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Forums - Microsoft Discussion - [solved]XBOX 360: WHY wasn't it x86?[NEW QUESTION]How hard would it be for MS to emulate/go BC with original Xbox games?

Locura XD on 10 August 2013

I think BC was not possible before because of DRM policies that very different to the XB360 and not a technical problem because there are some powerpc-x86 emulator, for example the Wii/Gamecube.
With all the resources they have, MS should be able to find a way that worked.



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walsufnir on 10 August 2013
snyps said:


Can someone explain what's going on with the XBOX's architecture over it's 3 console lifespan? It started out with x86, then powerpc, then x86 again! Both architectures are amazing.. but i don't understand why they'd keep changing it. Didn't x86 give the first xbox the pc exclusive games advantage? Once they had built an incredible game library on the 360, shouldn't they have stayed with the powerpc architecture for backwards compatibility? What is the logic behind this fluctuation?

The first Xbox was x86 because it was MS' territory. So they built a slightly customized PC and sold it as an Xbox.

Going PPC was probably a decision which engineers did because of

- price

- experience from IBM in gaming

- they were also building CPUs for Nintendo and Sony

- perhaps the combination with AMD and IBM at that time resulted in a performant hardware - more than x86. I think they didn't want to go with Intel again because of price and AMD didn't have powerful CPUs back then  to fit their needs. Also the PPC in 360 was a very specialized CPU, not a standard PPC

Going x86 now again is also the result of "ok, let's look at the market. What is available at which price and how does it perform". Then you build prototypes, run several performance-tests and then you decide. Adding compatibility just for keeping the library seems no option for Sony and MS because this could result in less powerful hardware than the competition.

The fact that Sony and MS both went for APU means both companies thought it'd be the best solution for price/performance/dev-ease.



walsufnir on 10 August 2013
Locura XD said:
I think BC was not possible before because of DRM policies that very different to the XB360 and not a technical problem because there are some powerpc-x86 emulator, for example the Wii/Gamecube.
With all the resources they have, MS should be able to find a way that worked.

 

Yes, there are emulators. But try to emulate 3 ppc-powerhorses running at 3.2GHz with fullspeed... and this is without emulating the GPU... *NO* way.



walsufnir on 10 August 2013
MonstaMack said:
To add on to the question: How hard would it be for MS to emulate/go BC with original Xbox games?
Wouldn't mind playing some Panzer Dragoon Orta upscalled on the X1.

 

This shouldn't be a challenge for them but I doubt they'll do it.



Pemalite on 10 August 2013
walsufnir said:

 

Yes, there are emulators. But try to emulate 3 ppc-powerhorses running at 3.2GHz with fullspeed... and this is without emulating the GPU... *NO* way.


That's because emulating one type of architecture to another is never efficient.

For example a game on the Xbox 360 may throw out a binary instruction and the emulator then has to get to work in translating it into one or more equivalent instructions for execution on the x86 hardware, hence, it's stupidly difficult to get a 1:1 conversion ratio on instructions between two completely different architectures.

To dumb it down a bit more, say you wanted to emulate the Xbox 360 on the PC, for every Gigaflop the Xbox 360 has, you need 2x Gigaflops on the PC to do the same task, it's not because the PC is slower, there is just stuff added in between that slows the entire process down.

MonstaMack said:
To add on to the question: How hard would it be for MS to emulate/go BC with original Xbox games?
Wouldn't mind playing some Panzer Dragoon Orta upscalled on the X1.


It wouldn't be hard at all. The hardware environment in the Xbox One is technically fully backwards compatible with the Xbox Origional.
However, the software environment is different, despite all of Microsoft's consoles using a variation of the NT kernel and Direct X.

The other bonus to this is that unlike with the Xbox 360's emulation, the Xbox One wouldn't need to translate instructions, thus there would be zero performance penalty. - That's in stark contrast to the Xbox 360's emulation of the origional Xbox where framerate issues could creep in.



--::{PC Gaming Master Race}::--

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walsufnir on 10 August 2013
Pemalite said:
walsufnir said:

 

Yes, there are emulators. But try to emulate 3 ppc-powerhorses running at 3.2GHz with fullspeed... and this is without emulating the GPU... *NO* way.


That's because emulating one type of architecture to another is never efficient.

For example a game on the Xbox 360 may throw out a binary instruction and the emulator then has to get to work in translating it into one or more equivalent instructions for execution on the x86 hardware, hence, it's stupidly difficult to get a 1:1 conversion ratio on instructions between two completely different architectures.

To dumb it down a bit more, say you wanted to emulate the Xbox 360 on the PC, for every Gigaflop the Xbox 360 has, you need 2x Gigaflops on the PC to do the same task, it's not because the PC is slower, there is just stuff added in between that slows the entire process down.

 

Why are you explaining this to me? ;)



darkknightkryta on 10 August 2013
Pemalite said:
darkknightkryta said:
As Mark Cerny researched; x86 isn't actually good for games. It's just gotten to a point where it's good enough and not worth investing more money in other technologies.


Funny joke, x86 has always had an edge over PowerPC in many tasks.

The problem lies completely with cost.

With the origional Xbox, Microsoft used a Celeron/Pentium 3 Hybrid due to cost instead of a full-on Pentium 3, even then the CPU was dwarfed in clockspeed by Desktop chips at the time and Microsoft still paid for the premium in having x86.

Microsoft then went with PowerPC with the Xbox 360 because the Cost/Performance ratio was against x86 at the time. - Back then you didn't have high performance x86 cores that would cost anywhere from $30 - $60 that would fit into a console.

Both consoles were launched where low-end x86 CPU's weren't common place. - Then came the Netbook and Tablet revolution with cheap-to-manufacture Atom and Brazos "Good enough" processors, AMD followed Brazos up with Jaguar just before this generation was about to kick off.

For the first time in console history x86 was viable in a Price/Performance/Power ratio to drop into a console all thanks to Netbooks, Tablets and low-end laptops, but don't kid yourself, the next generation consoles CPU's aren't going to be spectacular in any performance metric just like the previous generation.

Remember the PowerPC CPU's the Xbox 360 and PS3 uses are low IPC, In-order architectures and are thus low cost solutions, perfect for a cost sensitive device.
They provided adequate performance relative to Intel and AMD at the time, but they never out-performanced processors like the Core 2 Quad Q9700 which despite being 7-8 years old... Can still run every console port just fine today with better image quality and a "bloated OS" with other applications all at once.

How many of those tasks were game related?  Cisc processors were very bloated and gave you less performance which is why almost every cpu in a game machine is Risc.  Cost is also a factor, but not the main one.



Stinky on 10 August 2013

While the 360 was in design, the PC market consisted of Athlon and P4. There was no C2D, no Athlon64. PPC was still is use by the Apple Mac and the vector units were a mile ahead of anything else; important for gaming. The RISC design was also amenable to the simplified, multi-threaded, high-clock design which was also suited to gaming, considering that there was no other multi-core on die CPU available to consumers at the time. The high clockrate was also an advantage for the 360's innovative GDDR3 architecture.

In hindsight for us as players, staying x86 would have been preferable for BC. But MS was burned badly by Intel, and AMD possibly didn't have the facilities to spec an Athlon for them at the time. But the 360's CPU is no slouch, don't forget it can emulate the xbox P3 CPU at full-speed.



walsufnir on 10 August 2013
darkknightkryta said:

How many of those tasks were game related?  Cisc processors were very bloated and gave you less performance which is why almost every cpu in a game machine is Risc.  Cost is also a factor, but not the main one.


What? There are no cisc-processors anymore. Even if they appear to be, they are not. Since many years.



Stinky on 10 August 2013
Pemalite said:

Funny joke, x86 has always had an edge over PowerPC in many tasks.

Remember the PowerPC CPU's the Xbox 360 and PS3 uses are low IPC, In-order architectures and are thus low cost solutions, perfect for a cost sensitive device.
They provided adequate performance relative to Intel and AMD at the time, but they never out-performanced processors like the Core 2 Quad Q9700 which despite being 7-8 years old... Can still run every console port just fine today with better image quality and a "bloated OS" with other applications all at once.


That's not actually true. One example is G4 which slaughtered any x86 CPU in all benchmarks at the time. Also C2Q never came out until late 2008.