremely telling I thought. First, it did not appear to me to be running @1080P--but possibly @ 480P: the on-screen imagery was definitely low-res, exhibited noticeable pixel aliasing (I was surprised to see it), and seemed to generate a good deal of pixellation that was very noticeable in the scene transitions. It also looked like nobody wanted to show off XB1 rendering in longer scenes where you could really see the frame-rate and get a solid feel for the performance of the game--the whole demo for CoD consisted of one rapid scene transition after another. The rendering problems I observed could all have been caused by a streaming bottleneck--or else by the limits of the hardware (I *hope* it was the immediate streaming because if not then I think Microsoft is going to have some problems with this design.) It was easy to see why the CoD real-time demo was saved for last and was so very brief...;)But, now that consoles are going x86, there's no earthly reason why either Microsoft or Sony could not update the hardware every couple of years or so when new tech hits the price/performance marks they require. Since we're talking x86, there would never be a question of backwards compatibility for their games as it would always be 100%. I think the days of 8-10 year frozen console designs are over. I think that's great news for console customers.
However, depending on whether Sony handles it correctly, the PS4 could walk away with practically everything as Microsoft is building in some fairly heavy DRM restrictions that involve the basic operation of the device--"storage in the cloud," etc. Involuntary storage, it would appear. If Sony comes out with a gaming console that is not only more capable in terms of the standard hardware, but one which is also customer-friendly in that it allows the customer to control his software environment--I think Sony will walk away with it. The people who will wind up buying the xb1 will be the people who aren't buying it as a game console. To be honest, though, set-top boxes are as common as dirt these days, etc. It should be very interesting to watch as this all shakes out...It's great, though--we've got some competition! (I'm not a console customer, but this is always fun to watch!)
hemmy - Wednesday, May 22, 2013 - link
I think most of that first paragraph seems mostly rubbish to me. Sony made a game console, Microsoft made an all-in-one media device. It was well known before the announcement that Microsoft would be showing very little in the way of games yesterday, and they were saving that for E3. 360 games already render @ higher than 480p.jamyryals - Wednesday, May 22, 2013 - link
So you are saying you saw artifacts in a demo through a live stream? Tell me you are joking...As for Sony/Microsoft upgrading console hardware during the current generation, I mean anything's possible, but they would be leaving a lot of customers behind on older hardware. Developers would have to make sacrifices in framerate or quality to achieve compatibility. This places a lot of demands on game developers for testing more environments. Additionally, there's nothing about x86 which makes this upgrade more achievable than on PowerPC architecture. They could have released upgraded consoles if they saw a benefit.