XBox 360 Hardware In Depth

[bapenguin]

ExtremeTech (http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,1817031,00.asp) has an in depth interview up with Microsoft VP Todd Holmadahl. ET goes in depth and asks all the questions regarding the hardware, and trying to get the truth on things left vague. Here's some highlights:ET: What sort of wireless technology do you use in the controllers? Is it Bluetooth, or something proprietary?

TH: It's a proprietary technology that we developed. In order to do great games in a wireless fashion, you want to make sure you address some latency issues and some bandwidth issues. So we developed a proprietary technique in order to do that.
ET: One of the problems people have with the current Xbox is getting data off their hard drive, backing it up. Some games simply don't let you copy their saves to the memory card, even if they fit. If your Xbox dies, all the stuff on your hard drive is gone forever. Is there a scenario in place to save the stuff on your Xbox 360 hard drive? If a higher-capacity hard drive did come out, how do I get my stuff off the 20GB hard drive and onto the 80GB one?

TH: We're not talking about the other scenarios right now, but we're certainly looking into ways to do what you're talking about.

This is a great article, ET really makes Todd be upfront on all the questions. This one is pretty funny:ET: How would you answer those that say they have a performance advantage? They say their (PS3) CPU is more powerful, their GPU does this many shader operations per second…

TH: I don't really see how they're more powerful when they have one CPU core and we have three…

ET: They would argue they have eight cores.

TH: They have one core, they have seven something else.

In a sense he's right. No body knows WHAT the extra cells are capable of. Are they really a full fledged CPU core? Or are they more like Intel's HT technology?

[BlindSwordsman]

Well, the bottom line is that no one will really know which one is better until they both ship. Hardware specs do tend to change as you get closer to launch. Sony has changed their specs a few times already as example.

It is my guess that the consumer will have a very difficult time telling the difference between these systems as they are both very powerful.

It is really going to come down to the games.

We are not getting exciting about which one is more powerful - last generation was dominated by least powerful system - so we dont think it matters at all.

[Taco]

He had to be up front. His answers make me want to vomit.

Q: "Do you have this?"

A: "We are content with what we have and will continue to look at further additions"

Just say no you bum.

[CaptStu]

I'm truly excited about the new Xbox. Preordering it this weekend.

[Morratut]

For me i believe MS is being more truthful and up front regarding their specs than Sony.Whilst i'm sure the PS3 is impressive i can't seeing it being a massive improvement over the Xbox 2. I don't trust Sony at all.

Plus for me Xbox 2 has Live and that is the thing thats keeping me in the MS camp at the mo.

[netcraazzy]

ET: What about DVI or HDMI? Those are popular connections on HDTVs these days.

TH: We believe that we have the right set of outputs right now to meet the requirements of people who have HDTV sets today. We're continuing to look at what's going on in the future, and as things change, we've developed a very flexible system, so we can adapt to the different demands that are out there.

Is that him dodging the question or is that like the PR way of saying No, not yet?

[bapenguin]

Is that him dodging the question or is that like the PR way of saying No, not yet?

He's saying, no not yet. But we could.

[BabyJesus]

Sony's specs are suspect IMHO, anyone rememer all the buzz about the emotion engine?

[Ernst_Jager]

I will admit I am Xbox fanboy. It has been my favorite system next to my NeoGeo. I also agree that I think Sony is full of it. Microsoft wouldn't be putting out a system if it wasn't at least on par with whatever Sony was doing. How many times has Sony lied to us gamers about features and specs? There is just no way they could put a the PS3 as they claim it is now for a sub $500 price. When it is all said and done, I think both machines will be very similiar in performance and gaming licenses will again be the deciding factor.

[Borgboy]

Is that him dodging the question or is that like the PR way of saying No, not yet?

Based on the back of the 360, I'm guessing they are going the same route as the first Xbox...A special Xbox only output. So you will need to buy a new cable with HDMI if you want that (if it is provided).

[Reanimated]

I have studied the Cell spec a lot (I'm a SW engineer by trade and HW enthusiast) and even I don't really understand what the SPEs are.

Microsoft's architecture I get. AMD & Intel's upcoming multicore architectures I get. CELL... I just don't get it. I really don't understand what these SPEs are, how they work, or what they bring to the table in terms of performance enhancement.

[StoneGut]

Very good read. Everyone has their speculations on what system is going to be the leader in a couple of years time. No body knows. All we know now is the specs of each system and even those are questionable.

I'll make up my mind when I have both system in my house playing a bunch of games having mini seasures daily with all the pretty graphics and Wi-Fi data flowing through my brain. Can't Wait!

[kokyunage]

[t's a proprietary technology that we developed. In order to do great games in a wireless fashion, you want to make sure you address some latency issues and some bandwidth issues. So we developed a proprietary technique in order to do that.

Bullshit. More like "we need to make up all the money we lost on the xbox. So, we developed a wireless technology needlessly so we can license it out to whomever wants to make unified controllers for the xbox/pc."

[Mac]

He had to be up front. His answers make me want to vomit.

Q: "Do you have this?"

A: "We are content with what we have and will continue to look at further additions"

Just say no you bum.

He was certainly dodgy on a few issues (1080p compatibility), but can you blame him? He is trying to sell this system he put blood, sweat and tears into, after all. I give the journalist credit, he stuck with the questions he dodged around and got clear, definitive yes or no answers.

[Mac]

Bullshit. More like "we need to make up all the money we lost on the xbox. So, we developed a wireless technology needlessly so we can license it out to whomever wants to make unified controllers for the xbox/pc."

So? Both can be truths. If it works well, more power to them.

[CrysDark]

Could someone point out in an unbaised way, exactly what sony has lied about in the past. I keep seeing the emotion engine thrown up, but I don't know what they lied about with it. Thanks.

[Dirty Harry]

Could someone point out in an unbaised way, exactly what sony has lied about in the past. I keep seeing the emotion engine thrown up, but I don't know what they lied about with it. Thanks.
I think people were angry that they misrepresented with what the engine could produce. I wasnt disappointed nor did it make a big difference, i think people need to just let things go.

[CrysDark]

So... Sony is the evil lying conglomerate because they over hyped there system.... wow how many companies in the world are guilty of that?

[bjornbarspingvinen]

taken from a CNN story spun from SOny PR ;"Specifically, the story of the day was Sony's upcoming PlayStation 2, and the Emotion Engine processor that will run it. Developed by Sony and Toshiba, experts predict the high-tech processor will offer unprecedented gaming power."

LOL!!!!!

BTW; the Killzone 2 movie is prerendered.

[Scaryboy]

When the PS2 was originally announced they showed a few screenshots for first generation PS2 games (I remember one particularly good one for Ergheiz and a few Tekken screens). They looked awesome. "Emotion Engine! Emotion Engine! Such is the power of Emotion! You need special import licences because you will be able to build nuclear powered robots with PS2's and emotion engines!" screamed Sony PR. "Yaaaayyyyyyyyyy, Emotion!" said the gamers. Then the PS2 came out and the games looked like they were running on a 1st generation Voodoo card inside a commodore 64, and gamers said "What in the Sam Hill? Where's the emotion?". And Sony went "HAHA! Forget you! We don't need no stinkin' emotion when 5k8R d00Dz will buy the Playstation regardless of quality!" And lo, the few gamers with memories would forever make it their mission in life to remind the world that Sony lied, LIED through their teeth with the PS2 hype.
And to be honest it looks like they are doing something similar this time out, with a hell of a lot of perendered footage and not a whole lot of realtime stuff.

[netcraazzy]

Could someone point out in an unbaised way, exactly what sony has lied about in the past. I keep seeing the emotion engine thrown up, but I don't know what they lied about with it. Thanks.

I didn't follow the PS2 very closely back before it was launched but I think it was more that people had very high expectations for Sony's new console and Sony hyped the hell out of the emotion engine to the point where some thought it would be the 2nd comming. I guess when Xbox and Gamecube finally hit and the games had graphics that were just as good and in many cases better some people who bought into all the hype felt lied to.

[Hellstorm]

Damage control is a wonderful thing.

[voodoo401]

"So... Sony is the evil lying conglomerate because they over hyped there system.... wow how many companies in the world are guilty of that?"


Not Microsoft they Never lie they just stifle competition


Therefor Sony is less evil then Microsoft (not saying Sony is a saint)

[Furious Wang]

Bullshit. More like "we need to make up all the money we lost on the xbox. So, we developed a wireless technology needlessly so we can license it out to whomever wants to make unified controllers for the xbox/pc."

More like bluetooth has minor latency issues that could prove severe when translated into fast paced gaming.

[Dirty Harry]

So... Sony is the evil lying conglomerate because they over hyped there system.... wow how many companies in the world are guilty of that?
Every single one, microsoft especially, but hype does not work on me. The emotion engine is basically *ROUGHLY* a 1.5 gig pc with something along the line of a radeon 7500 or 8500. When the ps2 was released many games looked like complete shit, same thing happened when the ps1 was released. Anyone remeber all those wonderful cgi games ;), I'm still trying to forget all of those. I think you guys though should cut sony some slack for once.

[TrackZero]

What's exciting me about the 360 is that navigate functionality. I really dig the idea that every game I'm playing is live aware, so my friends can start up a VoIP chat with me, I can hit that navigate button, pause the game, shift over to my friends screen and do whatever I want. Hell, I can pause the game to watch media or listen to music. It's just nice to not have to constantly reboot when I want to get back to the OS.

[BabyJesus]

Damage control is a wonderful thing.

You sir, are a 'tard.


The name "emotion engine" alone conveys what Sony was trying to hype with the system. They constantly over estimate what thier systems can do power wise with that kind of hyperbole.

I know what MS can do, thier system came out and it is easily the most powerful machine, even if its only a "closed system" PC. They have been pretty truthful in regards to the graphic power of the current XBOX, so its easier to believe them.

[TrackZero]

Looks like this thing is definitely going to be a PVR as well. Since it's harddrive is external and upgradeable and this quote from the article:

"We architected the CPU, the GPU, and the I/O or south bridge, and the TV Encoder."

TV Encoder...eh? Sounds spiffy.

[voodoo401]

yea but with a 20 meg hard drive how much HD content will you record 15 min?

[Dirty Harry]

What's exciting me about the 360 is that navigate functionality. I really dig the idea that every game I'm playing is live aware, so my friends can start up a VoIP chat with me, I can hit that navigate button, pause the game, shift over to my friends screen and do whatever I want. Hell, I can pause the game to watch media or listen to music. It's just nice to not have to constantly reboot when I want to get back to the OS.
So you are excited that you can do the things i am currently doing right now on my pc?.

[Morratut]

It's true Sony hyped up the PS2 to amazing levels. It was nowhere near as powerful in reality.

Sony are doing the same with the PS3. Did you see the Tekken 6 and the Killzone 2 videos? Absolute bullshit.

The only thing that could possibly convert me to the Sony camp is if they come out with a SonyLive service. Nothing has been mentioned i don't think regarding that.

I want to have a nice ease of use online system just like Xbox Live is now. Only MS provides that :)

[Ernst_Jager]

The ability to download music and movies on the 360 is a feature I really think has lots of possiblity myself. Want some new songs for your custom soundtracks? Get online and download some. How about some new trailers for games/movies/videos? Download them and potentially watch them in HD.

As for Sony lying. Anyone remember how many features the PSX was suppose to have and everything it was going to be able to do? Then when it finally came out it had maybe a 3rd of them. Sony always makes there systems sound like the 2nd coming of Christ but after it is all said and done it only ends up dissapointing people. I would rather them be like MS or Nintendo and not talk about stuff they don't have then hype stuff up.

[Borgboy]

Looks like this thing is definitely going to be a PVR as well. Since it's harddrive is external and upgradeable and this quote from the article:

"We architected the CPU, the GPU, and the I/O or south bridge, and the TV Encoder."

TV Encoder...eh? Sounds spiffy.

I'm pretty sure that refers to video going out of the Xbox into the TV....Rather than the other way around. Then it would be decoder, would it not?

[raVen]

yea but with a 20 meg hard drive how much HD content will you record 15 min?

That's 20 gigs. Going from an 8 gig HDD in the Xbox to a 20 meg one for the 360 would be quite possibly the worst case of backtracking ever.

[diggable]

Sony, it's a hype machine. When the PSX was announced everybody thought it was the best machine available with all the extras attached to it.

Sony PSX DESR-7000
250GB HDD+DVD recorder
December 13, 2003
99,800 yen that's $900+

http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/News/Press/200310/03-1007E
http://www.lik-sang.com/info.php?category=24&products_id=3867&

# Plays Playstation and Playstation 2 games
# Includes TV Tuner
# Includes 250GB HDD
# Includes 100 base T Ethernet Adapter
# Does not play PAL or USA games
# Records up to 325 Hours to the HDD from TV or DVD
# Records up to 6 hours on 1 DVD-R/RW
# Picture playback of JPEG, TIFF and GIF from HDD or Memory Card slot

[SaintArnold]

In a sense he's right. No body knows WHAT the extra cells are capable of. Are they really a full fledged CPU core? Or are they more like Intel's HT technology?

Actually, details about the SPEs have been published. You can think of them as specialized number crunching units. They are very powerful, but probably very difficult to program for. My speculations: for low programmer effort, i.e. writing a single-threaded (non-parallel) program, the PS3 and Xbox360 will be about the same speed- 1 3.2GHz PPC processor. To utilize the 360's 6 thread contexts (2/processor) would require some more work to partition the program into a small number of threads. This shouldn't be too hard, since there are explicit tasks in games, i.e. input, physics, graphics, etc. Finally, to utilize the SPEs would require fairly massive effort, unless Sony or some 3rd party vendor writes some great physics and graphics libraries. Thus I predict that average 360 game will look better than the average PS3 game. However, second-generation high-budget PS3 games may blow the 360 away.

The SPEs are nothing like HT- HT is allowing multiple threads of execution to share the resources of a single processor, since these resources are typically underutilized. The 3 processors of the Xbox360 each of 2 thread contexts, like HT. Hopefully the IBM implementation is better than Intel's shitty one, though.

[MosBen]

I don't know which company lies more, I just don't trust any of them and wait until the system is actually out. The people that get pissed off are the people that give the statements credence to begin with.

[TrackZero]

So you are excited that you can do the things i am currently doing right now on my pc?.

Yes, I am. I'm also a PC gamer man, which is why I like to have this in another platform as well. It's bringing the mainstream closer to the PC experience, which is good for everyone.

[TrackZero]

I'm pretty sure that refers to video going out of the Xbox into the TV....Rather than the other way around. Then it would be decoder, would it not?

Yeah, true enough. I hadn't yet read that far in the article, though I wouldn't doubt they'll still have the potential capability in their video setup.

[president_fred]

All this talk of hype, does anyone remember when windows 95 and 98 came out ;). I think all companies are pretty good at hyping their machines. If you thought that your PS2 was going to be more powerful than a console which was released a long time after then you are being naive as hell.

[RMan]

Umm, as far as all this technical nonsense, the surprising thing to me is that the hype has actually convinced some people to care about it. Look, it’ll be similar to last generation (except I think the power of the consoles will be more equal). One console may be better at some things than another, but in the end it’ll make little difference. The tech didn’t make a significant difference between PS2 and Xbox, the Xbox was clearly superior and still got beat out because the PS2 got the games, and the games are what matters.

[Rakael]

Yes, yes we all know the games are what matters. What we are discussing is the technical hype, because in addition to being gamers most of us are tech heads as well. Please stop with the "whoever gets the games wins" argument, we all know this already and have heard it a hundred times by now.

[Mister Pie]

Well, in the end most games will be developed for at least two platforms in mind so the graphics quality will still most likely be limited by the weaker one. It's when you start talking about exclusives when ya might actually see huge differences in graphic quality.

[Mason]

Here's (http://trikuare.cx/mt/archives/000012.php) a fun article on the (engineered?) story about Iraq getting their hands on powerful powerful PS2s, which could then be used to control missles and stuff.

[KarmaGhost]

My favorite quote from the article was this:
TH: The I/O processor, developed with SiS, is responsible for enabling all of our input/output connectivity.Thank you, Captain Obvious.

[Zanzibar]

Actually, details about the SPEs have been published. You can think of them as specialized number crunching units. They are very powerful, but probably very difficult to program for. My speculations: for low programmer effort, i.e. writing a single-threaded (non-parallel) program, the PS3 and Xbox360 will be about the same speed- 1 3.2GHz PPC processor. To utilize the 360's 6 thread contexts (2/processor) would require some more work to partition the program into a small number of threads. This shouldn't be too hard, since there are explicit tasks in games, i.e. input, physics, graphics, etc. Finally, to utilize the SPEs would require fairly massive effort, unless Sony or some 3rd party vendor writes some great physics and graphics libraries. Thus I predict that average 360 game will look better than the average PS3 game. However, second-generation high-budget PS3 games may blow the 360 away.

The SPEs are nothing like HT- HT is allowing multiple threads of execution to share the resources of a single processor, since these resources are typically underutilized. The 3 processors of the Xbox360 each of 2 thread contexts, like HT. Hopefully the IBM implementation is better than Intel's shitty one, though.

Doesn't XNA handle multithreading near-automatically?

[voodoo401]

Looks like microsoft hired beautiful people to sit in on the press conference.

http://www.kotaku.com/gaming/xbox-2/index.php

http://www.satori.org/blog/archives/000270.html

[bobbler]

Doesn't XNA handle multithreading near-automatically?

Not unless its got some voodoo magic behind it. I think you still have to distinguish, in code, what each thread is -- that would be a lot of work for a compiler to split stuff into several threads without needing to be told exactly where to do it, I'd cry tears of joy if that was the case. XNA is just for easy portability to PC and in the future other formats as well (other consoles even). Thats my understanding of it at least.

[president_fred]

Looks like microsoft hired beautiful people to sit in on the press conference.

http://www.kotaku.com/gaming/xbox-2/index.php

http://www.satori.org/blog/archives/000270.html

If the links are true that is just sad.

[Kelegacy]

Jesus, the amount of Sony haters and fearers in this thread scare me. You guys accept Microsoft's PR but not Sony's? Yeah, that's intelligent. Sony is out to trick you and eat your children. I see the light now!

It's a little funny...now that the Xbox2 is potentially the "inferior" system, it's not all about graphics or power, eh? Just like when MS announced that they bought some Japanese dudes and were having them make jRPG's for the new system...suddenly everyone was like "YAAAY", but when the PS2 offered a plethora of RPG's for years without quality or quantity shortage, Xbox fans were like "meh, who cares".

I'll never understand you people.

[ElectricMonk]

the cells were designed to be used in many applications where bulk number crunching is required (audio en/decoding, video en/decoding, etc). imagine your new hd tv with a cell in it you could use it to upscale and filter images on the screen etc with high quality algorithms.

so they should be pretty powerful but how they will work with conventional programming remains to be seen.

there may be new brilliant ways to use threads too that nobody has discovered yet

[Rommel]

We do not fear the Cell, we simply do not understand it. Reanimated is a highly intelligent man, despite the fact that he fucks horses. As of yet, how that thing will affect the machine and possibily all that come after it is unknown. I for one am excited - but I am hesitant to feel about it one way or the other.

[baz]

Apparently there is a pretty fancy auto-parallelizing compiler for the cell. But there will need to be changes made to the code as well. As everything is going multi-core these days, its a step people are going to have to make to get the most out of a system anyway,

Here is a pretty good cell article, reasonably easy to read.

http://www.blachford.info/computer/Cells/Cell0.html

[RMan]

Yes, yes we all know the games are what matters. What we are discussing is the technical hype, because in addition to being gamers most of us are tech heads as well.
I am talking about the tech. What I'm saying is that you're getting technical specs that are filtered through and spun by marketing people, and demonstrations from pre-1st generation products, so what you're really getting is demonstration of how much money the respective publishers/developers have put into the product up to this point. Even the engineers likely don’t have a consensus on what parts of the system are going to be bottlenecks, so making judgments based on suspect specs, early software, and pure speculation seems pointless. I guess I should be used to it, the last two generations of consoles had exactly the same fanfare (when the N64 was shown at E3, most of the group I was with thought the N64 would decimate the PS1), and most of it was inconsequential or wrong.

[bobbler]

Its kinda funny, far more information has been released about the cell than whats in the Xbox360. You just have to look for it.

Its really not all that different from a cpu with a few gpus attatched to it. The SPEs are just a little more dedicated in their tasks. I'll try to explain it as best I can, from my understanding of it.

Each SPE can take its own thread, each has its own 256kb 'cache' (although its not really a cache, its actually sram -- no cache misses n such), the entire core shares a 512kb cache. Theres a lot of memory on the die of the Cell. Each of the SPEs are connected to a 'bus' (EIB) of sorts that also connects to the PPE (the PPE is more akin to a normal core we see in our comps today). The EIB the SPEs and PPE is attatched to is similar to the crossbar switch in the Athlon 64 cores, it connects all the 'thingies' on the die together (tee hee). Off the EIB is the memory controllers (dual memory controllers for a 25.6gb/s bandwidth to the XDR memory), and the I/O controller (originally there was supposed to be 2, but I think there might be only one in the PS3 cell, giving around 35gb/s bandwidth to the GPU and other things). The PPE is the main daddy Core (eating 1 or 2 threads, not clear on that) that does menial tasks and sort of divvies out the tasks to the children (the SPEs, each taking 1 thread). Each SPE is quite the monster in FP -- 128x128bit registers (which is a pretty hefty amount), 4 FPU units, 4 Int units, capable of doing 2 instructions/cycle, and support SIMD/altivec type instructions. The SPEs are only really useful for number crunching, but since thats what a lot of consoles are doing it works out ok (graphics, physics); the PPE is far better at doing things like AI and the other menial code that isn't already being crunched on by the SPEs. Streaming data and the such gets munched down like no other (anyone see the demo of the cell decoding HD streams?). A normal CPU has integer units and fpu units along with some other stuff, a SPE is like a dedicated core of just an integer/fpu units. They figured why add multiple cores when all we really need is more FPU power? So instead of making fully fledged cores they just took the parts of a normal cpu core and connected them together. That is part of where the 218gflops comes from, theres a lot of a single type of power in the Cell. Its not the most versatile CPU, but its very efficient at what its designed for. Its like the GPU of CPUs, if that makes sense to anyone.

I think that is a fairly decent explaination (in english) of what the cell is, feel free to correct me if anyone sees something wrong.

I am wary of compilers that claims to automatically parallelize (thread) applications on its own. Theres too much left to ambiguity with that, I know its possible, but I'd don't really trust a piece of software to efficiently split things that aren't always meant to be split up.

[bobbler]

...(when the N64 was shown at E3, most of the group I was with thought the N64 would decimate the PS1)

Well, to be fair, most of n64s problem was its limited game storage size (sub 256mb I think it was, this was probably a pretty apparent bottleneck most devs saw pretty quickly). Otherwise, n64 was superior in a lot of ways to ps1, it did AA and bi/tri-linear filter automatically, back when nothing else did it for quite a while.

There is a lot of speculation, but not everything is marketing. The specs released by IBM are pretty much what they are.

[RMan]

Well to be fare, most of n64s problem was its limited game storage size (sub 256mb I think it was, this was probably a pretty apparent bottleneck most devs saw pretty quickly). Otherwise, n64 was superior in a lot of ways to ps1, it did AA and bi/tri-linear filter automatically, back when nothing else did it for quite a while.
That's precisely my point. Most techies there had tunnel-vision and felt like the technical superiority of the system’s graphics would make the cartridge issue a small one. They got all whipped into a frenzy about the polygon crunching dominance of the system, and in the end it made little difference (for developers or consumers).

[mister_slim]

Man, bobbler and RMan, I wish you had both shown up earlier in the thread. I was about to give up on it and... bam, people with some idea what they're talking about.

Anyway, I think the PS3 is going to have a hell of a learning curve, but further specialization will probably pay off for Sony. Of course, MS will probably try to launch the 720 before the PS3 fully matures.

[president_fred]

Thank you bobbler for that concise description of the cell. I was slightly confused as to how it worked but thats the best paragraph explaining it I have seen. Do you have any links that you recommend I should check out for more information?

[bobbler]

Blachford (http://www.blachford.info/computer/Cells/Cell0.html)

Thats a pretty decent site for the Cell (was posted earlier by Baz), its sort of boring (not unexpected) and some of it is speculation still (the site was created a while back). It has a few links on it in the resources section also.

Other than that there is some pdf that IBM released (don't have the link offhand) for a really dry look at the Cell, if you want it -- I'll look tomorrow.