Microsoft’s Xbox One has hit the wild, and of course we knew we’d start to uncover some of the more “hidden” components inside Microsoft’s system as people started to tear it apart.
Inside the console, located on the main board is 8GB of flash memory- the model number is SK Hynix H26M42003GMR 8 GB eMMC NAND Flash. If you want a PDF document then click here (not an RGT link). If you take a look through the spec sheet, you’ll find that the Xbox One’s flash memory is two stacks of 32Gb (Gigabits – so divide by eight, meaning 4GB per stack).
What does the 8GB of Flash Memory inside Xbox One Do?
If you’re like most people you’ll immediately wonder what the hell the memory will be used for, and there are a couple of different guesses which make sense, but nothing that’s conformed. So let the speculation over the X1 flash begin.
The first and logical thought is that it’s to facilitate the Xbox One’s resume and standby functionality. It does make sense, as the two memory sizes (the 8GB of the Xbox One’s DDR3 and the 8GB flash) match exactly.
The second option is that it’s for recording gameplay videos as you’re playing. Obviously we’re not sure how big those files end up being yet though.
Thirdly, it could be used for either operating system functionality or for applications. Either as a temporary storage, or to hold details about a session which won’t fit into memory.
I’m sure that it won’t be long before we have a more complete technical picture of what the various components do of the Xbox One. We do know (according to Microsoft themselves) that they haven’t also revealed everything to do with the main APU of the Xbox One. The Main APU of course features the 8 AMD Jaguar Cores running at 1.75GHZ and the 12GCN cores providing the graphical grunt of the machine. Not only that, but also houses ESRAM and the Hardware Move Engines which help shuttle data around the machine.

Of course, just like the Playstation 4’s second chip and extra memory (article), we’ll have to just wait and see what other secrets lie inside Microsoft’s next gen console.
Credit for main image Ifixit