Microsoft’s New XBOX Scorpio To Be Powered By “Polaris” and “Zen”

Microsoft has just announced their new XBOX “Scorpio” 4K Ultra HD game console. This new console will be powered by a custom-designed SoC by AMD. This SoC will combine a GPU based on the “Polaris” architecture and a CPU based on the “Zen” microarchitecture. This is quite significant as it is a departure from using 8 smaller “Jaguar” cores and replaces them with stronger “Zen” ones. This chip could be built on the 14nm process.

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The SoC could feature a CPU with eight “Zen” CPU cores, with SMT enabling 16 logical CPUs, and a “Polaris” GPU with 6 TFLOP/s of compute power. The combined compute power is expected to be close to 10 TFLOP/s. For reference the new RX 480 features 5.84 TFLOP/s of power at its given clock speed. The power behind the new XBOX “Scorpio” should be able to power 4K Ultra HD, 1080p @ 60 Hz HDR, and VR solutions like the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift. Games for the console should take advantage of DirectX 12.

This is another big win for AMD as it will significantly increase their revenue, much like what happened in the past when the powered the last generation of consoles.

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