Are these still your positions?
Iâm not sure anyone knows exactly how many are in racks, but I very much guarantee thereâs at least an order of magnitude more than youâre suggesting at this point. We know a decent chunk of silicon from last year was dedicated for the server upgrades we also know occurred.
You state that there doesnât need to be physical hardware or âmillions of Xbox chips in racksâ, but we know (directly from Xbox Engineersâ mouths) that four sessions of Xbox One titles are able to be run from one blade, but Series titles are a 1:1 relationship of one player per one blade. We also know exactly what silicon is on each blade (which is now the Series X APU) because weâve seen them.
So Iâm confused as to what specifically youâre implying is fan fiction?
Of course this is still my position. Nothing has changed. Nobody who mentions these fantastical numbers has produced sources
Fan fiction is millions of xbox chips in data centers. Thats not how it works and nobody has produced any source whatsoever for their fiction. I have, on the other hand, given some examples and sources how this all works
The fact that the cloud exists and is playable isnât proof enough?
How is this proof for you assumption that millions of xCloud servers makes up the gap of around 5 million sales to PS5?
How??
1 million Fortnite players on xCloud (not concurrent) led to waiting queues. How is this possible with millions of servers?
Whereâs your source that this gap is supposedly five million units?
Every statement Iâve made can be backed by articles and statements from Xbox; whereâs your evidence to refute those statements, specifically the 1:1 ratio for Series games running on xCloud? I never said there were five million Series APUs in data centers but given what we know about xCloud usage, thereâs proof that thereâs likely at least a million there (and given what we know about reduced consumer shipments of Series silicon last year that just so happened to coincide with the Series upgrades to xCloud racks, it seems pretty safe to make that claim).
https://twitter.com/Welfare_JBP has pretty good and well thought out estimates.
The most recent tweet by him has a typo âGanestopâ. Very authoritative source you got there
Again, Iâm asking for your sources for millions of Xbox chips in xCloud data centers.
I guess I find it more interesting that your hypothesis is that Xbox cloud servers must be few in number because Xbox would never sacrifice console sales.
That seems to be the entire basis of your position.
No, the basis of my position are simply the realities of data centers.
One thing I think everyone could agree on is that life would be a lot easier if Xbox provided numbers in their financial reports. Then at least there could be official numbers.
Okay so not an actual source. Got it. As @Shpeshal_Nick has implied many a time, that gap thatâs being regurgitated without any viable data is most likely a lot less.
Hereâs some of my sources btw:
So thereâs at least four months of a portion of Series silicon directed to xCloud upgrades. Data centers often do have several hundred thousand CPU+GPU and/or APUs at each site btw; where I work has two of the fastest supercomputers on the planet and theyâd be considered âbaby-data centersâ in terms of CPU count, and we still have several thousand CPUs alone in roughly a twentieth the footprint of the average Azure DC. Youâre assuming that these are VMs running in Xeons or Epyc cores, but thatâs factually inaccurate in this case as Microsoft have explicitly stated (and again, shown the blades themselves). So what youâre implying about the ârealities of data centersâ is also inaccurate (most large scale data centers actually do have millions of servers - read: millions of CPUs).
https://www.racksolutions.com/news/blog/how-many-servers-does-a-data-center-have/
When you put together those articles it helps to give a good picture even though Xbox loves being tight lipped about itâs official numbers. Sometimes you just have to read between the lines.
The biggest indicator that Xbox has a million + series X chips in its servers is the recent launch of the Samsung smart tv app. Xbox clearly feels confident that they will meet the demand of such a partnership.
Of course Microsoft financial reports are valid sources. Welfare does good estimates from that. Whats Nicks source? Yeah.
I never denied that Microsoft put some portion of their silicon in server racks. Your sources donât mention anywhere any numbers.This portion of yours could be anywhere from 4 pieces to 4 million. Thats not a source for millions of xCloud server chips
What? Where did i do any of that?
From your work in data centers you know their millions of cpus donât implode, when 1 million players (and not even concurrently!) want to play Fortnite. Facts.
Look you are just way over complicating things. Ask yourself this: would Samsung partner with Xbox if there wasnât a million plus series Cloud servers?
How many new model tv do Samsung sell in a year ? The xcloud thing is only for 2022 models
Well its a weird thing. Planet Earth is split into time zones where humans are awake and asleep on different sides of the planet at any given time. So 1 Xbox Blade in the cloud can be used by 10-20 gamers every day.
Though its pretty obvious how Xbox prioritises. Theres a console shortage, and Microsoft decided that it was better to put millions of units in the cloud then millions of units in gamers homes.
All we know is Xbox started outselling PS5 globally just after they finished upgrading the data centers, so its certainly a meaningful amount.
Game Streaming is a low latency application of streaming, which means the hardware needs to be located as close to the user as reasonable. You canât use a US server to serve Japanese users when US has low utilization because itâd be a bad experience.
They need enough hardware in each region to serve the users in that region.
This so much this is what a lot do not understand about data centres or streaming. even more pin point in North America we have 2/3 data centres just for the east coast