FPGA & ASIC In XBox One? What Does This Mean For Xbox One?

There have been some rumors going around that the XB1's contain two significant chips that could push the XB1 to a new level. They are the FPGA & ASIC chips. Both are programmable chips, but what's fascinating about the FPGA chip is that it can be turned on and programmed AFTER manufacturing. It can be programmed by developers to do all kinds of wonderful things.

I'll let Mr. Oneaton tell you about FPGA's.

Pretty interesting stuff. What about ASIC's. An ASIC seems to be similar to a FPGA, but it's already preprogrammed. This guys tells a you exactly what an ASIC is and how it can be programmed. Real good information.

There have been several MS employees who worked on creating that XBox One that mentions these chips and XB1 in their resumes.

Saurabh Kasat

- "Working on verification and validation of XBOX one ASIC. "

http://www.linkedin.com/in/saurabhkasat

Cary Snyder

- FPGA & ASIC bring-up, debug/stress test i.e, XBox One DDR3 & SoC

http://www.linkedin.com/in/carydsnyder

Hsu-Kuei Lin

- Migrate XBOX RTL to 3rd party development kit through FPGA.

http://www.linkedin.com/pub/hsu-kuei-lin/27/15/37b

We know there are still NDA going on with the XBox One and this could possibly be one of the reasons. Developers being able to use FPGA to perform tasks the GPU/CPU would normally do is huge. No one knows how many of these FPGA or ASIC chips could be in the system if it's true. In any case this would be a game changer if developers started utilizing these along with DX12 and the cloud processing. Lots of the work being done by CPU/GPU would get offloaded, so things like 1080p, 60fps, shadows, shaders, AA, etc.. wouldn't be a problem.

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/184828-intel-unveils-new-xeon-chip-with-integrated-fpga-touts-20x-performance-boost

2015 should be interesting.

Watching game makers ignore all that? I guess if you're into that sort of thing.

Raw horsepower is what attracts devs. You think someone is going to pay more so they can figure all that out?

Developers don't know if FGPA & ASIC are in the XB1 or not. If it hasn't been activated, they wouldn't see it. Gamers won't need to understand any of this as all they'll have to do is look at the games and read what DF has to say. The XB1 is the same price as the PS4. So no one needs to pay more for anything.

No, you missed my point

Let's say these things are in the One ok?

That mean extra programing for devs, that means extra work, that means extra pay.

Just like the PS3, no one is going to do the extra work

Gah, I didn't see that this thread posted twice. I responded in the other one.

Well, I guess my question is this: Hasn't anyone actually physically looked to see if the chips are there? And if they are, what does it mean for the XBO?

Jaysonguy does make a good point, just because that great tech is there, doesn't mean that developers are necessarily going to take advantage of it. Though, hopefully if it's there, they will.

Personally, I guess I just want to know what kinds of things could be done with the ASIC and FPGA in the XBO.

Is your source misterxmedia TC because that seems to be the only place were I can find info about this rumor?

Actually it will be less work as developers wouldn't have to figure out how they can squeeze every logical command and process through the CPU and GPU. They can just send it through the FGPA instead. This will help make other tasks a lot easier in the long run.

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Yes, but I'm looking at the other links provided. The engineers who created the XB1 worked with FGPA & ASIC while working on the XB1. There are also several NDA's floating around for the XB1. Through interviews with developers, we know that Microsoft has given them information that they can't speak about. Microsoft themself has already said. We haven't told everyone everything about the XB1 yet." Of course, no one else is going to be talking about this because there is a NDA and it can only be leaked as a rumor. Same type of rumors we get from Thurway & CBoat in the past. This type of engineering is interesting though. If something like this is in the XB1 it would make a big difference with how the system performs and runs games & apps.

An FPGA would be amazing if the xbox one did indeed have one. Intel just announced that they are releasing a Xeon with an FPGA on package, so it's not uncommon. An FPGA would allow developers to tailor the hardware to their specific game, say a game needed extra floating-point hardware or a certain type of audio processor for an effect, it would take minutes to implement on an FPGA.

Here is a picture of a small development board I have sitting on my desk, the FPGA integrated circuit (IC) is the square chip to the right of the white "BASYS2" logo.

@Jaysonguy That is incorrect, FPGA implementation is probably one of the easiest things to do in the realm of programmable hardware. A high school student could learn to program one in a week, a game dev would maybe need a day. If the FPGA is inside the xbox, it likely comes with the IP for function blocks included so it would be literally as easy as choosing what functionality they need from a library. I think it would be mostly used for exclusives.

It takes 5 seconds to implement functions from an IP library, as shown in the second image, it's childsplay just drag and drop!

It would be easy to confirm if one were to look at the Xbox One's motherboard.

Oh Christ.

Oh no. That trolling attention spammer is one of the worst pretenders out there. He grabs onto new confusing tech and pretends it applies to Xbone. I don't give him any of my attention and I recommend you all do the same. misterX is a troll, plain and simple.

Bummer, would have been very interesting to see an FPGA on board of the Xbox One.

An extra spicy secret sauce?

This guy also knows the deal:

Daious said:

Well this thread is dead. Did TC really think Misterxmedia was a reliable source? Seriously?

He made it up. End of story. He does this thing all the time.

I remember when he was claming the xboxone had stack GPU when the designer explicitly stated it didn't. People look it apart and confirmed it too. But he went on and on.

The guy does this to get hits for his site.

Just like "OMG TEH AMAZING PS3 CELL PROCESSOR! IT CAN STOP ROCKETS IN MID-AIR, AND HACK NASA COMPUTERS - SO POWERFUL!". Yeah I see how well that turned out for them, as most multiplatform games ran and looked better on the Xbox 360. Developers aren't going to sit there for an extra 6 months trying to figure out how to squeeze the last bit of juice out of the Xbox One. Sorry, but this is just ambitious.

Like I said, I don't care who the source is, it's the links and information provided that I'm more curious about. The fact that engineers who were creating the XBox One were working on this tech with the XB1 make me wonder. If misterx is a troll then so must be Thurway and CBoat which every gamer and journalist seem to believe everything they say even when they are wrong most of the time. Also misterx doesn't even provide the majority of these rumors. They come from Insiders who work closely with developers and Microsoft employees. MisterXmedia just hosts the blog. So you're really calling the Insiders who provide him the info as trolls. If you have followed the blog for the past year you would know that many of the things said months ago have actually happened recently. Everything from new XDK system and updates to DX12 and various exclusives being announced. We knew about Horizon 2 and Master Chief Collection many weeks before it was announced at E3. You can believe what you want. Why are there so many NDA going on with the XB1 if we already know everything about it? Next year will be interesting. You XB1 haters need to stay off the XBox Forums.

Ugh. The comparison between misterx and thurway/cboat is completely erroneous. You should know this. Misterxpedia runs a blogsite to get ad revenue and makes up things to troll for hits. Any rumors orginiating from their site have been wrong. The only things that have been proven right are just things that don't originate from his site i.e. reposting. He just plays on the blinded fanboy fanbase for hits/$$$. He has never been right about the actual hardware of the xboxone.

Thurway/cboat have been right before and do not use their resources to run a blogsite. They aren't a business.

I mean come on man. He went on and on about a secret stacked GPU on the xboxone for a year. He went on about another master chip and was wrong. Even the actual designers of the xbox said he was wrong about the stacked gpu but he continued for another 5 months until the evidence was so overwhelming that he had to stop making it up. He then switched to another magical feature built in that didn't exist.

This is the guy who posts that there is a massive conspiracy theory that people are being brainwashed by sublimal messages to buy consoles other than xbox. I mean really? Come on.

There is a reason why no other major gaming site doesn't even refer his rumors because they are completely false.

There is no industry insider stupid enough to leak their information to a single site that has the reputation of making things up constantly and is wrong a majority of the time.

TDLR: MisterXpedia has absolutely zero credibility.

Thurway& CBoat have no credibility. They found out that CBoat was multiple people spread bogus rumors. So the rumors of a new XDK was wrong too right? lol!! They had said that on the blog long before it was announced. I'll wait and see and pass my own judgement when the time comes. The stacked GPU was always a rumor and it was on several sites. Albert said there wasn't another GPU, which is true. FPGA isn't a GPU.

Thurway and Cboat are not blogspam sites looking for hits.

Do you believe in MisterXpedia campaign on a subliminal messages that make you not want to buy xbox and buy playstations and other consoles? That came from their insider information too. Cboat and Thurway are not batcrazy guys spamming things to make $$$

I mean what freaking insider would pick MisterXpedia? I mean really? Come on.

Besides, no one here made a thread on Thurway or Cboat anyways. I don't make threads on those dudes. I don't even pay attention to many rumors to be honest. I don't follow those dudes either, but I know they aren't running a site for money to fill their pockets. Misterx is the worst. It's pretty obvious how horrible misterx is. It's really strange this gamespot user blackace is deliberately bringing up people like Cboat or whoever to deflect his decision to support a known troll misterx. He made this misterx thread and didn't even tell the users misterx was the source until he was questioned by a moderator.

Misterx, who gets paid by floating anything and everything to rabid xbot make-believers, and suddenly those that don't follow him are suspect? No, that's fanboy propaganda. Misterx's literal business is to fool people that don't have the capacity to understand and I'm not a customer. I support my Xbone and 360, I enjoy the exclusives, but I don't enjoy a troll like misterx who most likely laughs at these poor souls he makes money from.

N* please. CBoat and thurway were splashed all over SW last year leading up to the launch of the next-gen systems and even a bit after. Now that Thurway was caught in a couple of lies or misinformation, he's now trying to be friendly with Phil Spencer. lol!! Not sure how he getting paid from a blog. There are lots of blogs out there for every platform. He's not doing anything different then Thurway or CBoat, which is providing inside rumors of what's happening with a platform. The only difference is it's mostly positive things about XB1. With CBoat & Thurway it was never anything positive about XB1. It was mostly negative BS. Some of it was false information. I don't think I've ever saw any positive rumors about XB1 from Thurway or CBoat. MisterX has never gotten a dime from me. Also, I own both PS4 and XB1. So what's on his site never had any influence on me.