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Xbox Architecture

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Re: Xbox Architecture

#11

Post by 4ec0755f5522 »

bluedino wrote: post #9
vmception wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well this is false. But I can say that I became disinterested in piracy when they made getting games more convenient than piracy. When they made using the hardware closer to its full potential part of the default experience. When they got the pricing right for these “premium” but pretty basic features. And of course, personally having the disposable income to afford the content because I would have never been a custo…

It’s still hard to beat “free”

I bought an Xbox just for gamepass. 200+ games, may not have everything I want to play but it always has something I fun I do want to play.

(Also xbox sales are often very good. I'm ok paying $10-20 (sometimes less!) for games).

I suppose it helps that my backlog is 6 years now; up until last week I was still playing games on 360/ps3.

Re: Xbox Architecture

#12

Post by wtallis »

saagarjha wrote: post #8

I'm just looking at the motherboard layout at the very top of the article, and it's really strange to my non-expert eyes. The CPU is off to one side, and the GPU is the thing in the middle. And the SDRAM is all split up and far away from the CPU! Is this some sort of game-console specific thing?

CPUs didn't have DRAM controllers on-die back then. The GPU is performing that function for the system, and the link between the CPU and GPU is the CPU's front side bus rather than PCI(e). The CPU and GPU are also close together so they can both be cooled effectively by the same fan.

Re: Xbox Architecture

#13

Post by [deleted] »

muricula wrote: post #5
favokus wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh, I'm confused. The PS4 has been cracked. Jailbreaks exist. And yes, they enable piracy. But like any console that is still being actively supported/updated by the manufacturer, it requires a certain firmware version (or below).

Yes. The talk was given by an xbox architect, and iirc he mentions he's not sure about the state of the PS4. It's a great talk and if you're interested in security you should give it a watch.

[deleted]

Re: Xbox Architecture

#14

Post by jsheard »

favokus wrote: post #3
transpute wrote: post #2

Xbox One architecture talk (2019): https://www.platformsecuritysummit.com/2019/speaker/chen/ > Every game console since the first Atari was more or less designed to prevent the piracy of games and yet every single game console has been successfully modified to enable piracy. However, this trend has come to an end. Both the Xbox One and the PS4 have now been on the market for close to 6 years, without hackers being ab…

Uh, I'm confused. The PS4 has been cracked. Jailbreaks exist. And yes, they enable piracy. But like any console that is still being actively supported/updated by the manufacturer, it requires a certain firmware version (or below).

That's true, but Sony has been successful in making jailbreaking unfeasible for most people. The only path to a jailbroken PS4 today is to find one that's been sitting in a drawer without being updated for over 3 years, and even if you get that far there's no workaround for the version check on newer games so you can't play anything (legitimately or otherwise) that require firmware newer than the last exploitable version from 3 years ago, which rules out quite a few killer app exclusives.

Unlike past generations you can't just brute force it with hardware modifications either, the security is so deeply embedded in the SoC now that there's no way to touch it. Without a software exploit you're shit out of luck.

Re: Xbox Architecture

#15

Post by acomjean »

4ec0755f5522 wrote: post #11
bluedino wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s still hard to beat “free”

I bought an Xbox just for gamepass. 200+ games, may not have everything I want to play but it always has something I fun I do want to play. (Also xbox sales are often very good. I'm ok paying $10-20 (sometimes less!) for games). I suppose it helps that my backlog is 6 years now; up until last week I was still playing games on 360/ps3.

My partner has a ps4 and some subscription thing (PS now?). It ends up being about 6$/month and new games are available each month (including some AAA). If each month you add them to your library you quickly end up with a backlog of more games than you can play.

games seems to loose value rapidly after they are released so some are very affordable.

Re: Xbox Architecture

#16

Post by easde »

saagarjha wrote: post #8

I'm just looking at the motherboard layout at the very top of the article, and it's really strange to my non-expert eyes. The CPU is off to one side, and the GPU is the thing in the middle. And the SDRAM is all split up and far away from the CPU! Is this some sort of game-console specific thing?

The architecture here is similar to old PCs (roughly before 2010) that had integrated graphics in the northbridge. The memory controller also resides in the northbridge. The CPU communicates with the northbridge through the front-side bus. Incidentally the northbridge also used to be responsible for high-speed I/O such as PCIe, so even if you had a discrete GPU it would not be connected directly to the CPU.

Over time CPUs have integrated all those features on-die, resulting in today's SoC-like processors where the "chipset" is merely an I/O expander connected over a PCIe-like link.

Re: Xbox Architecture

#17

Post by flipacholas »

saagarjha wrote: post #8

I'm just looking at the motherboard layout at the very top of the article, and it's really strange to my non-expert eyes. The CPU is off to one side, and the GPU is the thing in the middle. And the SDRAM is all split up and far away from the CPU! Is this some sort of game-console specific thing?

That design is called Unified Memory Architecture or 'UMA' and can save a lot of production costs at the expense of greater memory latency. The Xbox is not the first one to implement it (the N64 is another good example).

Re: Xbox Architecture

#18

Post by phire »

saagarjha wrote: post #8

I'm just looking at the motherboard layout at the very top of the article, and it's really strange to my non-expert eyes. The CPU is off to one side, and the GPU is the thing in the middle. And the SDRAM is all split up and far away from the CPU! Is this some sort of game-console specific thing?

The xbox (like many consoles, n64, gamecube, xbox360, wii, wii u, xbox one, ps4, switch ps5, XSX) has unified memory, as in the CPU and GPU share the same sdram.

The only way to do this is to have one chip (It's always the GPU. The GPU needs more memory bandwidth) connected directly to the dram, and the second chip (CPU) has to send memory requests to the second chip.

Though, this console dates to a time when CPUs didn't typically have dram controllers onboard. PCs usually relied on a northbridge chip to have the dram controllers, along with the routing to all peripherals (PCI/AGP) and present a nice tidy Front-side-bus that the CPU understands. In the case of the xbox, the GPU is acting as a combined Northbridge/GPU (a design that was common at the time in low-cost desktops and laptops)

Unified memory has a large number of advantages for consoles. It lowers cost. It gets rid of copying delays between GPU and CPU memory and it allows the game developer to dynamically allocate memory to the GPU or CPU depending on their needs.

Re: Xbox Architecture

#19

Post by dvdbloc »

Thaxll wrote: post #4
favokus wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh, I'm confused. The PS4 has been cracked. Jailbreaks exist. And yes, they enable piracy. But like any console that is still being actively supported/updated by the manufacturer, it requires a certain firmware version (or below).

None of the recent firmware have been cracked.

Yet

Re: Xbox Architecture

#20

Post by jariel »

vmception wrote: post #7
transpute wrote: post #2

Xbox One architecture talk (2019): https://www.platformsecuritysummit.com/2019/speaker/chen/ > Every game console since the first Atari was more or less designed to prevent the piracy of games and yet every single game console has been successfully modified to enable piracy. However, this trend has come to an end. Both the Xbox One and the PS4 have now been on the market for close to 6 years, without hackers being ab…

Well this is false. But I can say that I became disinterested in piracy when they made getting games more convenient than piracy. When they made using the hardware closer to its full potential part of the default experience. When they got the pricing right for these “premium” but pretty basic features. And of course, personally having the disposable income to afford the content because I would have never been a custo…

"And of course, personally having the disposable income to afford the content"

I think this is most of the story.

I mean, it's fun to hack, but a lot of people's ideology about a lot of things go out the window as soon as they have a regular job and can afford to buy regular stuff and see these things as pretty much regular products and services.

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