Different design, different OS
The news that AMD managed to score all three latest console design wins, including Wii U, Playstation 4 and Xbox One, is now finally official and while Wii U uses older generation hardware, both Xbox One and Playstation 4 are pretty much based on the same design and the same architecture, just with a different approach to it.
As you already know, both the Xbox One and the Playstation 4 are based on a custom-design APU that feature Jaguar X86 CPU part paired up with Radeon Graphics CoreNext GPU architecture. Despite the fact that they are both pretty much based on the same design they have a different approach and some differences that will make these two consoles quite different.
With Playstation 4, Sony decided to go with eight Jaguar X86 cores clocked at 1.6GHz and pair it up with Radeon GPU with 1156 stream processors, 32 ROPs and a 256-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface providing 176GB/s of memory bandwidth. Both the CPU and the GPU part share 8GB of that GDDR5 memory with no partition between CPU and GPU memory where both can access as much as they want.
On the other hand, Microsoft decided to go on a slightly different route with Xbox One. It also decided to use eight Jaguar CPU cores clocked at 1.6GHz but paired it up with weaker Radeon GPU with 768 stream processors and also feature 8GB of quad-channel DDR3-2133 memory for 68.3GB/s of memory bandwidth. The memory is shared between the GPU and the CPU in a similar way as on the Playstation 4 APU but Xbox One uses 32MB SRAM cache that operates at 102GB/s but also has much lower latency than the GDDR5 memory on the Playstation 4.
Another key difference is the actual software. While Playstation 4 uses a Unix-based OS with OpenGL 4.2 API, Microsoft has the upper hand with Windows NT 6.x kernel-based OS with DirectX 11 API that is more familiar to developers of PC games.
In any case, both consoles share a lot of similarities with PC and multi-platform production, or so called "porting", will be much easier once these two appear on market, something that PC gamers certainly will appreciate.
Source: Techpowerup.com.
As you already know, both the Xbox One and the Playstation 4 are based on a custom-design APU that feature Jaguar X86 CPU part paired up with Radeon Graphics CoreNext GPU architecture. Despite the fact that they are both pretty much based on the same design they have a different approach and some differences that will make these two consoles quite different.
With Playstation 4, Sony decided to go with eight Jaguar X86 cores clocked at 1.6GHz and pair it up with Radeon GPU with 1156 stream processors, 32 ROPs and a 256-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface providing 176GB/s of memory bandwidth. Both the CPU and the GPU part share 8GB of that GDDR5 memory with no partition between CPU and GPU memory where both can access as much as they want.
On the other hand, Microsoft decided to go on a slightly different route with Xbox One. It also decided to use eight Jaguar CPU cores clocked at 1.6GHz but paired it up with weaker Radeon GPU with 768 stream processors and also feature 8GB of quad-channel DDR3-2133 memory for 68.3GB/s of memory bandwidth. The memory is shared between the GPU and the CPU in a similar way as on the Playstation 4 APU but Xbox One uses 32MB SRAM cache that operates at 102GB/s but also has much lower latency than the GDDR5 memory on the Playstation 4.
Another key difference is the actual software. While Playstation 4 uses a Unix-based OS with OpenGL 4.2 API, Microsoft has the upper hand with Windows NT 6.x kernel-based OS with DirectX 11 API that is more familiar to developers of PC games.
In any case, both consoles share a lot of similarities with PC and multi-platform production, or so called "porting", will be much easier once these two appear on market, something that PC gamers certainly will appreciate.
Source: Techpowerup.com.
News by Luca Rocchi and Marc Büchel - German Translation by Paul Görnhardt - Italian Translation by Francesco Daghini
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