Sorry, saw the video. So it sounds like they are talking cluster or distributed processing ala Folding @ home that was already done 10 years ago on the PS3. I even make a Beowulf cluster myself and have been a huge advocate of distributed processing, but using home consoles to aid isn't going to get you much in the way of processor cycles at all. I can only think that they may leverage them as download caches the way Windows 10 does for updates because that's not real-time or latency sensitive.

Anyway, as far as most of the other stuff he's talking about Sony, already does it but without the marketing spin. Example. PSvita and PSTV and all their Bravia TV, android apps etc are all less powerful than PS3s but they ran cloud PS3 games from the cloud. Sony was way ahead of its time in that regard. I can go into more detail later but want to respond to others.

This is a good example and I'll explain what this means. If your service is dynamically switching between the PC and Xbox version of the game based on the hardware you are playing from then there is not guarantee of save compatibility. So if you are playing from your Xbox you see you xbox saves and friends. But then you jump to you PC, or iPad or tablet and suddenly you have to start the game over with nothing and none of you Live friends appear. This is why the customer experience is important and emulating that experience for consistency is paramount. Otherwise you're just going to piss off a bunch of customers who dropped hours into a game and don't understand why their game saves aren't saved or transferable.

Remember not every game is an Xbox Playanywhere game and of the thousands of Xog, X360, and Xb1 games on 95 titles are Play anywhere enabled, meaning if you were to do the switching you were talking about, its almost a certainty your game saves would be incompatible and unable to transfer.

So, this is the part you are missing. For compatibility and consistent end user experience MS needs, no MUST have a consistent end user experience where the user can pick up where they left off. To do this, they can't have a scenario where the game flips back and forth between the PC and Xbox version. MS decided the easiest way to accommodate this is to just make all XB1 games cloud enabled, which does solve that immediate problem, but forces them to have cloud hardware to run games developed to run on Xbox hardware. Their solution: put Xbox hardware in the cloud.

That's basically where this is all being laid. However, the way they are posing it still makes sense in the event they want to ensure all the same auxillary services are supported and consistent on everything from an iPad, to an android phone, to a PC. Emulating these auxillary services would ensure service and experience parity between any device they run on so in the short run it makes sense if their intention is just to get the Xbox experience on as many devices as possible. Just want to add, because I thought about them flipping between PC and console versions of a game and it wouldn't make sense because the saves wouldn't transfer.

1) Here's their full blog complete with an xCloud blade animation. https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2018/10/08/project-xcloud-gaming-with-you-at-the-center/

About Project xCloud

Scaling and building out Project xCloud is a multi-year journey for us. We’ll begin public trials in 2019 so we can learn and scale with different volumes and locations. Our focus is on delivering an amazing added experience to existing Xbox players and on empowering developers to scale to hundreds of millions of new players across devices. Our goal with Project xCloud is to deliver a quality experience for all gamers on all devices that’s consistent with the speed and high-fidelity gamers experience and expect on their PCs and consoles.

We’ve enabled compatibility with existing and future Xbox games by building out custom hardware for our datacenters that leverages our years of console and platform experience. We’ve architected a new customizable blade that can host the component parts of multiple Xbox One consoles, as well as the associated infrastructure supporting it. We will scale those custom blades in datacenters across Azure regions over time.

2) No the purpose of the client is to offload processes that are not required for the game instance. For example. All the processes that track when your friends are online or send you a message, are outside of the game instance itself. There's no reason to emulate that part of the console if the client can do that and offload some that work to the clients while running the game instance itself. Like I said, the main reason I see MS emulating XBX in the cloud is to ensure experience parity whether you are playing on a PC, Xbox, or Mobile device you would have the same access to auxillary functions of xbox live such as friends lists, chats, etc. That all happen outside of the game instance itself. You could argue that they could strip away things like friends lists from the total experience but that wouldn't really be helpful to the consumer.

Sony is updating PS3 games that have a PS4 remaster or PS4 version to that version rather than running the PS3 version on its service. Basically if a game released on both, they are moving to offer the PS4 version instead of the PS3 version. They are doing this for 3rd party games too so it's not just their 1st party games.

1) The problem is you are making the assumption that "They will simple use the PC version in all the cases" While I 1000% agree this is a no-brainer and makes sense. That is directly at odds with what Microsoft has shown and built. That's the core problem. Microsoft has a massive Azure Network with cloud GPU infrastructure and industry leading virtualization tools and yet their solution is to rack up Xbox1 consoles into server racks. I'm taking Microsoft's word at face value, I can't just say oh MS didn't really mean that when they showed off working hardware to tech new outlets and build custom servers expressly for that purpose. No matter how much I think they should do it a different way, that plain not what they said.

2) This is both correct and incorrect and I'll explain why for both PS4 and Xbox1. Both consoles used instances sub sessions for their games within the OS layer itself. Meaning PS4 and XB1 have their OS system running processes in the background which take resources. We've been through this discussion before but we have seen some background processes, unrelated to gaming, take the equivalent of 2 cores/1.5GB of RAM. I would say on average it should be assumed that 1core/1GB RAM is reserved for OS specific and the actual "game" instance can reserve the remainder of the available resources. Effectively this means to run an actually game in a virtualized environment you would only need specification equivalent to the specifications reserved for that game instance on the original platform. What Xcloud seems to be doing is that rather than replicating just the game instances in cloud. It's replicating the top level OS as well which is technically further overhead on the servers which it doesn't really need to do if local clients can handle them and only the game instances are virtualized in cloud and streamed. The approach of virtualizing the entire OS rather than the game instance was the same approach Sony took on launch. It's why it played on everything from phones to TVs, because the entire console OS and not just the game instances were virtualized in cloud. Sony has moved away from that model, pushed higher end client devices and reduced support for devices which could not support them. Example: when you suspend a game you can go out, browse the store, check friend lists, open other programs, download games, etc, etc etc. None of those functions need to be enabled for a cloud instance of the game. Thus emulating the entirety of the OS doesn't make sense when you only need the cloud to run the game instances. However, in Microsoft's defense. Emulating the entire system creates parity between cloud devices. So the experience is the same whether on a cellphone, tablet, or Xbox. It also probably makes any licensing issues easier to get around. Its the same approach Sony took.

Again, I am agreeing that the best approach is to run on cloud hardware, but that's not what MS said they did. I'm not going to call them liars and pretend they are actually doing something different because they said what they are building. Again the irony of this is that PSnow is currently fair closer to the rumored Xbox Scarlett cloud only system. If I were a betting man, my guess is that Sony's direct competitor to the Xbox Scarlett would be a PS4, possibly even a smaller or handheld version. PSnow in terms of infrastructure, is already what MS was talking about. Instanced games from the cloud. Local processes on the client end.

Also yes, PS3 games still use the custom PS3 blades, but its also why Sony has been upgrading the PS3 versions to PS4 at every possible chance. The consumers assume Sony is gifting upgraded versions, but its really to reduce load on their PS3 custom servers. As for Sony being in more trouble, MS would only have an advantage if they were running PC games for xCloud instead of Xbox games. Instead they went the opposite way. Not only are they going to be running Xboxs, but they are building custom servers from xbox parts to accommodate their business model. Microsoft, by all accounts should be ahead in this space but they aren't and Sony is cruising in a space with no competition at this point.

So you are actually 100% on the right track here and many of the initial thoughts you have were mine as well. My initial thought was that MS had several options.

1) xCloud actually being built on Intel/Nvidia cloud solutions and releasing PC versions of the games in the cloud rather than Xbox versions. This seemed like the most like scenario as they would be able to leverage their existing infrastructure. In this scenario they would release every game to both Xbox and PC and possible explore the next xbox or xbox versions as being Intel/Nvidia based.

2) They buy up or partner with datacenters who use AMD cloud GPUs and emulate XB1s in software. Attempting to emulate XB1 AMD GPUs on Nvidia software at high performance levels may not even be possible and if it was it would be so inefficient and require so many resources they would be better off buying AMD cloud GPUs or using the PC versions instead.

The problem is they didn't do any of these things. Instead MS is building custom xCloud servers which are 4 XB1s stuffed into a blade server. Essentially making them remote desktop consoles designed for 1-1 use. From the sounds of it, each server would only be able to support 4 active users at a time.

The debate I'm making is that this business decision, puts them in the exact same place Sony was in Jan. 2014, 5 years ago. Sony built custom Cell blades which were the equivalent of 8 PS3s and stuffed them into datacenter racks so they had 8 concurrent users per rack. I'm not saying MS cannot be successfully or that they can't catch up. Rather they are making the same mistakes Sony did 5 years ago but I understand why you would do this if your intention is to just get remote consoles going.

If we fast forward to today. Sony has since moved to a more SaaS structure. Rather than emulating the entire OS environment like they did with PS3 blade and MS is currently working on now. They emulate and use just the resources needed for the game itself while keeping the OS level function on the client machine running PSnow. As such this currently limits it to PS4 and PC. This allows them to scale resources to the games needs rather than constantly having to emulate the entirety of a console instance. That's what the debate is, the avenue MS has taken is the same one Sony took 5 years ago. Just for reference Sony has been retroactively upgrading its PS3 library to PS4 versions which is likely because its far far far cheaper and more efficient to run the PS4 version than the PS3 versions which require the custom Cell blades in datacenters.

With the AMD V340s rolling out in datacenters, Sony would have the ability to use any data center any where in the world (Edited so no misunderstandings: Meaning Any datacenter running V340s and EYPC servers) and just spin up their PSNow instances as demand dictates and allocate as much of the GPU resources as they want. The biggest factor I explained was that in theory Sony could release a beta of PS5 games to PSNow gamers today if they wanted because the can allocate as much of the server GPU resources to a single instance as they want. Sony has switched to a SaaS which makes their cloud solution more flexible at this point.

The PSNow model has completely changed from a DaaS (Desktop as a Service or in this case Console as a Service) model to a SaaS or AaaS (Application as a Service Model). To think of it in equivalent terms one of the first usages of Azure was IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) Where by MS spun up virtual servers hosted in the cloud and companies could put things like Exchange up there. MS eventually made Office 365 where the virtual servers are invisible to the users and only the configuration is visible to system admins. This made the resources completely dynamic and able to move resources at will based on load without having to maintain a system with the same Virtually configuration even if the extra resources are not being used.

So how this works with PSnow and why it changed:

Sony's initial foray into the cloud space was more similar to IaaS where they would emulate the entire console, rather than just the game in the cloud. This means even they would emulate all functions of the console, similar to how you see the console backend when you use RemotePlay. This was incredibly inefficient. What Sony found is that they could stream "just the game" rather than emulating the entire console and it would be several times more efficient. The result is that most online Operating System level experiences with PSnow occur on the client side. Example, when you hit the "share" button. Rather than launching a remote share button on an emulated PSnow console in a cloud, that function is done locally on your PS4. It also why when you launch on PC you are prompted to login first and pick you game prior to seeing anything that resembles a PS4 environment. The OS functions have been stripped from the game and processed locally.

Now to accomodate this Sony had to discontinue support for devices which wouldn't be able to support client side functions. Example: When I used to use my Vita for PSNow it would emulate the entire PS3 OS on their server blades. The short window PS4 games were available, they wouldn't even run on the vita. Now, you can start a PSNow game right from the PS4 menu just like it was any other game and again, its because the OS functions stay local.

No one is taking MS's experience with cloud away. My initial argument was that in order for MS to compete they would need AMD GPU hardware in their cloud. Without even realizing it, I was 100% right because that's exactly what they did. The problem is the way they did it. They are using the exact same method Sony tried and determined was not viable long term. The xcloud blades are a stopgap to a long term strategy just like how Office 365 moved to a SaaS model from an IaaS model.

It just shows that MS are still in their infancy with this, not that they can't do it but Azure doesn't immediately translate into gaming consoles. It's like saying Dell makes computer parts so they automatically are well equipped to make game consoles...No there are specialized requirements for games that are not found in general computers. That doesn't mean Dell would fail but they aren't uniquely equipped beyond a games company like Atari/Sega to release a console just because they make general purpose PCs.

@ronvalencia said:

1. You stated "They have specialized Tesla and K series from Nvida for that and have yet to partner with AMD on cloud GPU" and you moved the goal post with "multi-user" which is irrelevant.2. The real nothing is your argument. Microsoft's forward and backwards compatibility software ecosystem are more advanced when compared Sony's version.

Furthermore, Microsoft's network infrastructure are within top three cloud infrastructure in the world. The specific node hardware like Intel CPU and NVIDIA GPU can be replaced by AMD equivalent hardware e.g. AMD Epyc based servers joining Microsoft's network infrastructure. The important part with cloud infrastructure is the network infrastructure not specific hardware nodes which can be easily replaced e.g. upgrade or changed.

For 3rd party cloud customers, DirectML has important role as an alternative to NVIDIA's DLSS. AMD confirms DirectML support for Radeon VII.

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20181001005218/en/ZT-Systems-Showcases-XPO200-3U-PCIe-Expansion

Based on Microsoft’s Project Olympus, this solution leverages powerful AMD accelerators and processors in a flexible Open Compute platform.

“AMD has a long-standing commitment to the Open Compute Project and is excited to see Microsoft’s Project Olympus platform, to which AMD was a significant early contributor, gain the support of ZT Systems’ XPO200 3U PCIe Expansion System,” said Scott Aylor, corporate vice president, datacenter products, AMD. “The combination of AMD Radeon Instinct™ GPU and the AMD EPYC™ CPU products in this ZT Systems solution delivers outstanding virtualization density and an exceptional combination for executing AI and deep learning workloads”

“This new ZT Systems expansion system brings a powerful combination of AMD GPU and CPU technology to bear on demanding cloud workloads,” said Kushagra Vaid, General Manager and Distinguished Engineer, Azure Hardware Infrastructure, Microsoft Corp. “The speed and efficiency with which ZT developed this solution demonstrates why Microsoft’s Project Olympus specification is the leading open source hardware standard for next-generation datacenters. ZT Systems continues to demonstrate their ability to rapidly develop and deliver flexible solutions to the market.”

ZT Systems XPO200 Server Solutions combine the groundbreaking energy efficiency, performance, versatility and cost effectiveness of Microsoft’s Project Olympus platform with ZT’s hyperscale-focused integration, supply chain and deployment capabilities. Customers benefit from ZT’s unique experience deploying platforms featuring these technologies into real-world hyperscale environments.

The XPO200 3U PCIe Expansion System with AMD technology and based on Microsoft’s Project Olympus can be seen at the Open Compute EU Summit in Microsoft’s booth B1.

Dated: October 1st, 2018. Source PR from https://www.ztsystems.com/#!/new-3u-pcie-expansion-system-powered-by-amd-based-on-project-olympus/

VII catches up to Volta/Turing Tensor's INT4 machine learning datatype support.

Both VII and Volta/Turing Tensor supports INT4, INT8, INT16 and FP16 inference workloads. The old Vega IP doesn't support INT4 and other AI related instruction set features.

Console GPUs has semi-custom feature like two GPC (graphics command processor) units which doesn't exist for AMD PC GPUs which has a single GPC (graphics command processor).

XBO GPU has semi-custom feature like FP10 support which needs to be bridged into PC GPUs. 3rd party Xbox 360 emulators for PC DirectX12 bridge this missing feature.

There's a reason for custom cGPU rack server since PC Vega GPUs doesn't have all of game console's semi-custom changes.

X1X Hawaii 44CU based GPU supports XBO GPU's semi-custom features with full baseline Polaris IP and subset Vega IP selections.

You are still wrong.

@michaelmikado said:

3) PS3 dev kit??? Why do you keep bringing up dev kits???? What do dev kits have to do with cloud services. What are you even talking about??? Why would a PS3 dev kit have or even need "extra memory storage to support PS4's development.

Anyway, to put it simply. Sony 5 years ago did exactly what MS is doing right now. Basically Desktop as a Service or in this case Console as a Service by emulating the entirety of the console by stuffing custom console hardware into servers. It's a tactic that works in the short term to launch a platform but there's no getting around the fact that MS is 5 years behind where Sony is. For Sony, they have moved past that stage of deploying consoles in boxes and made their service scalable. Meaning if they want to allocate 4 cores and 20cus to a user to play a game they can do so. If they want to allocate 32 cores and 118 cus to a single user to run a single game, they can do that too. The virtualization on the V340s is hardware based and transparent to the processes running its whatever resources Sony wants to assign at any given moment. It was designed that way. That's the key difference. That's why this is so crazy. Having MxGPU allow companies the ability to provide experiences and hardware performance that might not be seen until a theoretical PS6.

The irony of all this is that this cloud was all MSs dream, but they abandoned it and are taking a longer road to get there. MS can easily do what Sony is doing, but theres no getting around that fact that they are 5 years behind them in this venture.

Where's your source for "Sony, they have moved past that stage of deploying consoles in boxes and made their service scalable. Meaning if they want to allocate 4 cores and 20cus to a user to play a game they can do so. If they want to allocate 32 cores and 118 cus to a single user to run a single game, they can do that too. The virtualization on the V340s is hardware based and transparent to the processes running its whatever resources Sony wants to assign at any given moment. It was designed that way. That's the key difference. That's why this is so crazy. Having MxGPU allow companies the ability to provide experiences and hardware performance that might not be seen until a theoretical PS6."?

Prove "If they want to allocate 32 cores and 118 cus to a single user to run a single game, they can do that too".

Why the "mirror" PS4 BC hardware design for PS4 Pro? Why Sony needs two 20 CU in a mirror design?

Proper VM PS4 software on superior hardware will NOT need PS4 Pro's mirror hardware BC method!

@michaelmikado said:

The virtualization on the V340s is hardware based and transparent to the processes running its whatever resources Sony wants to assign at any given moment. It was designed that way

That's FALSE since V340's resource partitioning feature needs VM software support e.g. VMWare vSphere's virtual AMD GPU hardware feature support.

Virtual CPU/GPU/IO solution is not complete without proper hypervisor software support.

Windows Server 2019 features GPU-P (P for partitioning).

AMD's MxGPU driver is software. V340's VM hardware features are useless without software driver and updated hypervisor software.

AMD's MxGPU PC driver wouldn't know about game console's semi-custom features and needs to be bridged.

You're far far far off base again. The reason multi-user support is important is because THAT'S THE POINT OF THE CLOUD

otherwise you simple end up with remote desktop scenarios where you have full on consoles dedicated to a single user.

You keep bringing up Nvidia stuff when I've already explained WHY at the low-level it simply won't work. The reason "custom" hardware isn't needed is because they typically aren't doing anything that it's higher level cards aren't already doing. Being semi-custom doesn't mean its exotic and hasn't already been incorporated into new cards and drivers. Vega emulates all functions of AMD cards that XB and PS4 use. That's why they make PC dev kits in the first place.

Again, and I've stated this before MS has yet to partner with AMD for cloud MxGPU. Your partnership only amounts at this opoint to stuffing consoles on racks. That's again defeats the entire purpose of going cloud in the first place!

Of course there is a software aspect to V340 but that is 100% invisible to the VMs and has no effect on performance of the VMs because there is hardware separate from the GPU resources specifically for handling the virtualization. At no point did I say there's no software involved merely that they have hardware for virtualization which doesn't impact the performance. That should have been understood by any one that understands virtualization!

Prove "If they want to allocate 32 cores and 118 cus to a single user to run a single game, they can do that too".

Why the "mirror" PS4 BC hardware design for PS4 Pro? Why Sony needs two 20 CU in a mirror design?

What is this even????? What does PS4 backward compatibility on PS4 pro have to do with cloud servers? Why would I even need to prove that a server with 32 cores is able to use 32 core???????? Like you aren't even making sense. You're making obtuse arguments that have nothing to do with a cloud service.

Further your claim seems to be that MS has better Xbox virtualization because their X1X dev kit can emulate XB1 and XBS?????? But Sony, who CURRENTLY has working home consoles emulating PS1, PS2, and has working cloud PS4 servers cannot emulate their own consoles because PS4 pro uses a different method to run PS4 games????? WAHT?

Look, I'm not sure we are even speaking the same language, but your comments are all over the place and throwing specs and info that have ZERO to do with the conversation as if they have some relevance and meaning. You posted a slide of CPU-P which has zero relevance to the conversation, especially because its highly, highly, highly unlikely either MS or Sony would be running ANY of their virtual consoles on pure WS2019. You're just posting random tech information from Google in hopes that its somehow relevant.

@ronvalencia said:Red herring with Sony's solution i.e. you're wrong with

1. "They have specialized Tesla and K series from Nvida for that and have yet to partner with AMD on cloud GPU." with Microsoft's youtube video xCloud reveal dated October 5th, 2018.

2. PS3 dev kit is not like X1X dev kit with multiple XBO/XBO S/X1X retail/future looking X1X at 6.6 TFLOPS with 24 GB GDDR5 foot print performance profiles.

PS3 dev kit doesn't have extra memory storage to support PS4's development.

1) No I'm not wrong, MS has yet to announce/engage in any partnership with AMD for multi-user cloud GPUs. Their only existing partnership for Azure Cloud GPUs are with Nvidia. Unless you are trying to say that them stuffing 4 XB1s in server blade is their "partnership" They have no formal cloud GPU services to offer from AMD. Again stuffing Xboxs in servers are not multiuser cloud GPU resources, they're just remote xboxes.

2) Again DEV KITS have absolutely ZERO, NADA, ZIP. To do with cloud servers. I'm not sure why you keep bringing up dev kits unless you don't understand what they actually are. The PS3 blade servers Sony put in were used because they had no choice for PS3 cloud games. The remainder of their games, PS1, PS2, PS4, run on general server nodes with cloud MxGPUs.

If you want to bold specs we can do that. AWS is use V340. These card have 112cus for 21+TFLOPS again 21+TFLOPS with 32GB of HBM2 REPEAT 32GB of HBM2 . I don't even understand why you are bolding those specs when PSnow is running on hardware right now that completely outclasses it. I don't even understand what you are trying to prove here. Oh, and that card, takes up only 1, count them 1 PCI-E slot on a server node. Because AMD partnered with AWS they also have 32 core EYPC server paired up with 21+TFLOP cards. And... to make it more intense. That's just in a SINGLE socket configuration. It's more likely for wattage space gains they have 2 socket 64 core/128 thread servers paired with 2 of those 21Tflop cards. That's not even acknowledging the fact that we are expecting Epyc rome with a possible dual configuration of 128 cores/256 threads and pushing past 4GHZ on all cores plus 2TB or DDR4 RAM, Gen 4 PCIe and that's not even taking into account a server NAVI variant on the MxGPU cloud side.

3) PS3 dev kit??? Why do you keep bringing up dev kits???? What do dev kits have to do with cloud services. What are you even talking about??? Why would a PS3 dev kit have or even need "extra memory storage to support PS4's development.

Anyway, to put it simply. Sony 5 years ago did exactly what MS is doing right now. Basically Desktop as a Service or in this case Console as a Service by emulating the entirety of the console by stuffing custom console hardware into servers. It's a tactic that works in the short term to launch a platform but there's no getting around the fact that MS is 5 years behind where Sony is. For Sony, they have moved past that stage of deploying consoles in boxes and made their service scalable. Meaning if they want to allocate 4 cores and 20cus to a user to play a game they can do so. If they want to allocate 32 cores and 118 cus to a single user to run a single game, they can do that too. The virtualization on the V340s is hardware based and transparent to the processes running its whatever resources Sony wants to assign at any given moment. It was designed that way. That's the key difference. That's why this is so crazy. Having MxGPU allow companies the ability to provide experiences and hardware performance that might not be seen until a theoretical PS6.

The irony of all this is that this cloud was all MSs dream, but they abandoned it and are taking a longer road to get there. MS can easily do what Sony is doing, but theres no getting around that fact that they are 5 years behind them in this venture.

This is exactly where the industry is heading. Technically Sony could soft launch demos of PS5 games on PSnow today without even having a finalized console yet.