durango

I have been working with Microsoft for a while now and can share a few secrets about the next Xbox. Obviously I can’t reveal my identity as I would be fired and probably sued to hell and back if it became known that I had leaked this stuff.

Most of the stuff you have been hearing online is true. It’s going to have 8 Gb GDDR3 ram and ESRAM + 1.2 Tflop GPU and 8 core CPU. However, I can share some stuff about a new cutting-edge secret system that, to my knowledge, has not been discussed before. MS have definitely not abandoned the hardcore :)

I suppose you have been hearing about the powerful sound card in the new Xbox? It is there for a good reason. It’s going to be used in a new secret tool: the secret sonically augmented compute engine. From what I understand, the idea is to move data quickly around the system, with unprecedented bandwidth and low latency.

The system transfers data using sound waves. As sound travels at 340 m/s, this allows for extremely quick transfer of data. The data is stored in the different sound frequencies sent out. From what I understand, processing sound data is a lot more complex than processing ordinary computer ones and zeroes. For this reason, a lot of time has been spent developing good high-level software to help developers with this task. This is a new exciting field and breakthroughs are made on a daily basis.

However, at the moment MS is not quite there and most of this stuff will not be available at launch, which is why the ESRAM is in the system: to help out in the console’s early life. One problem that they have been working on is to decouple the sound waves in the system, from ambient sounds in the room where it is played, as well as voice commands from the player to the Kinect.

It is estimated that just a year into the system’s lifetime, the tools will have matured enough so that the ESRAM does not have to be used at all. Three years into its life is when the real benefits of this system will be seen as it can start to be used to increase the bandwidth of data movement. At the end of the generation, bandwidths of up to 1 TB/s are expected.

Due to the ever evolving nature of the underlying software, the system will have to be constantly online in order for it to be able to keep up with all the firmware updates. You will just have to deal with it. It will be well worth it.

I may have gotten some of the details wrong. I am an avid gamer, but not actually an engineer so some of this stuff is a bit above my head. I am actually working with Microsoft as an expert dog keeper. One problem which was identified early in the project was that the internal sounds of the console could be disruptive to the player and his/her family. For this reason, they opted to used ultrasonic sound waves for their data transfer. However, this could lead to problems if the player keeps dogs in their home. Imagine the PR backlash if use of the system would lead to distressed dogs. For this reason Microsoft have been working on various noise cancelling techniques.

This is where I come in. As an expert dog keeper I am able to tell whether Microsoft’s three in-house test dogs (Fenix, Cortana and Alan) show stress symptoms when a user is playing a game. We have been making progress in this area by using advanced techniques, but it is still not perfect. If worse comes to worst and we can’t resolve the problem fully before launch we will have to ship with Xbox-branded dog ear protectors in the box. I helped design those.

So there is still a lot of work and everyone is stressed. But we are also really excited and can’t wait to the reveal later this month!