Xbox 2 specs leak

Wow. Those specs look amazing. Three 976 G5s? Each dual core?



Those specs blow the current G5 right out of the water.

I'm guessing the single core 976 is the chip that takes the G5 to 3 gig this year. (Not called the '980' then?)

I guess it will go dual core next year?

It's kind of revealed Apple's hand in the cpu arena over the next year or so...

All of a sudden, waiting for Rev B 970fx G5s doesn't sound so cool.

If Apple could release a Mac under 1K with specs like that? They'd sell 10 million of them!

Crikey, after all those years stuck on the G4? All of a sudden, Mac cpu power is going to go through the roof...

Lemon Bon Bon

Hmm three PPC 97x going into this console? Sounds a wee bit pricy to me, as the 976 mentioned is said to be a dual-core chip Apple would market as the G6. I mean, even with the reduction to 65nm, this thing is going to cost...

Nevertheless, if true, this is great news for Apple, since IBM can spread the money they invest into the 97x family much better. Makes me wonder what kind of MS-only features in the XBox CPU will be withheld from the Macs. And how Apple marketing is going to explain that they are selling Dual-G6 Towers for $2000 containing one less CPU than MS's $199 console

I like this quote:

"Internally, Microsoft has begun developing game prototypes, and it is using G5 systems to do so."

These games, I'm sure, will be very, very difficult to emulate on the PC side for a decade.

Shame there aren't many emulator programmers on the Mac to experiment emulating consoles that have very similar instruction sets as G3/G4/G5s (ie Gecko in the GameCube).

Ports of these games will probably be easier to do (well, the MS games won't be easier to do because MS won't ever allow their games to be ported off their console) and, god forbid, have G5 specific optimizations that will help get much better performance out of them than ever before.

Who knows though...I haven't seen many GameCube games come our way so why would Xbox2 games be any different.

Perhaps G5s MS bought a couple of months back were for their Xbox2 development team?

True but the original Xbox cost almost $400 to make and still sold for under $200. MS told its shareholders that it expected to lose a billion dollars...that's billion with a 'b'...in the first two years. Of course their plan is to get people off other gaming platforms and dominate that market the same way they do with PCs. Only MS has the resources -- and the complete lack of ethics -- to do this.

I say bogus.

why would a GAME console need 3 processors? let alone 3 dual core processors?

that's like people saying there are 16 CPU powermacs coming out! It's not going to happen.

I say it will get 1 processor. It will have to come with a Hard drive, and probably contain some DVR functions as well. It has to offer some serious improvements such as DVR, HDTV, etc if they are not going to be backwords compatible.

on the other hand, nintendo is also not backwards compatible, so maybe it won't be such a bad deal. But if the choice is to get a PS3 that will play all of my PS, PS2, and PS3 games, or an XBox 2 that will only play new games, I'll be sticking with Sony.

On the other hand, maybe IBM in a meeting said the following

MS "What is Sony using in their PS3?"

IBM "Cell technology chip"

MS "We want those in our Xbox."

IBM "Can't do that. They will only go into the PS3"

MS "Well... What do you have that would be equivalent"

IBM "to get the same power, you would need 3 or 4 of these top of the line 65nm G5s."

MS "Great! We'll take 3 for each Xbox!"

Xbox 2 will be the size of the current G5 tower!

i beleve these specs ... and i also beleive that santa will bring me one and the tooth farry will give me 1000$ for games and the eastre bunny is due to lay tiffany cuff-links any minute now

The Mercury News is San Jose's legit newspaper. The Register seems to be embellishing the actual leak with fabricated details as usual. If XBox 2 PPC is for real, then what would be the point of the using x86-64 or IA-64 as a development platform? How far off would Windows XP Pro 64-bit edition for PPC be?

For as long as I've known, the XBox 2 hasn't included a hard drive.

Related Info....

(1) MS now owns Virtual PC. By the time XBox2 comes out, they should have it tuned pretty well for the G5/G6. A 2 processor (doesn't anyone else find "3" odd?) XBox2 might do a decent job of emulating a PC. Not perfect, of course. Not good enough for games. But why do you need PC games when you can get XBox2 games? But maybe good enough for legacy apps.

(2) MS has WebTV experience and is getting semi-serious about Media Stations as well.

(3) MS has Windows NT 4 running on the PPC. Besides the pretty interface, there's not all that much different between NT4 and XP. Like Apple keeping OSX ready to run on X86 if it's ever needed, MS could be keeping XP ready to run on PPC if it's ever needed.

Why purchase both a PC AND a game station AND a set-top box when you can get all three for one low price (low compared to the combined cost of all three). Only want the game station? Fine. Don't buy VPC or WindowsXP-PPC and save some cash. Don't need to emulate the old stuff, but still want Windows? Cool. Buy everything but VPC then.

The only thing holding them back will be the DOJ, and they've got a couple years to figure that one out.

If they manage to release it at >$150(not $149) and it has half of what they are touting, it'll probably knock nintendo and sony around quite a bit.

Xbox wasn't very popular at first, but I think in the past few months it's really hiked up it's popularity, I haven't seen sales figures, but certainly they have ramped up the exposure/advertising, they seem to have found their niche with they(seemingly) excellent online service.

While the Xbox was never going to dethrone sony, it has set up a huge market, allowing Xbox2 a lot more foot room.

It's weird how these days so many people own multiple game systems, I remember back maybe 6-7 years we had a SNES, and that was like it, and that was a big deal! and I had some friends with SNES or Genesis, they never(or rarely) had both, it was almost taboo to have both.

now a days though it seems that more and more people are getting PS2s AND gamecubes or Xboxes AND PS2s...etc.


Either way, I never thought I'd say this, but the xbox2 sounds like it will be a pretty awesome console.

Hmm... How much power would 3 dual cored chips need???

Hey tak1108 see a differrent perspective below.




Simple multiprocessing is the wave of the future. There is simply no way for the game developers to get the performance increases they need without adding additional compute resources.

Look at it this way some PC games are now built to gain significant performance increases from SMP machines. This same advantage can be offered to a game console. The other relaity is that it will be cheaper to go with multiple CPU's running at a reasonable clock rate than to try to get a system that runs one cpu at 8GHz.

Then there is cell which contrary to popular belief is nothing more than a massive SMP system. For MS to effectively compete against such systems it has no choice but to go with SMP machinery.

Finally I'm not a gamer; but I do have to wonder why anyone would complain about more performance in a game box. PC's certainly are far from performing at an acceptable level, considering gaming is even more demanding I can't see where any rational gamer would object to more power.

Well again I have to disagree, SMP is the future (near future anyways) PC manufactures have no other recourse to meet the demands of software. Now we may not see 16 CPU PowerMacs this year but there is a very real possibility of seeing machines handling 4 thread of execution by the end of the year. OK maybe just inside next year.

The fact remains that IBM has already anounced that it will be supporting its version of SMT in future processors. That and the relaity that dual core PPC processors are a very real posibility at 90 nm much less 65 nm, the thought of having 8 threads of execution running on a PowerMac with in a year or so becomes a possibility.

Before you say we don't need it I'd have to say sit back and cool off a bit. How the current software base would make use of all those threads of execution is a toss up. Some packages would certainly take advantage of the resources, others would not. You can bet your bottom dollar though that software will be written quickly to take advantage of that capability. Actually I see Java as taking on a new significance in the face of easily accessible multiprocessing.

Again I'm not a gamer but I'd have to believe that MS has some capability to provide backwards compatability. Emulating an old i86 processor is a piece of cake these days.

Well if MS was serious about the market they would add a compatability mode for PS2 also.

Yep I could certainly see that conversation taking place.

This is where things get interesting, IBM has demonstrated significant power usage improvements in the 90 nm 970, if they can extend this then all will be fine at 65 nm. I would not expect that the PPC chips if used would be running at full speed anyways. Maybe 2 GHz per chip, maybe a bit less depending on power usage. Remember by that time 2GHz will be considered slow by PC standards.

An intersting question indeed. If IBM can continue their rahter dramatic power level drops then I can see such a processor running in the 10 to 15 watt range at maybe 1.5 GHz. It is a given that MS will not be using the fastest chips available, the pricing structure does not support this. So looking at it from this perspective they will probally look for a procesor that meets thermal limits more than clock rate desires.

The key here is that at 65 nm and with a little good luck for IBM nad their new process we may be seeing 2GHz in a thermally cool processor. Maybe that is a stretch, as I've suggested I don't expect MS to go top of the line anyways as the gameing environement can make much better use of SMP than it is today.

Dave

Er...yeh, whatever...now back to Janet Jackson....8)

Great news : i will buy one, and remove the three CPU : very nice and cheap upgrade for my G5

2GHz is considered slow for a few months in the PC world.

Games typically have many computing tasks going on that could easily benefit from MP systems. From computing the physics of the thousand rounds of ammo flying across the scene, to the behavioral computing for the AI units of each "enemy" in and out of the scene, as well as any other game relate computing task including taking care of user interaction.

As for desktops, well if the Hub is fully realized then there could be many calls to the central computer from any and every node of the hub at any one time. MP systems are better able to handle this type of multi tasking than SP computers.

so basically what you're saying here is that a "mini-cluster" central computing hub could become as necessary as a water heater?

The 'mini-cluster' could actually become useful *as* a water heater.

direct X 10, ported onto a PPC platform?
Seems highly unlikely to me.
Sounds more like a tech-geeks wet dream, than a consumer priced living-room appliance...

Not sure what you are saying. The XBox2 will definately be PPC based. Whether it has 3 of the things is more of the question. And it's the ATI card that will be doing all of the Direct X stuff anyway.

Those are total BS specs.

There are accuracies, and there are inaccuracies.


It doesn't matter how unlikely it seems to you, does it?

Programmer,
You seem to be having a little fun tonight. I just came from ars and you had a post on this topic there too.

There strategy has a big hole in it. When xBox was released there was 20Million PS/2's out there. Now there are 13 Million Xbox'x with demand decelerating and 70 Million PS/2's. I think MSFT's reasons are more covert. They are working on their own PC. They are adopting the Apple model, as they have exhausted the licensing fee strategy. The only way for MSFT to succeed in this endeavor is to make the next MSFT OS incompatible with x86 hardware and develop their own proprietary system.

It is impossible for MSFT to innovate while having to support millions of potential combinations of hardware and software. They see how fast Apple is innovating and moving OS X and they know every year that goes by is another 2 years Apple adds to its already four year lead it has over Windows.

And what or where does Apple have this lead in? General market share? Gaming console market share? I'm afraid you're comparing apples, oranges and badgers. (OS X, Windows, PS2)

Any concept that Microsoft is doomed is purely delusional. Microsoft doesn't have to innovate to "win," just make an overall profit every quarter (but that's the trick and the trap Microsoft is in -- but that's another thread). Oh sure, the Xbox endeavor might fail, but not soon and not without sapping Sony's market share and crushing all others.

As for the "Microsoft PC?" Right now, Microsoft is profiting on Windows sales by a greater factor than they are losing on Xbox sales.
Does. Not. Compute.

Screed

Three processor chips has got to be expensive. As people said, MS was losing a lot of money on the original Xbox and it only has one processor.

badger badger badger badger...

http://www.companymen.net/stuff/badger.swf




edit damn link wont work for some reason, just copy, paste, and enjoy

Microsoft does not need, (or most likely) want their own hardware to run Windows on. They didn't become the most wealthy company on the planet selling hardware. I think Microsoft is just having fun with some of it's money while trying to make products that people are asking for. I'm sure they would like to turn a profit, and doubt they will ever fold the XBOX no matter what happens, but I certainly don't see them trying to do their own hardware, and trying to kick Apple off the it's little niche.
Apple finally has something very profitable for them with iTunes, and the iPod, and will probably get up to %10 market share with Mac OS, and Macintosh within 10 years, but I don't see it as a war between them any more.
I don't think MS is trying to push Sony out either. I think with all the games MS has made over the years it's just didn't seem like a total mislead venture to them. Gaming is big business anyway, and having a piece of that in the future is a wise decision for a company of their size that can't really do much more with software than they already have. They need to diversify, but making their own hardware for the windows platform would be a mistake, and I'm sure they know that.

I agree with whomever suggested the leak mistook having two virtual processors a la hyperthreading (SMT) for a CPU being "dual-core."

That's why we have DirectX support on the Mac for all machines with either an ATI or an nVidia card, right?
Ummm, google for DirectX...

The original Mercury article stated Microsoft chose to reduce costs by eschewing a hard disk. How much sense does that make, when, in the same article, they say the company will include three ultra-expensive PPC's in the same unit, especially since 10G hard disks will be manufactured at the cost of somewhere in the range of $10-20 in 2005. The article is pretty damn inconsistent in that regard.

Microsoft's vision for the Xbox has always been for it to be a closed unit that all of its components are internal and not removable. They don't want to make it a PC (they already own that market). Furthermore, the console's biggest strength this generation has actually been its strength and this is strength is not just from its CPU or GPU, but from its hard disk, and its ability to be used as a data spool for unlimited virtual memory, keeping games performing great. Xbox has also gotten tremendous support from the PC games community, because of the familiarity a hard disk provides (and also because of similar architectures of DirectX and X86, but the inclusion of the HD has made development much easier).

Let's forget for a second that the entire reason for the console's existence is Xbox Live, Microsoft's online service. How feasible is this service without a hard disk on which to download levels, modes, missions, characters, etc.? A lot of the functionality of even Xbox 1, such as the ability to use custom soundtracks ripped from game CD's, disappears when you remove the hard disk. It will be just one huge step backwards from the standard Microsoft set with their own console, four years earlier. It also makes backwards compatibility impossible.

Just how much good will two let alone three PPC's be to developers? For a development community that can't get over PS2's architectural hurdles after three years, do you think they'll invest in all these proprietary multiprocessing and advanced threading engines? You forget, there's no OS overhead like OS X to provide the automatic resource shifting present on a game console (IIRC, you can't even saturate two processors with the same process in Windows, the SMP code is so primitive), so all of that has to be in the developer's own code, and requires more time and money.

Sony's plan with CELL is a bit different from the traditional game console, since it will handle stuff traditionally done by the GPU. Everything on the PS3 will be done through software rendering, which makes for scalability in graphics prowess and performance. Theoretically, one can just plug in another CELL unit and boom, added graphical robustness (increased textures, poly-count, etc.). I assume Sony's API's will automatically make games adjust.

There's just so much in this article that doesn't make sense. It's so backwards from the vision from what people have expected. Between removing a hard disk and blowing backwards compatibility to hell, MS would be losing far more repeat customers than they'd be gaining with the lower price and misplaced performance.

These story of 3 G5 is bs. There is bi processor, quadri processor, octo and cluster, but tri ?

Perhaps IBM will produce a dual core G5 and two chipsed chips. That would make more sense.
The power alone of a dual core G5 will more than enought to have stellar performances. (compare this to a PPC at 400 mhz or the pentium 700 ...)

There are in fact strings in AppleSystemInfo.strings that suggests that Darwin is ready to be put on a three way system. Link to Hardmac.com.

// String used to describe a triple processor configuration.
//
// IMPORTANT: Make sure the right hand side value contains the substring "%@".
// "%@" will get replaced by the processor speed and type string
// (e.g. "800 MHz PowerPC G3").
//--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"3xCPUFormat" = "3 x %@";

Is there any technical obstacle for doing three way systems? Why should it always be about power of two? This rumored Xbox Next is a six way system.

And now to something completely different:

Comparison:
Two singe core processors fabbed at 130 nm, 1.3 V
vs.
Three dual core processors fabbed at 65 nm, .9 V

I we assume that the transistor count per core is the same and the cost of a processor is directly related to the size of the die, then the latter alternative would cost two thirds of the former.
The cost of the CPUs in Xbox Next would be considerable cheaper than those in current two way Power Macs.

If we assume that IBM manages to reduce wattage when moving to 65 nm, in the same ammount that they did when moving to 90 nm, then the latter alternative would draw a bit less power than the former.
The Xbox Next wouldn't need as much cooling as the current Power Mac, and they would be more heat resistant too.

If we assume that Microsoft will be requiring 40 times the ammount of processor cores as Apple use today (10 million Xbox Next, 6 cores in each = 60 million cores, compared to 1 million Power Macs with 1.5 cores each = 1,5 million) then Microsoft will be in a better spot for volume discount.

If we assume that MS will use the "slowest" version of a processor-family then we're talking about parts running at 3 GHz. These will be cheapest and draw the least ammount of power of all the processors in that generation comming of the production line.

970 is the smallest high end procesor out there today, less then half the size of a Prescott. If Intel can make a fat margin out of selling cheap Pentiums ($80?) then so can IBM. Why do we assume that these processors will cost a fortune for Microsoft? Is it because Apple demands $3000 for a complete two way Power Mac? Is there a way for Microsoft to make a Xbox Next with the suggested specs for let's say $500? I think so. Especially considering that they are developing just one machine, and then making tens of millions of identical boxes.

That's a lot to assume, but I think it's doable. With that said, I really don't think the report is accurate. Seems a bit to extreme for me. But, either way, Apple will be paying a lot less for processors in the future. That's good!

That would make more sense, wouldn't it? Its also clearly silly to think that MS would go from 1 processor chip in the XBox to 3 in the XBox2 as a cost and heat reduction measure. Assuming for a moment that the rumour has some validity, surely that implies something about the one chip that they are going to use...

And as for having 3 processors, what is wrong with that? Why is everybody so fixated on having powers-of-2 processors? If your processor is, say, 100 million transistors and your chip can hold 300 million transistors (for optimal power/cost/heat/yield reasons) do you just waste a third of your space? That's like saying you can build a 2-car garage, or a 4-car garage, but not a 3-car garage.

This probably comes from processor word sizes always being a power of 2... but that is driven because that multiple needs to be quickly calcuable in hardware using shifts instead of multiplies. The number of processor cores is under no such restrictions.

Why do you think Apple will be paying less for processors? If MS is getting this much bang for the buck from IBM at the low price point, imagine how much bang Apple gets for more bucks? Apple's current price point gets them the margins they need to survive in the PC business, they cannot compete at the price points of mass produced fixed-design closed box consumer hardware. Completely different business model, and Microsoft has figured this out.

Ah. So either a triple-threaded core(!!!) or three cores on one die, with space the size of a 4th core free for an ASIC. Then you have a system-on-a-chip design, which wins on cost efficiency.

Re: Multithreading. The games don't have to explicitly support SMP for this to be useful. If you have concurrency, you can have system functions (sound, networking) running concurrently, which means the game can just tell another thread to "do this" and go right back to rendering frames. It gives the system vendor the ability to provide something other than bare metal to code to, which means easier ports and easier development, without the system getting in the way of the game. And, of course, if a game does decide to use the concurrent processing capabilities, they have a whole world of power to tap into for physics, AI, pre-rendering for instant transitions between levels, etc.