Xbox One Developers Given More CPU Power
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Developers will need to go forgo certain features to use it.
By Jenna PitcherMicrosoft unlocked more Xbox One CPU power for developers with the roll out of the console’s latest updates, according to a report on the console's leaked software development kit documents.
Eurogamer's Digital Foundry analyzed the November 2014 Xbox One development tools, firmware and documentation after a hacking group leaked the information over the holiday break. The documents reportedly reveal that since October, Microsoft opened up access to 50 to 80 percent of a seventh processing core (of the console’s eight) to developers.
The seventh is one of the two cores previously reserved for background system operations, similar to the PlayStation 4. The publication reports that to access the seventh core, developers will need to forgo using custom, game-specific voice commands and that infra-red and depth functionality of Kinect 2.0 is disabled.
Scheduling tasks will also cause headaches as the amount of CPU time for developers fluctuates and the operating system doesn't report how much CPU time is available to them. Microsoft will address these issues in a future update. Voice commands also automatically take up 50 percent of the core’s activity, potentially overriding assigned tasks.
Digital Foundry theorizes that the extra CPU power “may partly explain why a small amount of multi-platform titles released during Q4 2014 may have possessed performance advantages over their PS4 counterparts in certain scenarios.”
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Jenna Pitcher is a freelance journalist writing for IGN. You can follow her on Twitter.Microsoft a déployé il y a deux semaines une nouvelle version du SDK (Software Development Kit) de la Xbox One, qui a été mise à disposition des studios de développement. Il est question grâce à elle de permettre d'accéder plus facilement à l'eSRAM présente sur l'APU de la console, et donc d'en tirer plus de performances
,depuis une mise à jour du SDK de la console, déployée le 12 décembre dernier. Selon Maciej Binkowski, le Lead Game Designer de
Dying Light cette nouvelle version a assez largement facilité le travail de ces équipes à ce niveau-là. «
La nouvelle API nous permet de faire bien plus de choses avec l'eSRAM. Des choses que les développeurs ont toujours voulu faire, mais qu'ils ne pouvaient pas effectuer facilement. [Cette mise à jour] et de meilleurs outils nous ont permis d'augmenter significativement les performances de notre jeu, et d'ajuster notre utilisation de l'eSRAM », explique-t-il à Gamingbolt.