Microsoft patents the 'infinite' Xbox - article
It is the cross and the delight of producers and users, which in exchange for technological stability that limits the purchase to the console and some accessories, does not require further investments other than the games themselves or the services connected to them . A recent patent application put in place by Microsoft relating to its next console would however seem to go against this assumption, laying the foundations for a console that can be updated with the passage of time, exactly as it happens for modern PCs.
The request to the American patent office number 20120159090 dates back to December 2010. The document was made public a few days ago and reported by this "Sonic" of the Beyond3D Forum. It describes the will of Microsoft to patent "versions of an architecture for a computerized multimedia system capable of satisfying quality of service (QoS) requirements for multimedia applications and video games, allowing platform resources, especially hardware ones, to evolve up or down over time. "
patent applications are submitted every day to the office of jurisdiction: what makes this request interesting is that the system described and revealed in these diagrams ( here you can find comprehensible images) shares the same lines as the design of the infamous system "Yukon" explained in the document on the Xbox 720 and emerged at the beginning of may. Comparing them with the dates of request and ascertained their authenticity, it is logical to think that it is the same material produced from the research and development sector of Microsoft at the moment she began to conceive the Project Durango.
The good thing is that the patent goes a lot more in depth compared to the document on the Xbox 720: much of that text is definitely obsolete, and the fact that it was circulated internally at Microsoft only "purposes of discussion" confirms these suspicions. In this case, however, we speak of schematic engineering related to the console that confirms the intentions of the marketing department. This time something is boiled in the pot, even if due to the age of the request, it is not said that you are either converting into a commercial project.
"in View of the age of the patent request, it is said that it is embodied in a commercial project."
the image attached to The patent application for a game console scalable, has amazing similarities with the document emerged on the specifications of the Xbox 720 circulated last may. The contents are quite clear: in the same way in which modern computers are built around the basic components (motherboard, CPU, GPU, RAM, and disks), Microsoft is preparing the basic architecture for a console that is able to evolve assuming the possibility of producing different models all based on the specifications of the version advanced by the document a few months ago. This paper theorizes a multi-CPU/GPU with different tasks. The first "pair" of the CPU/GPU is responsible for managing dashboards and streams audio/video media, and is the so-called "platform". The second pair is dedicated to games and is referred to as "application".
In the document come online some time ago, Microsoft spoke about "transmedia gaming": it is an idea based on the separation of resources for the game system, to allow the console not having to dedicate all of the system, only the three-dimensional rendering, but also to run in the background or in the foreground other applications that can enrich the game experience itself.
The examples given relate to a golf match broadcast live on the console that runs a game of golf that allows us to challenge in direct other human opponents. The applications also include interactive guides from the keep open while you play, chat, and so on. To do this, you need to rethink the structure of the console like that of a computer and adapt to the old adage that in order to do well a thing must be hardware dedicated and not shared resources the exploitation of which depends very often, or at all, by the talent of the individual developers.
The principle behind this patent is to provide the guidelines of an infrastructure that integrates the platform and application in a single system and allow the simultaneous management of these two entities in parallel. What changes radically compared to the past is the fact that it provides the possibility to mount on this common basis, the CPU and the GPU more and more advanced as time goes by. A diagram even the addition of a third platform support for CPU and GPU that can support the other two; the schematic does not clarify the purpose for what you might suspect that the underlying reason lies in the maximum expandability of the system.
"We foresee the possibility of being mounted on a common base for the CPU and the GPU more and more advanced as time goes by. "
Microsoft seems to have filed this patent with not a single scheme but with a significant number of changes to the design based around dedicated processors for 'platform' and 'applications'. The current design of the Xbox 360 includes a CPU Xenon three-core: this change of philosophy portends interesting developments for his successor. To curb some of the enthusiasm we find some substantial differences between the document emerged for error, and the patent issued: Kinect was represented with two cameras but now it's back to a single video capture device. This may suggest that you return to a connection interface via USB, a problem which we hoped could be resolved as the basis of many limitations in terms of latency related to Kinect current.
Then, in the light of this documentation, as we need to consider in this case, the life cycle of a ten-year manufacturers nowadays promote for the current generation console? Probably Microsoft realized that another long cycle like this without a significant evolution of the hardware could be a problem for the potential developers, and then the quality of the games. Certainly, with the assumptions of the kind you scardinerebbe completely the dogma that the console is a hardware or crystallized in time. And if the next generation of console does not answer these requirements, or at least not in the medium and long term?
The fact is that the patent can be interpreted also in the sense that different versions of the console may be marketed with different multimedia capabilities, confirming the intention of Microsoft not to tie itself to a single definition of the product since its conception. Taking the example of the iPad, the games are running on different versions of this smartphone: the more powerful the hardware, the better the final experience. If we combine this model with the subscription of the Microsoft "buy now, pay every month", the possibility that the next Xbox will be a new kind of platform evolution will increase greatly.
This would solve the problem of computational power, today virtually stop if compared to that of the desktop, not to mention the current evolution of mobile devices. Remain, however, strong doubts about the backward compatibility of the games: that Microsoft choose the architecture expandable, or decide to produce different models in the same family, I do not see how it is possible to obtain remarkable results without breaking the catalog titles that can only run on certain versions of the console or other securities that are playable with different performances depending on the model owned. Just in case you decide to bet on a common base expandable with the passage of time, the items turn lately that give "Infinity" as the possible name of the next Xbox, take on a different consistency.
science Fiction? Likely, given what we have heard so far regarding the Project Durango points to a design of the console totally traditional, and that this patent application is old a year and a half. As always happens, many of these requests are then often rejected for legal reasons, and few are going to turn into a finished product. However, the connections with the document surfaced on the Durango are anything but random, and we will provide a series of interesting clues on what could be the philosophy at the base of the next-gen on which Microsoft is working.
Translation by Matthew "Elvin" Lorenzetti.
