The Xbox One: Hardware Analysis & Comparison to PlayStation 4
by Anand Lal Shimpi on May 22, 2013 8:00 AM ESTPower & Thermals
Microsoft made a point to focus on the Xbox One’s new power states during its introduction. Remember that when the Xbox 360 was introduced, power gating wasn’t present in any shipping CPU or GPU architectures. The Xbox One (and likely the PlayStation 4) can power gate unused CPU cores. AMD’s GCN architecture supports power gating, so I’d assume that parts of the GPU can be power gated as well. Dynamic frequency/voltage scaling is also supported. The result is that we should see a good dynamic range of power consumption on the Xbox One, compared to the Xbox 360’s more on/off nature.
AMD’s Jaguar is quite power efficient, capable of low single digit idle power so I would expect far lower idle power consumption than even the current slim Xbox 360 (50W would be easy, 20W should be doable for truly idle). Under heavy gaming load I’d expect to see higher power consumption than the current Xbox 360, but still less than the original 2005 Xbox 360.
Compared to the PlayStation 4, Microsoft should have the cooler running console under load. Fewer GPU ALUs and lower power memory don’t help with performance but do at least offer one side benefit.
OS
The Xbox One is powered by two independent OSes running on a custom version of Microsoft’s Hyper-V hypervisor. Microsoft made the hypervisor very lightweight, and created hard partitions of system resources for the two OSes that run on top of it: the Xbox OS and the Windows kernel.
The Xbox OS is used to play games, while the Windows kernel effectively handles all apps (as well as things like some of the processing for Kinect inputs). Since both OSes are just VMs on the same hypervisor, they are both running simultaneously all of the time, enabling seamless switching between the two. With much faster hardware and more cores (8 vs 3 in the Xbox 360), Microsoft can likely dedicate Xbox 360-like CPU performance to the Windows kernel while running games without any negative performance impact. Transitioning in/out of a game should be very quick thanks to this architecture. It makes a ton of sense.
Similarly, you can now multitask with apps. Microsoft enabled Windows 8-like multitasking where you can snap an app to one side of the screen while watching a video or playing a game on the other.
The hard partitioning of resources would be nice to know more about. The easiest thing would be to dedicate a Jaguar compute module to each OS, but that might end up being overkill for the Windows kernel and insufficient for some gaming workloads. I suspect ~1GB of system memory ends up being carved off for Windows.
Kinect & New Controller
All Xbox One consoles will ship with a bundled Kinect sensor. Game console accessories generally don’t do all that well if they’re optional. Kinect seemed to be the exception to the rule, but Microsoft is very focused on Kinect being a part of the Xbox going forward so integration here makes sense.
The One’s introduction was done entirely via Kinect enabled voice and gesture controls. You can even wake the Xbox One from a sleep state using voice (say “Xbox on”), leveraging Kinect and good power gating at the silicon level. You can use large two-hand pinch and stretch gestures to quickly move in and out of the One’s home screen.
The Kinect sensor itself is one of 5 semi-custom silicon elements in the Xbox One - the other four are: SoC, PCH, Kinect IO chip and Blu-ray DSP (read: the end of optical drive based exploits). In the One’s Kinect implementation Microsoft goes from a 640 x 480 sensor to 1920 x 1080 (I’m assuming 1080p for the depth stream as well). The camera’s field of view was increased by 60%, allowing support for up to 6 recognized skeletons (compared to 2 in the original Kinect). Taller users can now get closer to the camera thanks to the larger FOV, similarly the sensor can be used in smaller rooms.
The Xbox One will also ship with a new redesigned wireless controller with vibrating triggers:
Thanks to Kinect's higher resolution and more sensitive camera, the console should be able to identify who is gaming and automatically pair the user to the controller.
TV
The Xbox One features a HDMI input for cable TV passthrough (from a cable box or some other tuner with HDMI out). Content passed through can be viewed with overlays from the Xbox or just as you would if the Xbox wasn’t present. Microsoft built its own electronic program guide that allows you to tune channels by name, not just channel number (e.g. say “Watch HBO”). The implementation looks pretty slick, and should hopefully keep you from having to switch inputs on your TV - the Xbox One should drive everything. Microsoft appears to be doing its best to merge legacy TV with the new world of buying/renting content via Xbox Live. It’s a smart move.
One area where Microsoft is being a bit more aggressive is in its work with the NFL. Microsoft demonstrated fantasy football integration while watching NFL passed through to the Xbox One.
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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.