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Forums - Microsoft Discussion - Xbox One Architecture Finally Explained – Runs OS ‘Virtually Indistinguishable’ from Windows 8

drkohler on 21 April 2014
Adinnieken said:

Really?
A ship has eighteen engines.  All connected to a single driveshaft in order to propel a ship.  Another ship has twelve engines but each connect to its own drive shaft.  Each driveshaft has the same four-bladed brass prop of the same weight and bearing as the others. 

This analogy would be cool if your ships had anything to do with current consoles. Unfortunately the analogy does not apply. There are a lot of what-ifs involved we don't really know about (until someone comes really forth and explains the inner workings of the SoCs). In your own picture, what if the drive shafts are not powerful enough to actually drive all the engines? What if you don't have enough engineers (remember you only have six at max) to see that all the drive shafts are engaged? What if you don't have enough oil throughput per second to drive the engines?

So many questions, so few answers. Actually some of the answers are there to see and explain, but I've grown tired of correcting people about their misconceptions. In the end, It's just like people constantly chanting the "only in 13 countries" mantra. I've corrected those people in probably in a dozen threads. Completely in vain, only to see the same nonsense repeated again and again just a few posts down the line/a few threads later.

So I leave you in peace with your magical ship with twelve engines and twelve shafts and 48 blades ( and by golly, damn those numbers sound like a misterxmedia blog fantasy...)



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sales2099 on 21 April 2014

Well people think that porting from Xbox to PC will be super easy.

Except that means MS would be taking away exclusivity from their own games. 3rd party games is fine.....keep those in the MS family and off Sony. But 1st party IP's will stay on Xbox.



Xbox: Best hardware, Game Pass best value, best BC, more 1st party genres and multiplayer titles. 

 

Dr.Henry_Killinger on 21 April 2014
Adinnieken said:

Finally, by all accounts the Xbox One is far more flexible and capable than the PS4, and the PS4 uses the same amount of memory and the same number of cores for non-gaming functions. 

Is there any non-circumstansial evidence to validate this claim? Or it just a personal suposition? How are you defining flexibility? 



In this day and age, with the Internet, ignorance is a choice! And they're still choosing Ignorance! - Dr. Filthy Frank

toastboy44562 on 21 April 2014
fps_d0minat0r said:
Adinnieken said:
Uabit said:

Is not as cool as it looks... And i don't know if it is a right choice because Xbox 360 with 512MB RAM (god knows how few for OS) works better than XOne with 3 fucking gb and 2 of 8 cores reserved for the OS.

The Xbox One OS is far more capable than the Xbox 360's OS.  Don't judge an OS by the UI.

First and foremost, the Xbox 360 wasn't capable of multi-tasking.  The Xbox One allows up to four apps and a game to run at the same time.  If you wanted to purchase DLC, you had to exit the game, enter the dashboard, then enter the game store to make a purchase.  With the Xbox One, you can pull up the dashboard, open the game store, purchase the DLC than switch back to the game without losing your place.

Second, the Xbox 360's OS, because it ran both games and applications, was a completely closed off system that required scrutiny of every game and app before it was implemented.  The two virtual machines that make up the Games and Apps portion of the Xbox One allow greater flexibility and freedom for developers.

Finally, by all accounts the Xbox One is far more flexible and capable than the PS4, and the PS4 uses the same amount of memory and the same number of cores for non-gaming functions. 


If thats true, why isnt it PS4 thats getting lower resolutions? why are developers not complaining about PS4's memory?


PS4 cannot multitask and perform different operations like the Xbox One can. PS4 puts all of its resources into one thing while the Xbox One can do several things at once. PS4 is the weaker machine. Xbox One is worth the extra 100 dollars and sales show it. give it up



fps_d0minat0r on 21 April 2014
toastboy44562 said:
fps_d0minat0r said:
Adinnieken said:
Uabit said:

Is not as cool as it looks... And i don't know if it is a right choice because Xbox 360 with 512MB RAM (god knows how few for OS) works better than XOne with 3 fucking gb and 2 of 8 cores reserved for the OS.

The Xbox One OS is far more capable than the Xbox 360's OS.  Don't judge an OS by the UI.

First and foremost, the Xbox 360 wasn't capable of multi-tasking.  The Xbox One allows up to four apps and a game to run at the same time.  If you wanted to purchase DLC, you had to exit the game, enter the dashboard, then enter the game store to make a purchase.  With the Xbox One, you can pull up the dashboard, open the game store, purchase the DLC than switch back to the game without losing your place.

Second, the Xbox 360's OS, because it ran both games and applications, was a completely closed off system that required scrutiny of every game and app before it was implemented.  The two virtual machines that make up the Games and Apps portion of the Xbox One allow greater flexibility and freedom for developers.

Finally, by all accounts the Xbox One is far more flexible and capable than the PS4, and the PS4 uses the same amount of memory and the same number of cores for non-gaming functions. 


If thats true, why isnt it PS4 thats getting lower resolutions? why are developers not complaining about PS4's memory?


PS4 cannot multitask and perform different operations like the Xbox One can. PS4 puts all of its resources into one thing while the Xbox One can do several things at once. PS4 is the weaker machine. Xbox One is worth the extra 100 dollars and sales show it. give it up




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drkohler on 21 April 2014
Dr.Henry_Killinger said:
Adinnieken said:

Finally, by all accounts the Xbox One is far more flexible and capable than the PS4, and the PS4 uses the same amount of memory and the same number of cores for non-gaming functions. 

Is there any non-circumstansial evidence to validate this claim? Or it just a personal suposition? How are you defining flexibility? 

I'd say the two cores for the oses are a given fact. The memory footprints seem to be around 5GB, although at this time noone has any ideas why the PS4 wastes so much space here.

Flexibility is basically the ease of changing goalposts on-the-fly I'd suppose. (You know, the tvtvtvtsportstvtvtv, the dgpu, the cloud, the dx12 magic, now it's Office on the X1 instead of tvtvtv.. someday it will be Kinect2, once they manage to actually make a good game for it).



drkohler on 21 April 2014
toastboy44562 said:

PS4 cannot multitask and perform different operations like the Xbox One can

Ahhh.. toastboy at work.

Look, my Amiga 500 could essentially do the same multitasking as the XBox One and the PS4 can. granted it was somewhat slow (but I had a whopping 1.5MB of ram and a 32MB hd so that helped a lot). It is very cool that you think the XBox One is some kind of Multitasking wonder. Just fill up the available memory space with various programs and then some more programs and voila, your multitasking wonders will instantly disappear and we are back at Amiga 500 times. On the technical level, there is absolutely nothing that either console can what the other cannot do as far as multitasking is concerned.



Dr.Henry_Killinger on 21 April 2014
drkohler said:
Dr.Henry_Killinger said:
Adinnieken said:

Finally, by all accounts the Xbox One is far more flexible and capable than the PS4, and the PS4 uses the same amount of memory and the same number of cores for non-gaming functions. 

Is there any non-circumstansial evidence to validate this claim? Or it just a personal suposition? How are you defining flexibility? 

I'd say the two cores for the oses are a given fact. The memory footprints seem to be around 5GB, although at this time noone has any ideas why the PS4 wastes so much space here.

Flexibility is basically the ease of changing goalposts on-the-fly I'd suppose. (You know, the tvtvtvtsportstvtvtv, the dgpu, the cloud, the dx12 magic, now it's Office on the X1 instead of tvtvtv.. someday it will be Kinect2, once they manage to actually make a good game for it).

How are you sure this is not just the allocation rather than the actual performance. Sony used the same tactic with the ps3.



In this day and age, with the Internet, ignorance is a choice! And they're still choosing Ignorance! - Dr. Filthy Frank

fps_d0minat0r on 21 April 2014
Adinnieken said:
fps_d0minat0r said:
Adinnieken said:

What does the flexibility of the OS have to do with resolution?

The fact that Microsoft can introduce an entirely new API (DirectX 12) while supporting the previous API points to the flexibility of the OS.

1) Because memory is is the bottleneck for X1 resolution. Thats why MS made adjustments to their SDK remember?

2) Sony could do that too since they have reserved a similar amount of memory, it just wouldnt be called directX, it would be called something else. If you really think X1 is gonna get direct x, updates to API, OS and SDK's and sony are just gonna sit idle, you are wrong. Until then, as it stands, theres nothing to suggest the X1 is 'far more flexible and capable' than the PS4 because its not.

Again, what does the flexibility of the OS have to do with resolution?  Resolution is a matter of hardware capability, not software capability.  Yes, Microsoft can and DirectX12 will make software more efficient, thus allowing for improved graphic fidelity, but the hardware is still capable of achieving the graphic fidelity.

For one, what makes you think Microsoft doesn't already own the patents for parallelism in a graphical API?  Considering neither NVidia, Intel, nor AMD have offered anything similar to DirectX12, what makes you think anyone else will be able to develop an API on the same level as DirectX12?  DirectX12 talks to the hardware on the same level as Mantle, yet offers parallelism with the GPU.  Who's going to write that capability for free and give it to Sony?  Sony's not a software developer.  Their OS is FreeBSD with their UI on top of it.  The only thing Sony knows how to do is take an OS that someone else wrote, put it on hardware, stick a UI on top of it, and throw some apps in it.  They don't know how to write kernels or APIs. 

Until they know how to do that, then as it stands, a Microsoft OS will always be more capable and flexible than any OS that Sony can install on a piece of hardware.

It doesn't matter how good the hardware is if the code is inefficient.  DirectX12 removes a substantial inefficiency in the hardware.  Any Windows PC capable of supporting DirectX12 will offer substantially greater efficiency, and that includes the Xbox One.  I know first-hand the importance of efficient code vs. more hardware and I can attest to the fact that no matter how much you have and how good the hardware is, unless you improve the software you won't see any improvement in performance. 

Doesn't matter if you're talking in-house code or packaged code.  I've dealth with it. 

Very few people can say this, but I've actually gone through the experience of a mainframe crash because of software inefficiencies that got so out of hand they obliterated the resources of an IBM mainframe.  So don't try and suggest to me the importance of hardware over software.  Hardware is only important to people who know nothing about software, because they think the hardware is like an engine in a car.  The reality is, however, that software is the gasoline/petrol that creates the horsepower the hardware is capable of. 

And that my good...whatever is a fact.

Atleast now I know you understand what im saying... now you just have to wait for that 'oh yeah' moment when you realise why 1080p capable hardware cant exceed 900p by most developers. (answer... inflexible software)



fps_d0minat0r on 21 April 2014
drkohler said:
toastboy44562 said:

PS4 cannot multitask and perform different operations like the Xbox One can

Ahhh.. toastboy at work.

Look, my Amiga 500 could essentially do the same multitasking as the XBox One and the PS4 can. granted it was somewhat slow (but I had a whopping 1.5MB of ram and a 32MB hd so that helped a lot). It is very cool that you think the XBox One is some kind of Multitasking wonder. Just fill up the available memory space with various programs and then some more programs and voila, your multitasking wonders will instantly disappear and we are back at Amiga 500 times. On the technical level, there is absolutely nothing that either console can what the other cannot do as far as multitasking is concerned.


wait what? he wasnt joking?