At the center of the Xbox Series X is our customized processor leveraging the newest RDNA 2 and Zen 2 architectures from our companions at AMD to ship a greatest in school subsequent era processor delivering greater than 12 TFLOPs of GPU energy and greater than four instances the CPU processing energy of the Xbox One X. Xbox Series X consists of the very best reminiscence bandwidth of any subsequent era console with 16 GB of GDDR6 reminiscence, together with 10 GB of GPU optimized reminiscence at 560 GB/s to maintain the processor fed with no bottlenecks. As we analyzed the storage subsystem, it turned clear that we had reached the higher limits of conventional onerous drive expertise and to ship on our design aspirations, we would wish to radically rethink and revolutionize our strategy with the Xbox Series X.
Empowering Next Generation Game Design and Creative Vision
Modern video games require a big quantity of knowledge to create the practical worlds and universes that avid gamers expertise. To allow the processor to work at its optimum efficiency, all of this knowledge should be loaded from storage into reminiscence. The explosion of large, dynamic open-world environments and dwelling, persistent worlds with elevated density and selection has solely elevated the quantity of knowledge required. From environmental mesh knowledge, excessive polygon character fashions, excessive decision textures, animation knowledge, audio and video supply information and extra all mix collectively to ship essentially the most immersive sport play atmosphere for the participant.
Despite the power for contemporary sport engines and middleware to stream sport belongings into reminiscence off of native storage, stage designers are nonetheless usually required to create slender pathways, hallways, or elevators to work across the limitations of a conventional onerous drive and I/O pipeline. These in-game parts are sometimes used to masks the necessity to unload the prior zone’s belongings from reminiscence whereas loading in new belongings for the following play area. As we mentioned builders’ aspirations for his or her subsequent era titles and the constraints of present era expertise, this problem would proceed to extend exponentially and additional constrain the ambition for actually transformative video games. This suggestions influenced the design and growth of the Xbox Velocity Architecture.
Introducing the Xbox Velocity Architecture
The Xbox Velocity Architecture was designed as the last word resolution for sport asset streaming within the subsequent era. This radical reinvention of the normal I/O subsystem immediately influenced all facets of the Xbox Series X design. If our customized processor is on the coronary heart of the Xbox Series X, the Xbox Velocity Architecture is the soul. Through a deep integration of {hardware} and software program innovation, the Xbox Velocity Architecture will energy next-gen gaming experiences not like something you have got seen earlier than.
The Xbox Velocity Architecture contains 4 main elements: our customized NVME SSD, {hardware} accelerated decompression blocks, a model new DirectStorage API layer and Sampler Feedback Streaming (SFS).
Let’s dive deep into every part:
Custom NVME SSD: The basis of the Xbox Velocity Architecture is our customized, 1TB NVME SSD, delivering 2.four GB/s of uncooked I/O throughput, greater than 40x the throughput of Xbox One. Traditional SSDs utilized in PCs usually scale back…
