Today, Xbox explained how the Xbox Velocity Architecture – the soul of Xbox Series X – was designed to unlock new next-gen gameplay experiences and a level of depth and immersion unlike anything previously experienced in console gaming.
If this sounds familiar, it is essentially exactly what Mark Cerny did when he presented the power of PlayStation 5 in the form of a GDC talk.
A lot of the post is technical but it’s also worth checking out if you’re curious about the components powering the Xbox Series X. The way it is built shows that each component complements each other, creating a powerful piece of technology that will deliver some exciting experiences.
Let’s dive deep into each component:
- Custom NVME SSD: The foundation of the Xbox Velocity Architecture is our custom, 1TB NVME SSD, delivering 2.4 GB/s of raw I/O throughput, more than 40x the throughput of Xbox One.
- Hardware Accelerated Decompression: Game packages and assets are compressed to minimize download times and the amount of storage required for each individual game. With hardware-accelerated support for both the industry-standard LZ decompressor as well as a brand new, proprietary algorithm specifically designed for texture data named BCPack, Xbox Series X provides the best of both worlds for developers to achieve massive savings with no loss in quality or performance.
- New DirectStorage API: Added a brand new DirectStorage API to the DirectX family, providing developers with fine-grain control of their I/O operations empowering them to establish multiple I/O queues, prioritization and minimizing I/O latency.
- Sampler Feedback Streaming (SFS): This innovation results in approximately 2.5x the effective I/O throughput and memory usage above and beyond the raw hardware capabilities on average. SFS provides an effective multiplier on available system memory and I/O bandwidth, resulting in significantly more memory and I/O throughput available to make your game richer and more immersive.
