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A SEMINAR REPORT ON XBOX TECHNOLOGY

Report submitted to:

Department of Computer Science, GURU RAMDAS KHALSA

INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

JABALPUR(M.P.)

SUBMITTED BY:- ISHTDEEP SINGH

0202CS131006

SESSION 2014-2015

GURU RAMDAS KHALSA INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE &

TECHNOLOGY

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Acknowledgement

Apart from the efforts of me, the success of any seminar report depends largely on the

encouragement and guidelines of many others. I take this opportunity to express my gratitude to

the people who have been instrumental in the successful completion of this report.

I would like to show my greatest appreciation to Mrs. -------- I can’t say thank you enough for

his tremendous support and help. I feel motivated and encouraged every time I attend his

meeting. Without his encouragement and guidance this report would not have materialized.

The guidance and support received from all the members who contributed and who are

contributing to this report, was vital for the success of the report. I am grateful for their constant

support and help.

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Contents

S.No. Topic discussed Pages(from – to)

1. Abstract 4

2. Introduction 5-6

3. Consoles 7-10

4. History 11-13

5. Technical Specification 14-17

6. Xbox 360 18-22

7. Conclusion 23

8. References 24

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ABSTR ACT

The Xbox is a video gaming brand created by Microsoft. It includes a series of video game

consoles developed by Microsoft, with consoles in the sixth to eighth generations, as well

as applications (games), streaming services, and the online service, Xbox Live. The brand

was first introduced on November 15, 2001 in the United States, with the launch of

the original Xbox console.

That original device was the first video game console offered by an American company after

the Atari Jaguar stopped sales in 1996. It reached over 24 million units sold as of May 10,

2006. Microsoft's second console, the Xbox 360, was released in 2005 and has sold over 77.2

million consoles worldwide as of April 18, 2013. The successor to the Xbox 360 and

Microsoft's most recent console, the Xbox One, was revealed on May 21, 2013. The Xbox

One has been released in 21 markets around the world on November 22, 2013, with the UK

as its first country. The head of Xbox is Phil Spencer, who succeeded former head Marc

Whitten in late March 2014

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Introduction

The XBOX System

The Xbox is a video gaming brand created by Microsoft. It includes a series of video game

consoles developed by Microsoft, with consoles in the sixth to eighth generations, as well

as applications (games), streaming services, and the online service, Xbox Live. The brand

was first introduced on November 15, 2001 in the United States, with the launch of

the original Xbox console.

That original device was the first video game console offered by an American company after

the Atari Jaguar stopped sales in 1996. It reached over 24 million units sold as of May 10,

2006. Microsoft's second console, the Xbox 360, was released in 2005 and has sold over 77.2

million consoles worldwide as of April 18, 2013. The successor to the Xbox 360 and

Microsoft's most recent console, the Xbox One, was revealed on May 21, 2013. The Xbox

One has been released in 21 markets around the world on November 22, 2013, with the UK

as its first country. The head of Xbox is Phil Spencer, who succeeded former head Marc

Whitten in late March 2014.

In 1998, four engineers from Microsoft's DirectX team, Kevin Bachus, Seamus Blackley, Ted

Hase and DirectX team leader Otto Berkes, disassembled some Dell laptop computers to

construct a prototype Microsoft Windows-based video game console. The team hoped to

create a console to compete with the Sony's upcoming PlayStation 2, which was luring game

developers away from the Windows platform. The team approached Ed Fries, the leader of

Microsoft's game publishing business at the time, and pitched their "DirectX Box" console

based on the DirectX graphics technology developed by Berkes' team. Fries decided to

support the team's idea of creating a Windows DirectX based console.

During development, the original Direct Xbox name was shortened to Xbox. Microsoft's

marketing department did not like the Xbox name, and suggested many alternatives. During

focus testing, the Xbox name was left on the list of possible names to demonstrate how

unpopular the Xbox name would be with consumers. However, consumer testing revealed

that Xbox was preferred by far over the other suggested names and "Xbox" became the

official name of the product.

The Xbox was the second console produced by an American company since the Apple

Pippin ceased production in 1997, after the release of the Nuon in 2000. It Microsoft's first

video game console after collaborating with Sega to port Windows CE to the

Dreamcast console.

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publicly in late 1999 during interviews with Microsoft's then-CEO Bill Gates. Gates stated

that a gaming/multimedia device was essential for multimedia convergence in the new times.

He has even been quoted as saying "if we do not advance, to the next generation, we will

most surely fall behind our competitors (Apple)".

The Xbox was officially announced at the Game Developers Conference on March 10,

2000. Audiences were impressed by the console's technology. At the time of Gates'

announcement, Sega's Dreamcast sales were diminishing and Sony's PlayStation 2 was just

going on sale in Japan.The Xbox was officially unveiled to the public by Gates and guest

professional wrestler The Rock atCES 2001 in Las Vegas on January 3, 2001. Microsoft

announced Xbox's release dates and prices at E3 2001 in May. Most Xbox launch titles were

unveiled at E3, most notably Halo: Combat Evolved and Dead or Alive 3]

Due to the immense popularity of gaming consoles in Japan, Microsoft delayed the release of

the Xbox in Europe to focus on the Japanese video game market. Although delayed, the

European release proved to be more successful than the launch of the Xbox in Japan.

Some of Microsoft's plans proved effective. In preparation for its launch, Microsoft

acquired Bungie and used Halo: Combat Evolved as its launch title. At the time, Golden Eye

007 for the Nintendo 64 had been one of the few hit FPS games to appear on a console, some

of other ones being Perfect Dark and Medal of Honor. Halo: Combat Evolved proved a good

application to drive the Xbox's sales. In 2002, Microsoft made the second place slot in

consoles sold in North America. The Xbox Live service gave Microsoft an early foothold in

online gaming and would help the Xbox become a relevant competitor to other sixth-

generation consoles.

Popular launch games for the console included Dead or Alive 3, Amped: Freestyle

Snowboarding, Halo: Combat Evolved, Fuzion Frenzy, Project Gotham Racing, and Jet Set

Radio Future.

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Consoles

Xbox Xbox (console)

Xbox console with "Controller S"

The original Xbox was released on November 15, 2001 in North America, February 22, 2002

in Japan, and March 14, 2002 in Australia and Europe. It was Microsoft's first foray into the

gaming console market. As part of the sixth-generation of gaming, the Xbox competed

withSony's PlayStation 2, Sega's Dreamcast (which stopped American sales before the Xbox

went on sale), and Nintendo's GameCube. The Xbox was the first console offered by an

American company after the Atari Jaguar stopped sales in 1996. The name Xbox was derived

from a contraction of DirectX Box, a reference to Microsoft's graphics API, DirectX.

The integrated Xbox Live service launched in November 2002 allowed players to play games

online with a broadband connection. It first competed with Dreamcast's online service but

later primarily competed with PlayStation 2's online service. Although these two are free

while Xbox Live required a subscription, as well as broadband-only connection which was

not completely adopted yet, Xbox Live was a success due to better servers, features such as

a buddy list, and milestone titles like Halo 2 released in November 2004, which is the best-

selling Xbox video game and was by far the most popular online game for years.

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Xbox 360

Left: Xbox 360 Elite, Right: Xbox 360 S and new-style controller

The Xbox 360 was released as the successor of the original Xbox in November 2005,

competing with Sony's PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's Wii as part of the seventh generation of

video game consoles. As of June 30, 2013, 78.2 million Xbox 360 consoles have been sold

worldwide. The Xbox 360 was officially unveiled on MTV on May 12, 2005, with detailed

launch and game information divulged later that month at the Electronic Entertainment

Expo (E3). The console sold out completely upon release in all regions except in Japan.

The Xbox 360 introduced an expanded Xbox Live service (which now included a limited

"Free" tier), the ability to stream multimedia content from PCs, while later updates added the

ability to purchase and stream music, television programs, and films through the Xbox

Music and Xbox Video services, along with access to third-party content services

through third-party media streaming applications. Microsoft also released Kinect, a motion

control system for the Xbox 360 which uses an advanced sensor system.

At their E3 presentation on June 14, 2010, Microsoft announced a redesigned Xbox 360 that

would ship on the same day. The redesigned console is slimmer than the previous Xbox 360

model and features integrated 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi, TOSLINK S/PDIF optical audio output,

five USB 2.0 ports (compared to the three from older versions) and special port designed for

the Kinect peripheral. Older models of the Xbox 360 have since been discontinued. The first

new console to be released features a 250 GB hard drive, while a later less

expensive SKU features 4 GB internal storage.

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Xbox One

The Xbox One with the redesigned Kinect and controller The Xbox One was released on November 22, 2013 in North America, as the successor of

the Xbox 360. The Xbox One competes with Sony's PlayStation 4 and Nintendo's Wii U as

part of the eighth generation of video game consoles.

Announced on May 21, 2013, the Xbox One will place a large emphasis on internet-based

features; including the ability to record and stream gameplay, and the ability to integrate with

a set-top box to watch cable or satellite TV through the console with an enhanced guide

interface and Kinect-based voice control.

Following its unveiling, the Xbox One proved controversial for its original digital rights

management and privacy practices; while Microsoft touted the ability for users to access their

library of games (regardless of whether they were purchased physically or digitally) on any

Xbox One console without needing their discs, and the ability to share their entire library

with 10 designated "family" members, all games would have to be tied to the user's Xbox

Live account and their Xbox One console, and the console would be required to connect to

the Internet on a periodic basis (at least once every 24 hours) in order to synchronize the

library, or else the console would be unable to play any games at all. After an

overwhelmingly negative response from critics and consumers (who also showed concerns

that the system could prevent or hinder the resale of used games), Microsoft announced that

these restrictions would be dropped.Microsoft was also criticized for requiring the Xbox One

to have its updated Kinect peripheral plugged in to function, which critics and privacy

advocates believed could be used as a surveillance device. Despite showing a commitment to

user privacy, Microsoft still ultimately decided to allow the console to function without

Kinect

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Xbox (console)

The Xbox is a video game console developed by Microsoft. It was released on November 15,

2001, in North America, followed by Australia and Europe in 2002. It was Microsoft's first

foray into the gaming console market. As a sixth-generation console, it competed with

Sony's PlayStation 2, Sega's Dreamcast, and the Nintendo GameCube. It featured Xbox Live, a fee-based online gaming service that enabled subscribers to

download new content and connect with other players through

a broadband connection. Unlike other online services from Sega and Sony, Xbox Live

had support in the original console design through an integrated Ethernet port. Xbox's

successor, the Xbox 360, was launched in November 2005.

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History

During development, the original DirectXbox name was shortened to Xbox. Microsoft's

marketing department did not like the Xbox name, and suggested many alternatives. During

focus testing, the Xbox name was left on the list of possible names to demonstrate how

unpopular the Xbox name would be with consumers. However, consumer testing revealed

that Xbox was preferred by far over the other suggested names and "Xbox" became the

official name of the product.

The Xbox was the second console produced by an American company since the Apple

Pippin ceased production in 1997, after the release of the Nuon in 2000. It Microsoft's first

video game console after collaborating with Sega to port Windows CE to the

Dreamcast console. Microsoft repeatedly delayed the console, which was first mentioned

publicly in late 1999 during interviews with Microsoft's then-CEO Bill Gates. Gates stated

that a gaming/multimedia device was essential for multimedia convergence in the new times.

He has even been quoted as saying "if we do not advance, to the next generation, we will

most surely fall behind our competitors (Apple)".

The Xbox was officially announced at the Game Developers Conference on March 10,

2000. Audiences were impressed by the console's technology. At the time of Gates'

announcement, Sega's Dreamcast sales were diminishing and Sony's PlayStation 2 was just

going on sale in Japan. The Xbox was officially unveiled to the public by Gates and guest

professional wrestler The Rock at CES 2001 in Las Vegas on January 3, 2001. Microsoft

announced Xbox's release dates and prices at E3 2001 in May. Most Xbox launch titles were

unveiled at E3, most notably Halo: Combat Evolved and Dead or Alive 3.

Due to the immense popularity of gaming consoles in Japan, Microsoft delayed the release of

the Xbox in Europe to focus on the Japanese video game market. Although delayed, the

European release proved to be more successful than the launch of the Xbox in Japan.

Some of Microsoft's plans proved effective. In preparation for its launch, Microsoft

acquired Bungie and used Halo: Combat Evolved as its launch title. At the time, Golden Eye

007 for the Nintendo 64 had been one of the few hit FPS games to appear on a console, some

of other ones being Perfect Dark and Medal of Honor. Halo: Combat Evolved proved a good

application to drive the Xbox's sales. In 2002, Microsoft made the second place slot in

consoles sold in North America. The Xbox Live service gave Microsoft an early foothold in

online gaming and would help the Xbox become a relevant competitor to other sixth-

generation consoles.

Promotion

In 2002 the Independent Television Commission (ITC) banned a television advertisement for

the Xbox in the United Kingdom after complaints that it was highly distasteful, violent, scary

and upsetting. It depicted a mother giving birth to a small boy who was fired like a projectile

through a hospital window and who aged rapidly as he flew through the air yelling. As he

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soared across a large area, he passed quickly through stages of his life as though time was

passing him by. After aging into an old man, he crash-landed into his own grave. Dust and

smoke poured from the grave. The advertisement ended with the slogan Life is short. Play

more.

Discontinuation and successor

The Xbox's successor, the Xbox 360, was officially unveiled announced on May 12, 2005

on MTV and released in North America on November 22, 2005. Nvidia ceased production of

the Xbox's GPU in August 2005, which marked the end of brand-new Xbox production. The

Xbox was discontinued in Japan in 2007 immediately after 360's launch, due to poor sales in

the country. Sales were much better throughout Europe and North America where the console

was discontinued in late 2008 and early 2009, respectively. The last Xbox game in Europe

was Xiaolin Showdown released in June 2007, and the last game in North America

was Madden NFL 09 released in August 2008. Support for out-of-warranty Xbox consoles

was discontinued on March 2, 2009. Support for Xbox Live on the console ended on April

15, 2010.

The Xbox 360 supports a limited number of the Xbox's game library if the player has an

official Xbox 360 Hard Drive. Xbox games were added up until November 2007. Xbox game

saves cannot be transferred to Xbox 360, and the ability to play Xbox games through Xbox

LIVE has been discontinued since April 15, 2010. It is still possible to play Xbox games

with System Link functionality online via both the original console & the Xbox 360 with

tunneling software such as XLink Kai.

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Hardware

Xbox was the first video game console to feature a built-in hard disk drive, used primarily

for storing game saves and content downloaded from Xbox Live. This eliminated the need for

separate memory cards (although some older consoles, such as the Amiga CD32 used internal

flash memory and others like the TurboGrafx-CD, Sega CD and Sega Saturn had featured

built-in battery backup memory prior to 2001). An Xbox user could rip music from standard

audio CDs to the hard drive, and these songs were used for the custom soundtracks in some

games.

The Xbox was the first gaming product to feature Dolby Interactive Content-Encoding

Technology, which allows real-time Dolby Digital encoding in game consoles. Previous

game consoles could only use Dolby Digital 5.1 during non-interactive "cut scene" playback.

The Xbox is based on commodity PC hardware and is much larger and heavier than its

contemporaries. This is largely due to a bulky tray-loading DVD-ROM drive and the

standard-size 3.5 inch hard drive. The Xbox has also pioneered safety features, such as

breakaway cables for the controllers to prevent the console from being pulled from the

surface it rests on.

Several internal hardware revisions have been made in an ongoing battle to

discourage modding (hackers continually updated modchip designs in an attempt to defeat

them), to cut manufacturing costs, and to make the DVD-ROM drive more reliable (some of

the early units' drives gave Disc Reading Errors due to the unreliable Thomson DVD-ROM

drives used). Later generation units that used the Thomson TGM-600 DVD-ROM drives and

the Philips VAD6011 DVD-ROM drives were still vulnerable to failure that rendered the

consoles either unable to read newer discs or caused them to halt the console with an error

code usually indicating a PIO/DMA identification failure, respectively. These units were not

covered under the extended warranty.

In 2002 Microsoft and Nvidia entered arbitration over a dispute on the pricing of Nvidia's

chips for the Xbox. Nvidia's filing with the SEC indicated that Microsoft was seeking a

US$13 million discount on shipments for NVIDIA's fiscal year 2002. Microsoft alleged

violations of the agreement the two companies entered, sought reduced chipset pricing, and

sought to ensure that Nvidia fulfill Microsoft's chipset orders without limits on quantity. The

matter was privately settled on February 6, 2003.

Launch-era Xbox gaming units were made in Hungary and the controllers made mostly

in Indonesia.

The Xbox includes a standard AV cable which provides composite

video and monaural or stereo audio to TVs equipped with RCA inputs. European Xboxes also

included an RCA jack to SCART converter block as well as the standard AV cable.

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An 8 MB removable solid state memory card can be plugged into the controllers, onto which

game saves can either be copied from the hard drive when in the Xbox dashboard's memory

manager or saved during a game. Most Xbox game saves can be copied to the memory unit

and moved to another console but some Xbox saves are digitally signed. It is also possible to

save an Xbox Live account on a memory unit, to simplify its use on more than one Xbox.

Technical specifications

Controllers

Original Xbox controller

Xbox controller S The Xbox controller features two analog sticks, a pressure-sensitive directional pad, two

analog triggers, a Back button, a Start button, two accessory slots and s ix 8-bit analog action

buttons (A/Green, B/Red, X/Blue, Y/Yellow, and Black and White buttons). The standard

Xbox controller (also nicknamed the "Fatty" and later, the "Duke") was originally the

controller bundled with Xbox systems for all territories except Japan.

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The "Controller S" (codenamed "Akebono"), a smaller, lighter Xbox controller, was

originally the standard Xbox controller only in Japan, designed for users with smaller

hands. The "Controller S" was later released in other territories by popular demand and by

2002 replaced the standard controller in the Xbox's retail package, with the larger original

controller remaining available as an accessory.

Software

Operating system The Xbox runs a custom operating system which was once believed to be a modified version

of the Windows 2000 kernel. It exposes APIs similar to APIs found in Microsoft Windows,

such as DirectX 8.1. The system software may have been based on the Windows

NT architecture that powered Windows 2000; it is not a modified version of either.

The user interface for the Xbox is called the Xbox Dashboard. It features a media player that

can be used to play music CDs, rip CDs to the Xbox's built-in hard drive and play music that

has been ripped to the hard drive; it also let users manage game saves, music, and

downloaded content from Xbox LIVE, and lets Xbox LIVE users sign in and manage their

account. The dashboard is only available when the user is not watching a movie or playing a

game. It uses many shades of green and black for the user interface, to be consistent with the

physical Xbox color scheme. When the Xbox was released in 2001 the LIVE service was not

online yet, so the dashboard's LIVE feature was unusable.

Xbox LIVE was released in 2002, but in order to access it users had to buy the Xbox LIVE

starter kit containing a headset, a subscription, and supplemental. While the Xbox was still

being supported by Microsoft, the Xbox Dashboard was updated via Xbox LIVE several

times to reduce cheating and add features.

Games

The Xbox launched in North America on November 15, 2001. Its most successful launch

game was Halo: Combat Evolved. Its sequel, Halo 2, is the best-selling Xbox game

worldwide. Although there were several more popular second-party launch titles,

including NFL Fever 2002, Project Gotham Racing, and Dead or Alive 3, the early public

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reputation of the Xbox was damaged by the failure of Azurik: Rise of Perathia and other

games designed and marketed by Microsoft.

Although the console gained strong third party support from its inception, many early Xbox

games did not fully use its powerful hardware, with few additional features or graphical

improvements to distinguish them from the PS2 version, thus negating one of the Xbox's

main selling points. Sony countered the Xbox for a short time by temporarily securing

PlayStation 2 exclusives for highly anticipated games such as the Grand Theft

Auto series and Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty.

In 2002 and 2003, several releases helped the Xbox gain momentum and distinguish itself

from the PS2. The Xbox Live online service was launched in late 2002 alongside pilot

titles MotoGP, MechAssault and Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon. Several best-selling

and critically praised titles for the Xbox were published, such as Tom Clancy's

Splinter Cell, Ninja Gaiden and LucasArts' Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic.

Take-Two Interactive's exclusivity deal with Sony was amended to allow Grand Theft

Auto III and its sequels to be published for the Xbox. Many other publishers got into the

trend of releasing the Xbox version alongside the PS2 version, instead of delaying it for

months.

In 2004 Halo 2 became the highest-grossing release in entertainment history, making over

$125 million in its first day and becoming Xbox Live's third killer app after

MechAssault & Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six 3. That year Microsoft made a deal

to put Electronic Arts's popular titles on Xbox Live.

The last game released on the Xbox was Madden NFL 09, on August 12,

2008.

Services

On November 15, 2002, Microsoft launched its Xbox Live online gaming service, allowing

subscribers to play online Xbox games with other subscribers around the world and download

new content directly to the system's hard drive. The online service works only with

a broadband Internet connection. Approximately 250,000 subscribers signed up within two

months of Xbox Live's launch. In July 2004, Microsoft announced that Xbox Live had

reached 1 million subscribers; in July 2005, membership reached two million, and by July

2007 there were more than 3 million subscribers. By May 2009, the number had ballooned to

20 million current subscribers. On February 5, 2010, Marc Whitten posted on gamers

coreblog that Xbox Live support for the original Xbox games would be discontinued as of

April 14, 2010. Services were discontinued on schedule, but a group of 20 gamers continued

to play for almost a month afterwards by simply leaving their consoles on connected to Halo

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Sales

On November 15, 2001, Xbox launched in North America and quickly sold out. Its launch

in that region was successful, selling 1.53 million units three months after launch,

which is higher than its successor Xbox 360, as well as the GameCube, PlayStation 3, Wii U,

and even the PlayStation 2 and Wii.

The Xbox has sold 24 million units worldwide as of May 10, 2006, according to

Microsoft. This is divided out to 16 million units sold in North America, six million units in

Europe, and just two million units sold in Asia, Australia, and New Zealand.

The Xbox was almost always behind the PlayStation 2 in terms of sales, although in April

2004, the Xbox outsold the PS2 in the U.S. Despite lagging far behind the PlayStation 2's

sales, the Xbox was overall a success (especially in North America), keeping a steady second

place in the generation sales

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Xbox 360

Microsoft’s Xbox 360 game console is the first of the latest generation of game con-soles.

Historically, game console architecture and design implementations have provided large

discrete jumps in system performance, approximately at five-year intervals. Over the last

several generations, game console systems have increasingly become graphics supercom-

puters in their own right, particularly at the launch of a given game console generation.

The Xbox 360, pictured in Figure 1, contains an aggressive hardware architecture and

imple-mentation targeted at game console workloads. The core silicon implements the

product designers’ goal of providing game developers a hardware platform to implement their

next-gen-eration game ambitions. The core chips include the standard conceptual blocks of

CPU, graph-ics processing unit (GPU), memory, and I/O. Each of these components and their

intercon-nections are customized to provide a user-friendly game console product.

Design principles

One of the Xbox 360’s main design princi-ples is the next-generation gaming principle— that

is, a new game console must provide value to customers for five to seven years. Thus, as for

any true next-generation game console hardware, the Xbox 360 delivers a huge discrete jump

in hardware performance for gaming.

The Xbox 360 hardware design team had to translate the next-generation gaming prin-ciple

into useful feature requirements and next-generation game workloads. For the game

workloads, the designers’ direction came from interaction with game developers, including

game engine developers, middle-ware developers, tool developers, API and dri-ver

developers, and game performance experts, both inside and outside Microsoft.

One key next-generation game feature requirement was that the Xbox 360 system must

implement a 720p (progressive scan) pervasive high-definition (HD), 16:9 aspect ratio screen

in all Xbox 360 games. This fea-ture’s architectural implication was that the Xbox 360

required a huge, reliable fill rate.

A third design principle was programma-bility; that is, the Xbox 360 architecture must be

easy to program and develop software for. The silicon development team spent much time

listening to software developers (we are hardware folks at a software company, after all).

There was constant interaction and iter-ation with software developers at the very beginning

of the project and all along the architecture and implementation phases.

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This interaction had an interesting dynam-ic. The software developers weren’t shy about their

hardware likes and dislikes. Likewise, the hardware team wasn’t shy about where next-

generation hardware architecture and design were going as a result of changes in silicon

processes, hardware architecture, and system design. What followed was further iteration on

planned and potential workloads.

An important part of Xbox 360 pro-grammability is that the hardware must present the

simplest APIs and programming models to let game developers use hardware resources

effectively. We extended pro-gramming models that developers liked. Because software

developers liked the first Xbox, using it as a working model was nat-ural for the teams. In

listening to developers, we did not repackage or include hardware features that developers did

not like, even though that may have simplified the hard-ware implementation. We considered

the software tool chain from the very beginning of the project. scalability include the num-ber

of CPU cores, the number of GPU shaders, CPU L2 size, bus bandwidths, and main memory

size. Other scalable items rep-resented smaller optimizations in each chip.

Hardware designed for games Figure 2 shows a top-level diagram of the Xbox 360 system’s

core silicon components. The three identical CPU cores share an 8-way set-associative, 1-

Mbyte L2 cache and run at 3.2 GHz. Each core contains a complement of four-way single-

instruction, multiple data (SIMD) vector units.1 The CPU L2 cache, cores, and vector units

are customized for Xbox 360 game and 3D graphics workloads.

The front-side bus (FSB) runs at 5.4 Gbit/pin/s, with 16 logical pins in each direction, giving

a 10.8-Gbyte/s read and a 10.8-Gbyte/s write bandwidth. The bus design and the CPU L2

provide added sup-port that allows the GPU to read directly from the CPU L2 cache.

As Figure 2 shows, the I/O chip supports abundant I/O components. The Xbox media audio

(XMA) decoder, custom-designed by Microsoft, provides on-the-fly decoding of a large

number of compressed audio streams in hardware. Other custom I/O features include The

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GPU 3D core has 48 parallel, unified shaders. The GPU also includes 10 Mbytes of embedded

DRAM (EDRAM), which runs at 256 Gbytes/s for reliable frame and z-buffer bandwidth.

The GPU includes interfaces between the CPU, I/O chip, and the GPU internals.

The 512-Mbyte unified main memory con-trolled by the GPU is a 700-MHz graphics-

double-data-rate-3 (GDDR3) memory, which operates at 1.4 Gbit/pin/s and provides a total

main memory bandwidth of 22.4 Gbytes/s.

The DVD and HDD ports are serial ATA (SATA) interfaces. The analog chip drives the

HD video out.

CPU chip

Figure 3 shows the CPU chip in greater detail. Microsoft’s partner for the Xbox 360 CPU is

IBM. The CPU implements the Pow-erPC instruction set architecture,2-4 with the VMX

SIMD vector instruction set (VMX128) customized for graphics workloads. The shared L2

allows fine-grained, dynamic allocation of cache lines between the six threads. Commonly,

game workloads significantly vary in working-set size. For example, scene man- agement

requires walking larger, random-miss-dominated data structures, similar to database searches.

At the same time, audio, Xbox proce-dural synthesis (described later), and many other game

processes that require smaller working sets can run concurrently. The shared L2 allows

workloads needing larger working sets to allo-cate significantly more of the L2 than would

be available if the system used private L2s (of the same total L2 size) instead.

The integer execution pipelines include branch, integer, and load/store units. In addition, each

core contains an IEEE-754-compliant scalar floating-point unit (FPU), which includes single-

and double-precision support at full hardware throughput of one operation per cycle for

most operations. Each core also includes the four-way SIMD VMX128 units: floating- point

(FP), per-mute, and simple. As the name implies, the VMX128 includes 128 registers, of

128 bits each, per hardware thread to maximize throughput.

CPU data streaming

In the Xbox, we paid considerable atten-tion to enabling data-streaming workloads, which are

not typical PC or server workloads. We added features that allow a given CPU core to execute

a high-bandwidth workload (both read and write, but particularly write), while avoiding

thrashing its own cache and the shared L2.

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First, some features shared among the CPU cores help data streaming. One of these is 128-

byte cache line sizes in all the CPU L1 and L2 caches. Larger cache line sizes increase FSB

and memory efficiency. The L2 includes a cache-set-locking functionality, common in

embedded systems but not in PCs.

Specific features that improve streaming bandwidth for writes and reduce thrashing include

the write-through L1 data caches. Also, there is no write allocation of L1 data cache lines

when writes miss in the L1 data cache. This is important for write streaming because it keeps

the L1 data cache from being thrashed by high bandwidth transient write-only data streams.

We significantly upgraded write gathering in the L2. The shared L2 has an uncached unit

for each CPU core. Each uncached unit has four noncached write-gathering buffers that allow

multiple streams to concurrently gath-er and dump their gathered payloads to the FSB yet

maintain very high uncached write-streaming bandwidth.

The cacheable write streams are gathered by eight nonsequential gathering buffers per CPU

core. This allows programming flexibility in the write patterns of cacheable very high

bandwidth write streams into the L2. The write streams can randomly write within a window

of a few cache lines without the writes backing up and caus-ing stalls. The cacheable write-

gathering buffers effectively act as a bandwidth compression scheme for writes. This is

because the L2 data arrays see a much lower bandwidth than the raw bandwidth required by a

program’s store pat-tern, which would have low utilization of the L2 cache arrays. Data

transformation workloads commonly don’t generate the data in a way that allows sequential

write behavior. If the write gathering buffers were not present, software would have to

effectively gather write data in the register set before storing. This would put a large amount

of pressure on the number of reg- isters and increase latency (and thus through-put) of inner

loops of computation kernels.

We applied similar customization to read streaming. For each CPU core, there are eight

outstanding loads/prefetches. A custom prefetch instruction, extended data cache block touch

(xDCBT), prefetches data, but delivers to the requesting CPU core’s L1 data cache and never

puts data in the L2 cache as regular prefetch instructions do. This modifi-cation seems minor,

but it is very important because it allows higher bandwidth read streaming workloads to run

on as many threads as desired without thrashing the L2 cache. Another option we considered

for read streaming would be to lock a set of the L2 per thread for read streaming. In that case,

if a user wanted to run four threads concurrently, half the L2 cache would be locked down,

hurting workloads requiring a large L2 working-set size. Instead, read streaming occurs

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through the L1 data cache of the CPU core on which the given thread is operating, effectively

giv-ing private read streaming first in, first out (FIFO) area per thread. A system feature

planned early in the Xbox 360 project was to allow the GPU to directly read data produced

by the CPU, with the data never going through the CPU cache’s back-ing store of main

memory. In a specific case of this data streaming, called Xbox procedure

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Conclusion

Although featuring improved performance over the original Kinect, its successor has been

subject to mixed responses. It has been praised for its wide angle, its fast response time and

high quality camera. However, the Kinect's inability to understand some accents in English

was criticized. Furthermore, controversies surround Microsoft's intentional tying of the

sensor with the Xbox One console despite the initial requirements for the sensor being

plugged in at all times having been revised since its initial announcement. There have also

been a number of concerns regarding privacy.

The Xbox One console has a revised controller with forty improvements over the 360's

controller. This new controller is built to work with Kinect. The Start and Back buttons are no

longer present. It has impulse triggers that replaces the regular triggers. The button with the

Xbox logo will no longer bring up the Xbox Guide as the Xbox Guide Button on the Xbox 360

controller did. The button will now open up the dashboard without interrupting the game

currently being played by the user. Once pressed again, the Xbox will resume the game.

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2. "77 million Xbox 360s sold". Gamespot. Retrieved April 24, 2013.

3. "EXCLUSIVE: Xbox One Confirmed as Name of Microsoft's New Console".

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4. "Microsoft Confirms Next-Gen Xbox Announcement". IGN. April 24, 2013.

Retrieved April 24, 2013.

5. Gilbert, Ben (April 10, 2014). "Getting to know Microsoft's new Xbox lead, Phil

Spencer". Engadget. RetrievedMay 9, 2014.

6. "Satya Nadella email to employees on tuning our organization". Microsoft. 2014-03-31.

Retrieved2014-04-06.

7. "11-X, WEP, Midway, CyberPlayGround, FACE – the rejected names for Microsoft’s

first console"http://www.edge-online.com/features/11-x-cyberplayground-ehq-the-

rejected-names-for-microsofts-first-console/

8. "Microsoft Ends Xbox Live for Original Xbox Games and Owners - Yahoo! Voices".

voices.yahoo.com. RetrievedApril 22, 2013.