Nick Baker: XBox 360 Architecture | Going Deep

littleguru
<3 Seattle

Excellent interview, Charles and Nick. I enjoyed it a lot Smiley

Is there more stuff on the Xbox coming up?

scytherage

Now we know who to blame.
Sorry to say this, but with the three red lights of death plaguing gamers everywhere (myself included), I can't say that I 'admire' the design of the Xbox 360.

Surely the 360 is quite visually pleasing but the reliability of the machine is just horrendous. I would have preferred if Microsoft designed a very large and loud game console just like the original Xbox....so long as it can survive the rigors of daily use.

Don't get me wrong...I love the Xbox 360 and its games and I'm still a fan of the machine. But to live in fear that my 2nd machine can just die on me anytime (i had to buy another 360 again because my first was beyond repair and out of warranty)...that just sucks. There's no eloquent way of saying it. In my mind is the thought that I just spent over 800 dollars to play console games; the first 400 when I dutifully supported the machine at launch and the second 400 when I had to buy the damned thing again because my size of my game library just compels me to do it. I almost bought a PS3...MS is just lucky that at this time they just have better games, so....unfortunately, we gamers don't really have a choice (what? Wii? Are you kidding me? I'm not four years old anymore, thank you very much....)

And I know I'm not the first one to have my console die on me---there are thousands out there with the same problem. What I want to know is, is MS even bothering to DO SOMETHING about this issue or are they just ignoring it completely, knowing full well that letting 3RL happen is more profitable for them?

The game press [whether you like them or not] has also covered this issue extensively. It's not going away anytime soon. Someone has to answer for this problem one day. If and when the PS3 gets games worth having, then maybe that's the only time that MS is going to act on 3RL.

I just wish that MS would acknowledge that the problem is real, and start talking with gamers on how they're planning to get rid of it once and for all.

dot_tom

I totally agree that the RROD and noise problem need to be owned up to and addressed by Microsoft. I'm on my 2nd '360 now having pre-ordered the system back when it launched. I'm lucky enough to have a PS3 as well and there's no doubt that the '360 is my favorite machine by far save for the fact that it is insanely noisy. I'm really hoping the 65mn machines run quieter and cooler. The problem with the noise is that it constantly pulls you out of the experience. I couldn't imagine leaving my '360 on in order to run Folder @ Home in my living room. All my '360 owning friends agree that the '360 is the console you turn on to cover up the noise of construction crews digging up the street. Please Microsoft - fix it in this generation - don't leave it till the next. I'll buy a 3rd machine if you can produce a version that is at least as quiet as the PS3. With the PS3 I have to walk over and get a visual confirmation that I did remember to turn it off before leaving my appartment - that's the manufacturing quality bar you need to shoot for.

nektar

I am disappointed that you didn't ask many architecture questions. Not all of us know the architecture details anyway. How many registers, what about cache sizes and memory chips. How do the cores communicate? What protocol? How do you face latencies due to communication? How are multiple threads programs? All by hand or what? Do you use a different bus technology than the pc? Are you considering moving back to Intel now that the Core Duos have come out?
Even more advanced hardware questions. You had the man the architect in front of you and you left him walk away without the hardware questions. Have him describe the Power PC design, talk about the way that it handles out-of-order execution, what about pipe-line depths? He talks that it has three cores, how come you have 6 threads?
Then move on to software support of parallelism. You didn't ask almost anything. What about the compiler? How do it work on a Power PC architecture differently from the Intel one? Does it optimize for multiple threads? How is the OS componentized to run in that a parallel architecture? Does it work on one core or does the OS utilize all cores?
Then go on to ask about the other hardware int eh machine. It is wired up in a special manner? Do you take advantage of GPGPU, meaning graphics cards for general purpose computations in the 360?
Then talk about the future. What are you main concerns with the current design? Please have Nic answer the user problems voiced even in this thread. What about future improvements?
I know that some of this information is available onlie, especial the architecture details, but this is why we have an interview, to ask these questions without having to look them up. What about cache policy, synchronyzation protocols, new OS apis, give examples, how different are 360 executables from PC ones? Etc, etc.

littleguru
<3 Seattle

I don't think they would answer these questions... There is too much competition, NDAs and people trying to crack the system somehow...

mycroft

Good stuff. You should have gone on longer, you'd just warmed up.

Charles
Welcome Change

mycroft wrote:
Good stuff. You should have gone on longer, you'd just warmed up.

Nick's a very busy guy. Further, there's only so much technical detail we can go into...

I thought this interview was a good conversation about the past, present and future of XBox hardware architecture design and implementation.

System

I agree with Guru. Would love to see some more videos on Xbox. Would be nice to also have a few interviews with 1st party developers (like scoble's interview with Bungie)?

prencher

anon wrote:
I agree with Guru. Would love to see some more videos on Xbox. Would be nice to also have a few interviews with 1st party developers (like scoble's interview with Bungie)?

Bungie who? I want a Channel 9 at Epic interview Smiley