When the Xbox One was first announced last year, Microsoft made it clear that the console will have a clock speed of 1.6ghz, however they managed to boost it to 1.75ghz. Now Microsoft is currently looking to optimize it even further according to recent job listing for a Senior Software Development Engineer. Obviously this does not mean that they will boost the clock speed again but they are definitely working to improve and optimize the CPU’s performance.
The job listing states that they are looking for someone who has experience in CPU performance and optimization along with C/C++ compiler architecture. “Experience in any the following areas is a plus: low level debugging on Windows platforms; CPU performance tuning on one or more platforms; C/C++ compiler architecture; assembly languages; digital signal processing; Direct3D and general 3D graphics concepts,” the listing reads. The last point could indicate DirectX 12 involvement.
Furthermore, the concerned candidate should have deep technical knowledge about cloud computing and games development. The job also involves optimization of all platforms, including “working directly with game developers to understand and address their technical problems; researching and developing incubations, samples, and white papers that illustrate advanced techniques”. This is fairly typical of any console manufacturer – the Xbox One may be fairly powerful but it will take time to efficiently utilize all of that power in the coming years.
We’ll see what advanced techniques are in store and how Xbox Live Compute is further improved down the line. What are your thoughts on the listing? Let us know in the comments.