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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elitewolverine - Thursday, May 23, 2013 - link
with the eSram, 172 means nothing...You have all process, fighting for attention on a higher latency bandwith.
There is a reason pc's are still using ddr3, and its not just because of memory controllers, ddr5 has been in use for many many years.
Heck with amd producing both video card controllers for their video cards, one could simply conclude just dump a ddr5 controller on the apu and have them go to ddr5 desktop.
But cost is not just a factor, bandwith only goes so far.
x1 will be saving costs and reap the benefits with eSram, sony's bandwith starts to go out the window.
Put in cloud computing, and it becomes even more mute to have ddr5
UNCjigga - Wednesday, May 22, 2013 - link
Given how similar the the X1 and PS4 are, any chance developers would be able to ship a single disc with support for both platforms? Not that they would...just wondering if it's technically possible to have shared assets/textures etc. and separate binaries on a single disc that could be read by both machines.tipoo - Wednesday, May 22, 2013 - link
I'm sure there are security descriptors for each console that would stop that.juhatus - Thursday, May 23, 2013 - link
Double layer blu-ray disc? One layer for X1 and the other for PS4.. mmhhhrangerdavid - Wednesday, May 22, 2013 - link
Assuming that white Xbox logo glows on both the box and the Kinect, I can see some black electric tape coming in very handy....marc1000 - Wednesday, May 22, 2013 - link
lol shut it's eyes close!I bet the logo on Kinect has some kind of IR emmiter below it!
trip1ex - Wednesday, May 22, 2013 - link
Can I turn it into a Windows computer? That would be a selling point.Can I turn it into a DVR? Selling point.
I would question not the choices here, but the underlying principle of wanting to check stats etc on your tv in a side bar using Kinect, game controller or Smartglass instead of just using your phone or tablet directly.
I would question the attraction of this to someone not interested in games. GTV hasn't made a case for a box on a box tv product. And it is hundreds cheaper than the nextbox will be. It doesn't seem like this market will open up until, at the least, you don't need that second box.
I suppose though that this stuff is a value add to convince mom or dad to buy it or someone on the fence with their gaming interest to buy it. Or someone only interested in one or two franchises.
blacks329 - Thursday, May 23, 2013 - link
I think the scenario arises for having ESPN or a news site pinned to the side, when you have multiple people in the room watching. Where as a tablet would provide the same info; its just a personal experience. But if you have the guys over for a playoff game, while another important game is going on at the same time. Instead of having every one individually looking down at their phones/tablets/switching channels. You can have one game full time and the other with it's boxscore pinned to the side, so everyone can see everything without having to look away from the screen. Or have a news or twitter feed going on the side, which depending on the circumstances could be really interesting.The example they showed with buying tickets for a movie, while watching a movie, was such a stupid example, all of which is a personal experience and can be done on a phone or tablet anyways, especially since everything on the TV had to be manipulated by a phone to begin with.
I honestly find this really compelling and potentially awesome, but all the gamer (or anti-gamer) things they've mentioned so far as well as the XBL gold still being required for playing online are really dissuading me from thinking about getting one any time soon.
elitewolverine - Thursday, May 23, 2013 - link
300,000 servers is not free...Live this year will slowly start to show why people are paying
ncsaephanh - Wednesday, May 22, 2013 - link
In introduction:"This last round was much longer that it ever should have been, so the Xbox One arrives to a very welcoming crowd." Change that to "than"