When the hardware details for Microsoft's Xbox Series X were first released, the headlines mainly focused on the processor, GPU, and 16GB of GDDR6 memory. Much less was spent on what some will consider the real revelation; Microsoft Velocity Storage. In short, it's a new extension to DirectX (DirectStorage), along with a silicon on a dedicated processor that deals with decompression and a new proprietary memory card that offers 2.4 Gb/s (or 19.2 Gbit/s) of what Eurogamer calls it "guaranteed performance". By comparison, Thunderbolt 3 (TB3) has a maximum theoretical throughput of 40 Gbit/s, but we've rarely hit anything higher than 24 Gbit/s (or 3 Gb/s) in our many reviews of external SSDs using TB3. What makes Velocity Storage so special is that Microsoft has worked with AMD to customize an array area to handle the decompression issue, using a DirectX API extension. This, according to Microsoft, is revolutionary. The ability to combine software, hardware and a third player could be a game changer for companies and allow Microsoft to extend its control over the business computing market, beyond the reach of Apple. or google
Beyond compression.
Working with Intel or AMD, we can imagine that Microsoft will be able to tie accelerators to specific tasks or applications in Windows 10: encryption, compression, artificial intelligence, or Javascript performance. This is not unusual in the cloud computing market, where semi-custom processors are common. Intel, for example, acquired a company called Altera to offer programmable Xeon chips in 2014. However, it would be revolutionary if Microsoft could make things happen in the end-user computing market by including custom silicon in market-ready products. For example, a Velocity Storage-capable workstation could provide faster performance for video editing, similar to Intel's proprietary AVX-512 extensions, but more universal. A Javascript accelerator could make Microsoft Edge Chromium much faster than the competition, but it would require new hardware, and therein lies the real business value. The concept of custom performance is so revolutionary that it may turn out to be the catalyst that drives companies to upgrade their hardware once the migration period from Windows 7 to Windows 10 ends. What about Microsoft's Azure cloud business? ? Compression/decompression blocks are likely to exist on CPUs to significantly reduce storage demand (especially cold or glacier-like storage), similar to tape. It is inevitable that Microsoft will transfer its learning from the Xbox Series X to Windows 10, to the benefit of end consumers and end users.