21–30 of 78 posts
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 only unusual thing here is that the GPU and Northbridge are the same chip.
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…
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.
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 di…
As I recall, the earliest Intel integrated graphics added almost nothing to the production cost of the chipset. The die needed a certain perimeter to support all the IO connections, and that left quite a bit of unused silicon in the middle. Putting GPU logic in that space was almost free (minus R&D), and only slightly increased the total pin count. Intel got to capture slightly more revenue per PC and deny a lot of revenue to competing chip companies making discrete GPUs.
The situation today is very different, with GPU and CPU on the same die and the GPU blocks taking up far more space than the CPU cores. The integrated GPU is an important part of the chip cost, and that means desktop processors often have worse (smaller) iGPUs than laptop chips.
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…
Why bother? Those who "pirate" will never convert to paid customers so why not let kids from some landlocked African country or rural India enjoy games?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yet
For 3 years. If it takes 3 years to crack and Sony can update in a few months (and force update or games won't run), cracks are uselss
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 di…
> 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) As I recall, the earliest Intel integrated graphics added almost nothing to the production cost of the chipset. The die needed a certain perimeter to support all the IO connections, and that left quite a bit of unused silicon in the middle. Putting GPU logic in that space…
It's a lot like what you see today with AMD's chiplets at 7nm connected to a central I/O die on 14nm. Just the classic systems were integrated at the board level instead of a special interposer.
EDIT: I wonder if the switch to serdes links instead of parallel buses (infinity fabric instead of hypertransport) is a large part of what made this idea useful again, reducing the number of off chip signals again for the CPU dies. I wonder if we'll therefore see a replacement for Intel's QPI if they switch to chiplets too.
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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”
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…
Why bother? Those who "pirate" will never convert to paid customers so why not let kids from some landlocked African country or rural India enjoy games?