processor

Could the next generation Xbox run on an ARM-based processor? The possibility has been mooted ever since Microsoft’s FTC-related leak revealed that the firm was investigating which architecture to consider for a circa-2028 console. Would it be x86 or ARM? Would Microsoft collaborate on a custom chip with AMD or tap into the firm’s roadmap of upcoming technology? We never found out. However, Microsoft commentator Brad Sams found something interesting last week: a Qualcomm job ad discussing “the next generation of Surface and Xbox products built on Snapdragon solutions”. Based on his tweets, Sams believes the upcoming tenth generation Xbox will run on ARM – but how plausible is it?

Well, job ads are notorious as a poor sourcing for actual company strategy but can sometimes offer up some insights. This one, for a sales director, seems particularly slight – and after Sams’ reporting, the link stopped working, with the ad eventually re-appearing with all Xbox mentions deleted. So is this an unintended leak or just an error?

Based on everything we know about how Microsoft works, what its intended strategy is, and its comments on delivering the “largest technological leap ever in a generation”, it’s difficult to reconcile any of this with the notion of an Xbox console running on Snapdragon hardware. While Qualcomm has achieved incredible success with its Snapdragon processors on mobile phones, its collaboration with Microsoft on the Surface line has so far been unimpressive. I bought a Surface laptop with the fully enabled Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite, finding that gaming was a mess: the PRISM compatibility layer for running x86 code on ARM was missing key support to the point where many games would not even boot. Meanwhile, GPU performance was frankly awful with tremendous stuttering problems.

Xbox and Snapdragon is just one of the many stories within the latest edition of DF Direct Weekly.Watch on YouTube

• 0:00:00 Introduction
• 0:00:57 News 1: Nintendo reportedly not sending early Switch 2 review units
• 0:11:52 News 2: Should we criticize “forced ray tracing”?
• 0:32:03 News 3: Next-gen Xbox to use Snapdragon ARM chips?
• 0:43:03 News 4: Assassin’s Creed Shadows devs spill ray tracing revelations
• 0:59:11 News 5: Days Gone patch brings balanced modes, VRR support
• 1:13:27 News 6: John tests the Backbone Pro
• 1:23:23 Supporter Q1: Are we reaching the end of the home console era?
• 1:29:46 Supporter Q2: Should Halo run on id Tech?
• 1:38:38 Supporter Q3: Could Doom: The Dark Ages get a PS4 version? A Switch 2 version?
• 1:41:55 Supporter Q4: What happened to the review of Spider-Man 2 on PC?
• 1:48:33 Supporter Q5: What are your favourite memories of the Sega Saturn?

To base a new Xbox on Snapdragon hardware would see Microsoft facing huge challenges on every front. Interestingly, developing games on CPUs using the ARM architecture is possibly the least onerous problem. After all, developers got to grips quickly with Nintendo Switch, which ran a range of CPU-heavy games. Ultimately, it would all be down to how good the compiler is.

Graphics? Well, the latest Snapdragon processors do deliver the modern range of features. The Adreno graphics core does support ray tracing, for example. Snapdragon processors do ship with an NPU (neural processing units) that could have certain gaming applications: the Surface’s AutoSR upscaling is a very interesting piece of technology, while an NPU could conceivably handle frame generation too.

Where things start to get tricky is with compatibility. It’s hard to imagine even the most potent ARM processor being able to emulate the Zen 2 CPU of the Xbox Series X and Series S with the same level of performance – and it’s key for Microsoft to be able to assure gamers that its existing library of games will run (and run well) on its new hardware. Similarly, while the DirectX API does a lot of heavy lifting, shifting GPU architectures from one generation to the next is also going to cause problems. For that, there’s already a ready-made solution – certainly from the transition from GCN-based graphics in Xbox One and One X to the RDNA tech in the Series consoles, AMD baked in hardware backwards compatibility (which Sony benefits from too).

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Then there’s the whole question of what “largest technological leap ever in a generation” actually means and the extent to which a Snapdragon processor could deliver it. Both Microsoft and Sony face a unique challenge in delivering a tenth generation console: firstly, it needs an actual reason to exist bearing in mind how good the existing hardware is – and how limited the gains were with the PlayStation 5 Pro. Secondly, it needs to deliver this generational leap while still being affordable as a console should, which sounds almost impossible bearing in mind that Microsoft had just raised prices on its five-year-old consoles.

Ironically, it’s PlayStation 5 Pro that gives us some idea of where the platform holders are heading: sacrificing a much larger GPU in favour of ray tracing support and (inevitably) machine learning hardware. Moore’s Law may be alive, but the concept of cramming larger amounts of transistors – more logic – onto the same area of silicon is no longer cost effective. Microsoft itself knew this would happen, hence the creation of Xbox Series S, which as this classic DF interview reveals, essentially came about because the engineers could not foresee a scenario where Series X could be cost-reduced over the generation.

By confirming a tenth generation console, Microsoft and indeed Sony seem to have made the costs work for a future process node (TSMC 3nm being a likely prospect), but costs will be tight – and similar to PS5 Pro, expect that silicon budget to be less about extraordinarily large graphics hardware and more about a balance between graphics, RT and ML. Not much is known about AMD’s roadmap going forward but the unified UDNA graphics architecture (or a customised version of it) seems much more likely. There’s nothing to stop ARM being combined with UDNA on an architectural level, but remember, compatibility is king in a world where persistent digital libraries are so important and in that scenario, ARM is more hindrance than help.

And going back to the Qualcomm job ad, remember that the definition of Xbox is somewhat fluid. Is there any reason why a Surface device running the Xbox app isn’t an Xbox in the “this is an Xbox” era? With a planned mass diversification of Xbox devices, there’s plenty of room for a Snapdragon device of some description – and not just within the Microsoft Surface line.

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