November 22, 2007, 5:08 PM by ziggy
I've just watch Beowulf last week and the graphics blew me away. One day in the future we will be playing games with that level of fidelity but it certainly wont be in 2011.
http://uashome.alaska.edu/~jndfg20/website/buliwyf.gif
http://blog.spout.com/wp-content/uploads/beowulf-first-01.jpg
http://www.seelab.com/blog/images/angelina-jolie-beowulf.jpg

This is the first movie I've seen where the graphics and animation are so lifelike its almost impossible to tell them apart from real life.

November 23, 2007, 3:19 PM by chairmansteve
I'll add more speculation on the CPU, GPU, and RAM.

I think the three most likely CPU/GPU combinations in order are:

1. PowerPC CPU + ATI GPU = Xbox 360 Reloaded
2. AMD CPU + ATI GPU = It's AMD from top to bottom.
3. Intel CPU + Intel GPU = Intel gets back in the console game.

A 4th option may involve an nVidia GPU.

If AMD or Intel wins the deal but doesn't want to license its CPU IP, then MS would probably want a written agreement for the price and technology roadmap. For example, MS may want 32nm (2011), 22nm (2013), and 16nm (2015) revisions of the hardware.

Assuming that 4Gbit 5GHz GDDR5 32-bit chips will be available and suitable for a game console in late 2011, what RAM configurations are possible?

4x4Gb = 2GB memory with 128-bit interface (80 GB/sec)
6x4Gb = 3GB memory with 192-bit interface (120 GB/sec)
8x4Gb = 4GB memory with 256-bit interface (160 GB/sec)

I'm leaning towards either 4x4Gb or 6x4Gb, as 8x4Gb seems excessive.

What if only 2Gbit GDDR5 is available for launch?

4x2Gb = 1GB
6x2Gb = 1.5GB
8x2Gb = 2GB

8x2Gb can be enough by itself. But 6x2Gb and especially 4x2Gb should come with a 2nd memory, most likely slower and cheaper. 1GB Fast + 1GB Slow is the minimum.

November 23, 2007, 3:55 PM by Alex to chairmansteve
This is exciting again. And now is the time. Right now they are working on this stuff. There may be no sense in referencing ATI any more. Its really just AMD. I think MS gets the most leverage out of IBM/AMD which is 360 reloaded. It would pitch that bid against Intel/Intel. The pure Intel is the most compelling to me if MS can negotiate with them effectively. A pure Intel platform would likely rid us of the console divide. I think the outcasts IBM/AMD have a lot to lose and so does Intel. MS is going to have fantastic opportunities this time around.

January 6, 2008, 2:40 PM by Calgon
Hmmm weren't there roumers of MS moving into chip fabrication to do their own? I doubt that will happen or atleast not as soon as 2011 but its something to think about.

January 7, 2008, 2:38 AM by chairmansteve to Calgon
Chip fabrication? Very doubtful. Chip architecture design? Maybe. The most likely route is co-design. Microsoft may add its own coprocessor design for physics, compression, voice recognition, facial recognition, etc.

January 20, 2008, 2:19 AM by Airzonk
Here's my prediction.

Shaders will be gone. the CPU will be able to do all of the physics and raw graphics calculations to do realtime ray tracing. There will be no need for for a GPU/CPU combo because by then CPU will be powerfull enough to do that. I do see a seperate processor for AI being an option. Basically, all processing will be unified, much like RAM is right now on the console. That would make the next xbox easy to do BC without hardware issues because everything will be emulated via software.

If the CPU is cheap enough then we'll see some really fast unified memory but no more than 2 GB.

Games will no longer come on disks. Solid state memory (cartridge) will be back and cheap. Also, a solid state writable drive might make it's way onto the console depending on how far the tech has come by then. Perhaps a solid state/ HDD combo drive will be the best solution at that time.

January 20, 2008, 5:01 AM by chairmansteve to Airzonk
Shaders are software. That's like saying instructions will be gone. The shaders can determine how to build the world geometry, trace the rays, and compute the pixel colors. Pixar's RenderMan uses shaders. The future's so bright, I gotta wear shaders.

A CPU for all graphics calculations would be like Intel Larrabee. It's a "GPU" with many simple CPU cores optimized for streaming. But even Larrabee has some dedicated hardware for texture sampling. AMD/ATI may have a top secret project similar to Larrabee in the works too.

Solid state carts probably won't be large enough at a reasonable cost to distribute big budget games. Games in the 1GB range should be fine on carts. But maybe a new technology will change the game and allow 20-30GB on a memory card at low prices.

January 20, 2008, 9:26 AM by Airzonk to chairmansteve
Awwww fark it. By 2011, IBM and Toshiba will be done with the Emotion Engine and Cell's untapped potenshulz n' sheee and the xbox 3 will just be a cell processor with 500 SPEs and 10 Emotion Engine processors running in parrallel! That should be one hell of a console!

Developers will be able to go into the chip to make photorealistic graphics.

February 12, 2008, 8:16 PM by ziggy
Here's a thought. What if the next Xbox doesnt have an optical drive but instead has a 3.5" 1 Terabye HDD with all games downloadable from Live like Steam? Does that seem possible or are we likely to be stuck with blu ray on it?

February 12, 2008, 8:32 PM by chairmansteve to ziggy
What happens to the millions of people with no broadband? And the ones with a low monthly cap and overage fees? Maybe some new technology, maybe wireless, will solve the bandwidth and availability problems in a few years. Maybe Microsoft will partner with Cable TV, IPTV, and Satellite TV companies to host data on their closed networks.

Then there are the people who want to own physical media. That group may decrease with time, but they won't vanish within just a few years.

There should be physical media, at least optionally. Digital distribution shouldn't be forced on us, but a model without any optical drive is certainly possible.

http://forum.pcvsconsole.com/viewpost.php?pid=398279

If the next Xbox is backward compatible with 360 discs, it'll need a DVD drive.

March 22, 2008, 10:09 PM by Alex
Steve,
What do you say now that HD-DVD is out?

March 23, 2008, 2:14 AM by chairmansteve to Alex
It doesn't make much difference. Optical disc formats store the same bits and bytes. If the decision is that optical is needed, then Blu-ray and CH-DVD are two candidates with more than enough space. The factors are cost, a non-gaming feature (movie discs), and piracy.

CH-DVD would be interesting.

July 2, 2008, 1:26 PM by chairmansteve
After half a year, my estimate is mostly the same. I narrowed the launch window to just Q4 2011 or 2012. The hardware should be sold at a profit by 2013, so that 3rd party manufacturers like Toshiba and Samsung may license the platform.

Xbox 2011/2012 Specs
32nm Technology
IBM Six-Core CPU at 3.6-4GHz
ATI GPU at 700-900MHz
2GB GDDR5 Main RAM (Game)
512MB Auxiliary RAM (OS, Buffers, etc.)
250-500GB 2.5-inch HDD

The GPU could be very similar to the Radeon HD 4870. The render back-end may be different to accommodate eDRAM. And it may handle a bit more advanced instruction set or shader model. But the clock speed and number of parallel units could be very similar.

Xbox 2011/2012 ATI GPU (at 800MHz)
16 Render Units (12.8 Billion Pixels/Sec)
32-48 Texture Units (25.6-38.4 Billion Texels/Sec)
640-960 Stream Processors (1-1.5 TFLOPS)
32MB eDRAM

Xbox 360 ATI GPU (at 500MHz)
8 Render Units (4 Billion Pixels/Sec)
16 Texture Units (8 Billion Texels/Sec)
48 Shader Processors (240 GFLOPS)
10MB eDRAM

Radeon HD 4870 (at 750MHz)
16 Render Units (12 Billion Pixels/Sec)
40 Texture Units (30 Billion Texels/Sec)
800 Stream Processors (1.2 TFLOPS)

I'm still entertaining the ultra parallel coprocessor (array of mini-cores) idea. But a GPU with multithreading and compute shaders, both features of DirectX 11, should be able to offload physics and other streaming jobs from the CPU.

8-12 core CPU is possible, but 6 is enough. Base it on the Xbox 360 cores, but increase per cycle performance by improving branch prediction, thread synchronization, cache management, new instructions, etc. One core might be reserved by the OS for standard features and services.

I haven't decided on a single optical disc format yet. One scenario would be possible if Blu-ray/CBHD dual format drives exist. Games could come on CBHD discs, renamed to XD-ROM. More expensive boxes (e.g. Elite or something from 3rd parties) could have a dual format drive to add Blu-ray movie support. At the moment, Blu-ray for games might appear to be the most likely option, but we'll see what happens in the optical and solid state industries in the next few years.

On the software side, if games come on optical discs, I'd like HDD installation to be a standard option that works with all games. Cloud-based gaming is a possibility. Those are games rendered online with servers and streamed to the console like a movie. It could be great for MMO games. What else? Integrating TV into games may be a nice extra touch. Instead of predetermined video on a virtual screen inside a game, you could watch actual live TV channels.

July 2, 2008, 1:39 PM by Airzonk to chairmansteve
I still think the next gen consoles are going back to solid state media for games. One good thing about it will be the speed it takes load a game. Also, by 2010, I'm sure carts will be able to hold 20 GB and be cheap to put games on. Another plus is that as the memory gets cheaper and bigger, games will be able to be put on larger carts and old games will be able to go down in price pretty fast. So, you won't be limited in space for future games and cost of manufacturing games will go down.

It's also possible that a harddrive won't be needed as the game data that needs to be saved will go on the solid state media. Then, microsoft (or Sony or Nintendo) won't have to spend money on an optical drive or a harddrive, thus making the console cheaper.

July 2, 2008, 1:59 PM by chairmansteve to Airzonk
20GB in 2010? Got any particular technology in mind? The media has to be dirt cheap.

Holographic Versatile Card (HVC) holds 30GB and costs only $1 each. But the gotcha is the drive price at over $1000.

http://techon.nikkeibp.co.jp/english/NEWS_EN/20050608/105586/050608_hvc1.jpg#

SanDisk has 3D One-Time-Programmable (OTP) Memory that's similar to flash. It can only be written once, so that's good for distributing content. Nintendo DS may be using that, and DS carts are up to 256MB so far.

http://www.sandisk.com/OEM/ProductCatalog.aspx?CatID=1279