Microsoft's Xbox One engineers reveal more about console's CPU

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Earlier this week, Eurogamer posted an excerpt from a long interview with two of Microsoft Xbox One hardware engineers, where they revealed that game developers will be able to access the 10 percent of the console's GPU that's being used for other features sometime in the future. Now, the website has posted the full interview with the engineers, Andrew Goossen and Nick Baker, where the two men go deep into hardware details for the Xbox One.

The highly technical interview has lots of information for hardware junkies, including more on the Xbox One's custom APU, which Microsoft co-designed with AMD. The CPU has eight cores based on AMD's Jaguar design. When asked why Microsoft picked this configuration instead of four Piledriver-based cores, Baker stated:

The extra power and area associated with getting that additional IPC boost going from Jaguar to Piledriver... It's not the right decision to make for a console. Being able to hit the sweet spot of power/performance per area and make it a more parallel problem. That's what it's all about. How we're partitioning cores between the title and the operating system works out as well in that respect.

The Xbox One has 15 processors inside the system on a chip, according to Baker, "eight inside the audio block, four move engines, one video encode, one video decode and one video compositor/resizer." The audio block was designed completely by Microsoft and made to handle 512 simultaneous voices for audio in games. It can also handle the speech pre-processing for the Kinect add-on.

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Related Forum: Xbox Forum

Source: http://www.neowin.net/news/microsofts-xbox-one-engineers-reveal-more-about-consoles-cpu

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"Microsoft's Xbox One engineers reveal more about console's CPU" :: Login/Create an Account :: 69 comments

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Dr-PonyfilePosted:

Mentalist
Aggie I really cannot wait for this to be released.


Same here, I'm going to get the X1 later, getting the PS4 first.


Both consoles will be at the top of the charts but when they release it will be interesting to see who comes out on top. Especially with all the exclusives each of the consoles have its a shame I would rather have all the games on one console not two lol.

HelloThereEveryonePosted:

I wish I could get the Xbox one on day one...but I'm broke ):

MentalistPosted:

Aggie I really cannot wait for this to be released.


Same here, I'm going to get the X1 later, getting the PS4 first.

Corn_DogPosted:

Dr-Ponyfile
PawnStars
xxRider702xx Would somebody be willing to dumb this down for me.?


They basically talked about the reasoning behind picking hardware they did for the xbox one, they're saying they could of went with more powerful "stuff" but they chose this "stuff" so the console could run at optimal performance


Yeah I read the full interview and from I have read they are sticking with what they have got as it does run at an optical performance. Either way both consoles PS4 and XB1 will be powerful machines and entertain the majority of us for the next 6-7 years.


I mean there actually is a pretty big difference in the DDR3 and DDR5, the 3 was chosen so a lot of the stuff like multitasking and kinect usage can run great. DDR5 will be better for gameplay but you wont see any differences in 3 party games like cod or battlefield, only in exclusives.

Dr-PonyfilePosted:

PawnStars
xxRider702xx Would somebody be willing to dumb this down for me.?


They basically talked about the reasoning behind picking hardware they did for the xbox one, they're saying they could of went with more powerful "stuff" but they chose this "stuff" so the console could run at optimal performance


Yeah I read the full interview and from I have read they are sticking with what they have got as it does run at an optical performance. Either way both consoles PS4 and XB1 will be powerful machines and entertain the majority of us for the next 6-7 years.

Corn_DogPosted:

xxRider702xx Would somebody be willing to dumb this down for me.?


They basically talked about the reasoning behind picking hardware they did for the xbox one, they're saying they could of went with more powerful "stuff" but they chose this "stuff" so the console could run at optimal performance

AdamuPosted:

Aggie I really cannot wait for this to be released.


Yeah me to will be fun lol.

xxRider702xxPosted:

Would somebody be willing to dumb this down for me.?

BONDGUY8514697Posted:

Dr-J
DavidDo0M
Dr-J I think the CPU is perfect.


That it is. So many trolls in comment sections everywhere, including IGN, TTG, x360a, TA, MajorNelson, USgamer, EUROgamer, Kotaku, io9 and many more, try to spread that old "50% more power" rumor, which has no roots to reality. All they are proving is that they have to knowledge of the inner workings of a processor. They clearly do not understand the technical differences between DDR5 and DDR3+eSRAM. Anyone with an actual understanding of the technology can clearly see that both the CPU and GPU in the Xbox One are works of art, perfectly balanced to achieve their goal.

It is nice to read these comments and see that I still have fellow free-thinking intellectuals in the gaming community. :]


Yeah I understood nothing you wrote(tech wise) but I must agree


Fortunately, I actually understood most of what he wrote. Also, I agree, now that i see that, the One is amazing.

SwiftPosted:

I really cannot wait for this to be released.


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