News AMD to design processor for Xbox Next: Team Red extends long-standing Microsoft partnership

[Admin]

Microsoft has officially confirmed a multi-year partnership with AMD to co-develop high-performance custom processors for both next-generation Xbox home consoles and new Xbox-branded portable gaming devices.

AMD to design processor for Xbox Next: Team Red extends long-standing Microsoft partnership : Read more

 

[bit_user]

Heh, if they had been talking to Intel, then I guess the partnership fell victim to Intel's 50% minimum margins policy.

It is cool that both next-gen consoles should now feature AVX-512, especially with Intel finally bringing that back to their client processors.

FWIW, I'd have put odds on Microsoft going with ARM, with their next XBox. Well, I guess it's good that I don't gamble!

 

[Aurn]

“In a rather unexpected turn of events, …”
Why was this unexpected?

 

[DS426]

Heh, if they had been talking to Intel, then I guess the partnership fell victim to Intel's 50% minimum margins policy.

It is cool that both next-gen consoles should now feature AVX-512, especially with Intel finally bringing that back to their client processors.

FWIW, I'd have put odds on Microsoft going with ARM, with their next XBox. Well, I guess it's good that I don't gamble!

ARM, so Qualcomm? It's an interesting idea, but I don't think MS wants to rock the boat the much, namely the additional challenge in maintaining solid backward compatibility. While Windows on ARM has been around for many years now, it still feels like Windows is the testing grounds, of course making regular users their beta testers like everything else up and down their product stacks.

Probably right on there with Intel's min margins policy. I then naturally wonder if that allows AMD to negotiate slightly better margins since Intel's waterline is known.

 

[DS426]

“In a rather unexpected turn of events, …”
Why was this unexpected?

Yeah, I took this as some kind of terrible form of humor.

 

[bit_user]

ARM, so Qualcomm? It's an interesting idea, but I don't think MS wants to rock the boat the much, namely the additional challenge in maintaining solid backward compatibility. While Windows on ARM has been around for many years now, it still feels like Windows is the testing grounds, of course making regular users their beta testers like everything else up and down their product stacks.

Qualcomm would've been the natural choice, but they also could've gone directly to ARM, as they did with their cloud CPUs. Another possibility might've been to use an AMD-designed ARM core, which I had thought might be one of the reasons behind AMD's Soundwave, except I heard a rumor that AMD is licensing designs from ARM for it.

Maybe what kept them in with AMD was the GPU, though. Regardless of what they might want to do on the CPU front, it would have to take a back seat to having the best GPU performance they can afford. RDNA4 looks quite solid, on that front.

The thing that slightly surprises me is how Microsoft was undeterred by AMD's close partnership with Sony.

https://videocardz.com/newz/sony-un...i-enhanced-hardware-in-collaboration-with-amd
​

 

[thestryker]

Heh, if they had been talking to Intel, then I guess the partnership fell victim to Intel's 50% minimum margins policy.

It is cool that both next-gen consoles should now feature AVX-512, especially with Intel finally bringing that back to their client processors.

FWIW, I'd have put odds on Microsoft going with ARM, with their next XBox. Well, I guess it's good that I don't gamble!

I think as long as AMD is putting out competitive hardware they've got the consoles on lock due to backwards compatibility. Should Microsoft do more of a convergence between Xbox OS and Windows then maybe that could change, but as things stand the software cost has got to be entering into the equation.

 

[rluker5]

I hope they put in at least Zen 5 for the CPU. This Zen 2 stuff has to be put to rest. Like Jaguar was before, it is the biggest drag on gameplay improvements.

When I heard the Witcher 4 was being designed to run on the equivalent of 10 year old CPUs at 60 fps on UE5 I realized it wasn't going to have appreciable npc ai improvements over the W3. Or have more than token interactions with the environment.

More of the same, but with different lighting, better textures and improved draw distance is just more of the same with improved graphics. May as well just do more remasters at that point.

 

[Heat_Fan89]

Heh, if they had been talking to Intel, then I guess the partnership fell victim to Intel's 50% minimum margins policy.

It is cool that both next-gen consoles should now feature AVX-512, especially with Intel finally bringing that back to their client processors.

FWIW, I'd have put odds on Microsoft going with ARM, with their next XBox. Well, I guess it's good that I don't gamble!

I did not know that Intel requires 50% margin? I think MS made the right choice going with AMD as they are the preferred CPU X3D choice for gamers. I'm not saying the next XBOX is getting an X3D CPU. 😏

 

[artk2219]

“In a rather unexpected turn of events, …”
Why was this unexpected?

Microsoft had been very whisy washy on whether they were going with AMD for their next console, and supposedly were considering a mix of ARM for the cpu, or straight up Intel for everything. So they basically pulled a 180 and went from "The future is unclear" to "Ayyyyy MD, YEAH!"

 

[rluker5]

I think as long as AMD is putting out competitive hardware they've got the consoles on lock due to backwards compatibility. Should Microsoft do more of a convergence between Xbox OS and Windows then maybe that could change, but as things stand the software cost has got to be entering into the equation.

So PC games aren't compatible across different hardware brands? I thought the difference was minimal and that you could play games on GamePass on all sorts of stuff as long as it was compatible with Windows. Every xbox game released since AMD started making Xbox hardware is compatible with PC.

Lock on hardware compatibility, whatever.

 

[rluker5]

Microsoft had been very whisy washy on whether they were going with AMD for their next console, and supposedly were considering a mix of ARM for the cpu, or straight up Intel for everything. So they basically pulled a 180 and went from "The future is unclear" to "Ayyyyy MD, YEAH!"

When you put it like that it sounds like a bargaining tactic and they finally got a deal they liked.

 

[thestryker]

So PC games aren't compatible across different hardware brands? I thought the difference was minimal and that you could play games on GamePass on all sorts of stuff as long as it was compatible with Windows. Every xbox game released since AMD started making Xbox hardware is compatible with PC.

Lock on hardware compatibility, whatever.

It's not that simple for Xbox games because they're not the PC version of the game. Every Xbox has run Windows variants, but none of the games have ever been compatible because they're designed for specific hardware. It's not the CPU which is the problem but rather the GPU. AMD can ensure that everything used from one generation to another has everything required to be completely compatible making the software side a non issue.

 

[artk2219]

When you put it like that it sounds like a bargaining tactic and they finally got a deal they liked.

That was likely the case if im being honest, that and they wanted to look around and see if they could put something better together with other vendors, only to find they couldn't. I mean I don't blame them for looking around, especially since its only done once every 6 -8 years, and it sets the hardware that they're going to support for the next 6 - 8 years after that. My hope is that they don't pull another Series S, the decision to seriously compromise the amount of RAM available between versions had pretty obviously foreseeable consequences.

 

[ezst036]

FWIW, I'd have put odds on Microsoft going with ARM, with their next XBox. Well, I guess it's good that I don't gamble!

AMD does have an ARM processor. Just saying.

Probability would say the XBox will have a Zen-based CPU in it, but as a percent an AMD ARM chip may not be zero. I would bet on a Zen chip myself.

 

[bit_user]

I hope they put in at least Zen 5 for the CPU. This Zen 2 stuff has to be put to rest. Like Jaguar was before, it is the biggest drag on gameplay improvements.

Zen 2 came out in 2019. The current consoles came out in 2020. Yes, it's getting long in the tooth, but so is everything else about them! It was a massive improvement over the Jaguar cores.

I'm really starting to wonder how much memory they'll have. Will they stick with unified memory, or use DDR5 for the CPU and GDDR7 for the GPU? If unified, will it be 24GB or 32? Could they really afford to put as much GDDR7 on there as a RTX 5090 has? At this point, I'd bet on 24 GB, especially if it's unified.

 

[bit_user]

So PC games aren't compatible across different hardware brands?

Apparently, at least on Sony consoles, games are optimized below the level of HLSL, down to the native ISA of the GPU. According to Sony, this is why the PS5 Pro didn't simply upgrade to a RDNA 3+ GPU, but instead retrofitted their RDNA 2-derived GPU with enhancements to ray tracing and AI. They said upgrading to RDNA 3 (or higher) would've broken backward compatibility, due to incompatible GPU ISA changes. I'll be interested to see what PS6 does about this! Will Playstations stay permanently forked down a RDNA2 lineage of GPUs?

I don't know if XBox supports games doing the same thing, or forces them to stay at the HLSL level. If they're restricted to use only Direct3D, then they should run on other GPUs, like Intel, Nvidia, etc.

 

[bit_user]

AMD does have an ARM processor. Just saying.

They officially killed the K12 project, a few years ago. Like I said, I thought Soundwave would be Zen 6-based, with an ARM ISA frontend, but I've since heard that it's just IP licensed from ARM.

 

[Mr Majestyk]

ARM, so Qualcomm? It's an interesting idea, but I don't think MS wants to rock the boat the much, namely the additional challenge in maintaining solid backward compatibility. While Windows on ARM has been around for many years now, it still feels like Windows is the testing grounds, of course making regular users their beta testers like everything else up and down their product stacks.

Probably right on there with Intel's min margins policy. I then naturally wonder if that allows AMD to negotiate slightly better margins since Intel's waterline is known.

Given Qualcomm has no runs on the board with a great gaming gpu why would MS even consider them at all. Current SD X Elite has a pretty poor Adreno iGPU so unless they are cooking up something that is giving 100-200% better in the next gen or two, who cares (I'm only talking about gaming)

 

[Xajel]

ARM, so Qualcomm? It's an interesting idea, but I don't think MS wants to rock the boat the much, namely the additional challenge in maintaining solid backward compatibility. While Windows on ARM has been around for many years now, it still feels like Windows is the testing grounds, of course making regular users their beta testers like everything else up and down their product stacks.

Probably right on there with Intel's min margins policy. I then naturally wonder if that allows AMD to negotiate slightly better margins since Intel's waterline is known.

Why Qualcomm? I mean you're talking about current MS ARM based devices which are created with Qualcomm SoC.

That's about to change, MS has an exclusive deal with Qualcomm for this in the past several years, that's why no ARM SoC maker did anything for Windows. But that deal is expired (or going to expire very soon), as more companies are rumored to work on ARM SoC for Windows including NVIDIA/MediaTek alliance and most importantly, AMD is rumored to be working on an ARM based SoC for MS next gen Surface devices.. Sure the rumors still says it will be using ARM reference High-performance core design, but AMD might do other parts (mainly the non CPU things like the iGPU) and could make some changes as well to the CPU design, but who knows.

 

[TerryLaze]

The shocking part here is that they will even make a new xbox...
I guess they need to to keep the name in the public consciousness.

Heh, if they had been talking to Intel, then I guess the partnership fell victim to Intel's 50% minimum margins policy.

That's gross not operating...
Gross is the margin between them and the foundry. (Only the cost of production)
Operating margin would be when they sell them outside the company.

 

[bit_user]

That's about to change, MS has an exclusive deal with Qualcomm for this in the past several years, that's why no ARM SoC maker did anything for Windows. But that deal is expired (or going to expire very soon),

Well, we can judge the timing by when the Nvidia/MediaTek SoC was originally supposed to ship, which was this year. I think AMD's Soundwave was also supposed to ship this year. For whatever reasons, both have slipped into early next year.

AMD might do other parts (mainly the non CPU things like the iGPU) and could make some changes as well to the CPU design, but who knows.

Yeah, AMD will definitely use their iGPU. Sadly, I think it's going to be RDNA3.5 - no other products for next year are said to be using RDNA4. You're right that they might tweak the core design, but I'd expect any tweaks to be limited to optimizations so that it works better with their Infinity Fabric.

It's still very exciting!

 

[-Fran-]

Heh, if they had been talking to Intel, then I guess the partnership fell victim to Intel's 50% minimum margins policy.

It is cool that both next-gen consoles should now feature AVX-512, especially with Intel finally bringing that back to their client processors.

FWIW, I'd have put odds on Microsoft going with ARM, with their next XBox. Well, I guess it's good that I don't gamble!

AMD can do ARM-based designs. The real question is if MS wants that or not. Perhaps that's the real reason why they went with AMD? They can indeed do ARM with their graphics IP, whereas Intel, Qualcomm and even nVidia (mostly because they're horrible to work with), don't have much to offer over AMD.

Not saying you're wrong, just to be clear, but it's another possiblity.

Regards.

 

[TerryLaze]

whereas Intel, Qualcomm and even nVidia (mostly because they're horrible to work with), don't have much to offer over AMD.

Mostly it's about AMD being the only one willing to work for pittance.

 

[LordVile]

AMD can do ARM-based designs. The real question is if MS wants that or not. Perhaps that's the real reason why they went with AMD? They can indeed do ARM with their graphics IP, whereas Intel, Qualcomm and even nVidia (mostly because they're horrible to work with), don't have much to offer over AMD.

Not saying you're wrong, just to be clear, but it's another possiblity.

Regards.

They can but the issue is that Apple is so far ahead of everyone with ARM it’s scary.

Biggest win here is the cross store thing they’re doing which is a big issue for Sony