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http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?section_name=dev&aid=3668
Rob Fahey 16:04 23/06/2004
Latest leak from Microsoft's ATG looks like the real deal, according
to developers
A document purporting to be the currently planned specification for
Microsoft's next-generation console has been leaked onto the Internet,
and information in it tallies with what the company has told
development partners, gi.biz has learned.
Although the document, which claims to have been authored by Pete
Isensee at the Xbox Advanced Technology Group, admits that many of its
figures are subject to change, developers working on Xenon technology
have confirmed to us today that the details it contains are genuine.
The hardware overview outlines a system with three 3.5Ghz PowerPC G5
CPU cores, built onto one silicon die, a 500Mhz ATI graphics unit with
a 10Mb on-board framebuffer and 256Mb of main RAM shared between the
graphics unit and CPU system.
The document notes that the speed of the CPU cores, the graphics core
and the amount of RAM are subject to change in the final specification
for the system - so aside from being unsurprising in themselves, they
are only an indication of Microsoft's current thinking on the console,
rather than a set in stone specification.
However, a number of interesting additional features are revealed for
the first time in the document - and it is these which our development
sources have fingered as confirming the veracity of the leak.
The ATI graphics unit will have the ability to read directly from the
Level 2 cache on the CPU cores - effectively providing a 1Mb shared
"scratch pad" which can be accessed from all three CPU cores and the
GPU, a unique feature of the system which has not been widely known
outside the development community until now.
The document also reveals that the GPU will implement a number of
unique and powerful extensions to the pixel and vertex shader systems
in DirectX 9.0 - including the ability for shaders to fetch directly
from the console's main memory, which should open up the possibility
of implementing many previously impossible features in shader code.
Xenon is set to ship with a 100mb network socket (compared with a 10mb
socket in the Xbox) and USB2 sockets for connecting storage devices,
cameras, microphones and other such devices, according to the outline,
and will once again support four controllers.
The document does not answer the questions being posed about the
inclusion of a hard-drive in the system - stating only that no
decision has yet been taken, but that if one does not ship as
standard, it will certainly be available as an integrated extra. This
certainly seems to imply that the decision is being made on a cost
basis - with the hard drive being a non-essential component that could
potentially drive the manufacture cost of the console up drastically.
Interestingly, the outline acknowledges that developing games which
take advantage of the system will be "a daunting task," going on to
explain that "writing multithreaded games is not trivial." A number of
elements of the Xenon system software (a Windows NT based operating
system) will be designed to take advantage of the multiprocessor
nature of the system, it claims, while the Xbox ATG is working on ways
of offloading graphics work to the CPUs of the machine.
Developers working on Xenon technology to whom we showed the document
today confirmed that it tallies with what they have been told by
Microsoft about the specification of the new console - even down to
the continuing procrastination over making a decision on RAM size and
the inclusion of a hard drive, both issues which have not been solved
as yet.
"I've not actually seen this specific document coming from Microsoft,"
one developer told us this afternoon, "but there's certainly nothing
in there which doesn't fit with what they've been telling us. If this
is a hoax, which I doubt, it's a hoax so close to the truth that it
hardly makes any odds."
The document itself goes into far more detail about the processing,
graphics and audio systems on the Xenon console. It can be found in
its entirety on the Xbox-Scene forum, where we believe it originated.
Rob Fahey 16:04 23/06/2004
Latest leak from Microsoft's ATG looks like the real deal, according
to developers
A document purporting to be the currently planned specification for
Microsoft's next-generation console has been leaked onto the Internet,
and information in it tallies with what the company has told
development partners, gi.biz has learned.
Although the document, which claims to have been authored by Pete
Isensee at the Xbox Advanced Technology Group, admits that many of its
figures are subject to change, developers working on Xenon technology
have confirmed to us today that the details it contains are genuine.
The hardware overview outlines a system with three 3.5Ghz PowerPC G5
CPU cores, built onto one silicon die, a 500Mhz ATI graphics unit with
a 10Mb on-board framebuffer and 256Mb of main RAM shared between the
graphics unit and CPU system.
The document notes that the speed of the CPU cores, the graphics core
and the amount of RAM are subject to change in the final specification
for the system - so aside from being unsurprising in themselves, they
are only an indication of Microsoft's current thinking on the console,
rather than a set in stone specification.
However, a number of interesting additional features are revealed for
the first time in the document - and it is these which our development
sources have fingered as confirming the veracity of the leak.
The ATI graphics unit will have the ability to read directly from the
Level 2 cache on the CPU cores - effectively providing a 1Mb shared
"scratch pad" which can be accessed from all three CPU cores and the
GPU, a unique feature of the system which has not been widely known
outside the development community until now.
The document also reveals that the GPU will implement a number of
unique and powerful extensions to the pixel and vertex shader systems
in DirectX 9.0 - including the ability for shaders to fetch directly
from the console's main memory, which should open up the possibility
of implementing many previously impossible features in shader code.
Xenon is set to ship with a 100mb network socket (compared with a 10mb
socket in the Xbox) and USB2 sockets for connecting storage devices,
cameras, microphones and other such devices, according to the outline,
and will once again support four controllers.
The document does not answer the questions being posed about the
inclusion of a hard-drive in the system - stating only that no
decision has yet been taken, but that if one does not ship as
standard, it will certainly be available as an integrated extra. This
certainly seems to imply that the decision is being made on a cost
basis - with the hard drive being a non-essential component that could
potentially drive the manufacture cost of the console up drastically.
Interestingly, the outline acknowledges that developing games which
take advantage of the system will be "a daunting task," going on to
explain that "writing multithreaded games is not trivial." A number of
elements of the Xenon system software (a Windows NT based operating
system) will be designed to take advantage of the multiprocessor
nature of the system, it claims, while the Xbox ATG is working on ways
of offloading graphics work to the CPUs of the machine.
Developers working on Xenon technology to whom we showed the document
today confirmed that it tallies with what they have been told by
Microsoft about the specification of the new console - even down to
the continuing procrastination over making a decision on RAM size and
the inclusion of a hard drive, both issues which have not been solved
as yet.
"I've not actually seen this specific document coming from Microsoft,"
one developer told us this afternoon, "but there's certainly nothing
in there which doesn't fit with what they've been telling us. If this
is a hoax, which I doubt, it's a hoax so close to the truth that it
hardly makes any odds."
The document itself goes into far more detail about the processing,
graphics and audio systems on the Xenon console. It can be found in
its entirety on the Xbox-Scene forum, where we believe it originated.