|  More Xbox 2 specs emerge - Although Microsoft's upcoming Xbox 2 console is probably a year or more away from production, rumors about this system continue to pervade various Internet sites. Some websites are claiming to have detailed specs of the Xbox 2 platform. According to these rumors, the next-generation Xbox, codenamed Xenon, will feature an IBM PowerPC CPU and an ATI GPU clocked at greater than 500MHz. The Xbox 2 may have 256 MB of RAM, which will be shared by the CPU and GPU, and will be designed for high definition (720P and greater) output, so it will work well with HDTV sets. It will come with a 12x DVD player and will be designed to maximize CPU and memory bandwidth. It isn't clear if the Xbox 2 will be backwards-compatible with the original Xbox, but Microsoft has described articles reporting non-compatibility as "pulp-fiction." At this point it appears almost certain that Microsoft's upcoming Xbox 2 console will have some sort of IBM CPU and an ATI GPU, and it should have formidable graphics capabilities. Microsoft would clearly like to unveil the Xbox 2 as early as is feasible, and before the PlayStation 3 launches.
| The latest PlayStation 3 rumors suggest that the PlayStation 3 may not launch before 2007, so Microsoft could have a year or more to build market share before the PS3 emerges. At this point, all Xbox 2/PlaySation 3 rumors should be seen as little more than conjecture. Nevertheless, all the evidence indicates that Microsoft and Sony are making the development of next-generation gaming consoles an exigent priority. Microsoft's Steve Ballmer and Sony's Ken Kutaragi are both willing to spend billions on these next-generation consoles, and both corporations have massive and well-funded R&D programs. Sony spends almost US$3 billion per year on R&D, and Microsoft allocates about $7 billion per year for research and development. Sony and Microsoft appear willing and able to expend vast resources to ensure dominance in the next-generation console market. Thanks to HawKe for a heads-up on this. |
| This documentation is an early release of the final documentation, which may be changed substantially prior to final commercial release, and is confidential and proprietary information of MS Corporation. It is disclosed pursuant to a nondisclosure agreement between the recipient and MS. “Xenon” is the code name for the successor to the Xbox game console from MS. Xenon is expected to launch in 2005. This white paper is designed to provide a brief overview of the primary hardware features of the console from a game developer’s standpoint. Caveats: In some cases, sizes, speeds, and other details of the Xenon console have not been finalized. Values not yet finalized are identified with a “+” sign, indicating that the numbers may be larger than indicated here. At the time of this writing, the final console is many months from entering production. Based on our experience with Xbox, it’s likely that some of this information will change slightly for the final console. For additional information on various hardware components, see the other relevant white papers. Hardware Goals
Xenon was designed with the following goals in mind: -
Focus on innovation in silicon, particularly features that game developers need. Although all Xenon hardware components are technologically advanced, the hardware engineering effort has concentrated on digital performance in the CPU and GPU. -
Maximise general purpose processing performance rather than fixed-function hardware. This focus on general purpose processing puts the power into the Xenon software libraries and tools. Rather than being hamstrung by particular hardware designs, software libraries can support the latest and most efficient techniques. -
Eliminate the performance issues of the past. On Xbox, the primary bottlenecks were memory and CPU bandwidth. Xenon does not have these limitations. Basic Hardware Specifications: Xenon is powered by a 3.5+ GHz IBM PowerPC processor and a 500+ MHz ATI graphics processor. Xenon has 256+ MB of unified memory. Xenon runs a custom operating system based on MS Windows NT, similar to the Xbox operating system. The graphics interface is a superset of MS Direct3D version 9.0. CPU: The Xenon CPU is a custom processor based on PowerPC technology. The CPU includes three independent processors (cores) on a single die. Each core runs at 3.5+ GHz. The Xenon CPU can issue two instructions per clock cycle per core. At peak performance, Xenon can issue 21 billion instructions per second. The Xenon CPU was designed by IBM in close consultation with the Xbox team, leading to a number of revolutionary additions, including a dot product instruction for extremely fast vector math and custom security features built directly into the silicon to prevent piracy and hacking, Each core has two symmetric hardware threads (SMT), for a total of six hardware threads available to games. Not only does the Xenon CPU include the standard set of PowerPC integer and floating-point registers (one set per hardware thread), the Xenon CPU also includes 128 vector (VMX) registers per hardware thread. This astounding number of registers can drastically improve the speed of common mathematical operations. Each of the three cores includes a 32-KB L1 instruction cache and a 32-KB L1 data cache. The three cores share a 1-MB L2 cache. The L2 cache can be locked down in segments to improve performance. The L2 cache also has the very unusual feature of being directly readable from the GPU, which allows the GPU to consume geometry and texture data from L2 and main memory simultaneously. Xenon CPU instructions are exposed to games through compiler intrinsics, allowing developers to access the power of the chip using C language notation. |
