Daniel Mason and Joonho Han

XBOX ONE ARCHITECTURE

AGENDA ● History ● CPU ● Instruction Set Architecture ● GPU ● Memory ● Operating System ● Xbox One and PS4 Comparison ● Summary

HISTORY

• Released on November 22, 2013

• Predecessors were the Xbox and Xbox 360

• Eighth generation of gaming systems

• Utilizes backward compatibility with many Xbox 360 games

• Around 20 million units sold

FULL XBOX ONE ARCHITECTURE

CPU - AMD JAGUAR • Runs on an AMD Jaguar APU • It uses 8 x86-64 bit cores, in the form of 2 quad cores, running at 1.75 GHz. • Jaguar is an improvement from its predecessor, Bobcat. • The size of the L2 cache is 2MB and is shared among all of its cores as opposed to the

Bobcat’s 1MB cache per core. • Jaguar uses 4 CPU cores instead of 2 like Bobcat. This leads to an improvement in

performance in multithreaded workloads.

BOBCAT VS. JAGUAR

ISA - X86-64 • 64 bit version of x86 instruction set • Main features include:

• Pointers and long integers 64 bits long • General-purpose registers expanded from 8 to 16 • Much of program state held in registers rather than on stack. • Better performance than traditional branching code due to conditional operations being

implemented using conditional move instructions • Floating-point operations implemented using register-oriented instruction set, rather than

stack-based approach supported by IA32

DURANGO PROCESSOR CHIP

GPU • It uses is the AMD Durango graphics processor chip which uses the Graphics Core Next (GCN)

architecture. • Uses a 28nm process • Has 768 shading units • Clock speed of 853MHz • The GPU core is relatively small. This is because there is a large 32MB of on-die RAM so there

is less space for the GPU.

MEMORY GPU:

• 8GB of DDR3 RAM

• 5 GB is reserved for games • 3 GB is used for utility software and the operating system

• The memory is connected using a 256 bit memory bus • Has a bandwidth of 68.2GB/s • Clock speed of 1066MHz

Cache:

• 32MB of ESRAM

• Has a bandwidth of 109GB/s for both writes and reads

OPERATING SYSTEM • Xbox One console runs on operating system that includes the Windows 10 core called OneCore. • OneCore is Windows-based operating system using the Hyper-V hypervisor (VMM) and Windows 10. • Hyper-V allows the Xbox One to create virtual machines on x86-64 systems. • Backward compatibility to Xbox 360 games is available by emulating a virtual Xbox 360 environment on the Xbox

One. • With Windows 10, Universal Windows Platform apps became available on Xbox One allowing for a single app to be

able to run on a variety of devices.

XBOX ONE AND PS4 COMPARISON

Xbox One PS4

AMD 8 core CPU AMD 8 core CPU

1.75GHz CPU clock speed 1.6GHz CPU clock speed

8GB of DDR3 RAM 8GB of GDDR5 RAM

1.31 teraflop GPU 1.84 teraflop GPU

SUMMARY • The Xbox One CPU uses an AMD Jaguar APU. It utilizes 2 quad core modules with 4 x86-64

cores on each. • The memory is comprised of 8GB of DDR3 RAM and 32MB of ESRAM. • The GPU runs on an AMD graphics chip codenamed Durango which uses a GCN architecture. • Operating system contains three partitions, one for the Host OS, one for running applications,

one for running games. • Xbox One has a better CPU while the PS4 has a better graphics.

SOURCES • https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~fp/courses/15213-s07/misc/asm64-handout.pdf

• http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2015-06-23-xbox-one-back-compatibility-supports-xbox-360-dlc

• http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/156467-xbox-one-hardware-and-software-specs-detailed-and-analyzed

• https://www.extremetech.com/gaming/171735-xbox-one-apu-reverse-engineered-reveals-sram-as-the-reason-for-small-gpu

• http://www.anandtech.com/show/6976/amds-jaguar-architecture-the-cpu-powering-xbox-one-playstation-4-kabini-temash/3

• https://www.extremetech.com/gaming/171735-xbox-one-apu-reverse-engineered-reveals-sram-as-the-reason-for-small-gpu

• https://www.techpowerup.com/gpudb/2086/xbox-one-gpu

• http://www.techradar.com/news/gaming/consoles/ps4-vs-xbox-720-which-is-better-1127315/2

• http://www.redgamingtech.com/xbox-one-the-hardware-specs-and-architecture/

• http://cdn.wccftech.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Xbox-One-runs-Windows-8.jpg

• http://wccftech.com/xbox-one-architecture-explained-runs-windows-8-virtually-indistinguishable/

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_One

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_One_system_software

• http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-the-complete-xbox-one-interview