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Intrinsic on 26 May 2016
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mutantsushi said:

Is ESRAM or whatever Xbone uses amenable to 3d FinFET process?
I'm just thinking about how well that will scale and fit in to such an APU.
If it didn't, it would become disproportionately expensive (to maintain 2d structures).
If it does (and especially if it is MORE proportionately benefited by 3d) then it's OK to repeat that.

I see alot of people expect/want MS to have full/trivial BC with Xbone, which kind of needs same memory arch.
OTOH, devs ALREADY develop for Sony's memory model, so switching to that model won't be difficult either,
any game with Sony port can just draw from the Sony code, which is more straight forward anyways.
Even MS exclusives can release a patch to work on Xbox "Dos" (or whatever) memory arch (an easier switch than vice versa).

Doing that WILL likely strongely invoke the issues people had with PS4NEO announcement,
e.g. Xbone (original) releases will suffer because their architecture/optimization model is dead end.
(much more so than PS4/NEO who will share same overall architecture)

I kind of suspect MS will go that way, and since they're breaking trivial BC anyways,
they will go ahead and update the CPU side more than Sony is (supposedly retaining Jaguar, just upclocked).

Can't see why they can't put the ESRAM on the chip. Though it risks taking up space on the die which in turn limits how much else they can put on it like what hapoened to them with the ogXB1. But on a plus side they can now put a lot more of it, maybe 64MB or even 128MB and at an even higher bandwidth. This is the most effective way they can ensure BC with all existing XB1 games out already and ensure FC and BC going forward.

Another option would be to go with somwthing likE GDDR5x ram. That if clocked right could give them upwards of 300GB/s+ in bandwidth. With that kinda margin they could emulate the ESRAM allowing full BC. Only problem with that is going forward that would make it seem like the XB is made up of two entirely different platforms as opposed to one platform with two graphical presets. 

For these mid gen cycles to work, full BC is the single most important thing. It so inoortant that its not even considered as BC, its just scalability. Maybe there is something about the UWP that makes this all work.... maybe.