More On IBM's Next-Gen Xbox Chipset Win

Pieroxy writes "EE Times reports further details on Microsoft's use of IBM chips in its next generation Xbox game and consumer electronics devices, dealing a blow to Intel and providing a much needed boost for IBM's lossmaking chip business." An analyst claims that "IBM is likely to modify its most advanced G5 PowerPC silicon, which is being used in Apple Computer's fastest Macintosh desktops, for the embedded market, reducing the cache and cutting power consumption", and further comments: "This is likely to heat things up at Intel, but it is competition that is healthy for the industry. It's ironic that IBM, with its roots in the computer industry, doesn't supply the processors for the main portion of the personal computer industry. Intel does." We covered IBM's initial announcement as a section-specific story earlier today.

Comments

A question

[FreeBSD Goddess]

Forgive me if I'm being moronic about this, but if it's based off the G5, it has a completely different instruction set. Does this mean that the modified Windows 2000 kernel used with the current XBox will be upgraded and ported to G5, or that we might see a completely different and new kernel?

Re:A question

[Anonymous Coward]

didn't some guy at microsoft get fired for posting a picture of lots of G5's bought by microsoft?

Re:A question

[grotgrot]

In fact Microsoft developers on the OS side do a lot of their development on non-Intel platforms such as PowerPC. The reason is that it ensures the code is cleaner and architecture neutral. Later on it is "ported" to Intel.

Re:A question

[Anonymous Coward]

As of NT 4.0, there were still PPC-specific files on the NT install disk. Oddly, one of the primary design goals of NT was portability, and Alpha, PPC and something I forget were supported throughout its early development.

Re:A question

[laird]

Actually, NT 3.x (and, possibly 4.0) ran on many CPU's including the PowerPC. If you remember back when the PPC was being promoted as the CPU of the Common Hardware Reference Platform, you could run MacOS, Linux, and NT on the same hardware. Anyway, I would hope that MS has retained that portability in the core of the OS (the same way Apple makes sure that MacOS X still runs on the x86) in order to keep its options open.

So it'd be easy for new "Xbox 2" games to run natively on PPC. That being said, they'd still need an x86 emulator to run the Xbox games. I bet a 2 GHz G5 could emulate an Xbox pretty well...

Re:A question

[ADRA]

If for instance the code was somehow embedded inside the CPU core, then the following holds:

- The Signature that allows the boot loader to run is stored inside the CPU, but it can only run a boot loader that has been signed by microsoft beforehand. Since the key can't be changed, all it guarantees is that the boot loader is secure. Now, you have the kernel, which one would assume to be upgradable. If the kernel is not upgradable, a major bug / exploit found in the kernel could be exploited and never get fixed until Xbox 3.

If the kernel isn't upgradable, you need to start hackimng the userspace apps to kill the lock-out.

If they make the kernel upgradable, they have to be able to sign the kernel from the boot loader. So, you either use the embedded CPU ID to sign the kernel, or they will have the key somewhere else that normal users won't be able to reach. Of course having the decode key only gives you half the prize. You need to find the encoding key in order to encrypt software that actually runs on the Xbox. Once software has been signed, there is no stopping anyone from running anything as long as that piece of software has kernel-level access to the hardware. If you rely on a userspace exploit, you can only perform a limited set of operations, like running arbitrary commands. Get the kernel, and you could burn in a new kernel in its place tricking everything on the higher levels as to who you are.

So, how do we hack the Xbox 2 if we can't run arbitrary code on the xbox to begin with?
Any external access to the system is exploitable through its IO subssytems. The kernel could have a buffer overrun, the game running could leak precious data, who knows. The more functionality left open, the more potential expoits there are to take advantage of.

I haven't bridged the topic of hardware mods which does get more sticky if the encryption is processes in the CPU. I'd have to see when and how the CPU decrypts a signed working set and how the decoded code is run after the decrypt.

Won't MS have to rewrite everything?

[ajiva]

Uhhh, won't MS have to rewrite the whole OS, directX, etc for the XBox2? It seems that porting Windows to PowerPC may be harder than just getting a new Intel processor in there. Of course if MS does port XP to the G5, maybe the Apple guys can install something besides a real OS :)

Re:Won't MS have to rewrite everything?

[stratjakt]

Yah, MS and IBM are stupid, you better call 'em and set them straight!

Some things to consider:

1) NT ran on PowerPC long ago, porting it wont be hard.

2) Wasn't IBM working on a new mega-chip that can run x86 and PowerPC codes side by side?

3) Perhaps making the Xbox so close to a PC blew up in MSFTs face, and they don't plan to do it again. You can turn your noses at "security through obscurity" all you want, but the Xbox, once initiall cracked, has been blown wide open - it's a no brainer to port PC emulators and apps to it. The GCN or PS2, however, have taken much longer, and are still an obfuscated mess to try and develop custom stuff for.

Bodes well for Apple too!

[MarcQuadra]

Who thinks that IBM is going to turn around and sell these things to Aplle as the CPU for the G5 laptop?

This bodes VERY well for IBM, Apple, Microsoft, and anyone else interested in low-power-draw PowerPC systems. It sucks for Motorola, but they lost my favor years ago, and they really charge ludicrous prices for their wares.

Also, Could IBM be developing their G3+AltiVec chip for this? It seems to me that if the G3 series was dead IBM would stop working on it, but there are 750GX CPUs due soon (just a 750FX with 1MB on-die cache), and rumors of a G3 with SIMD coming down the pipe. It seems to me that if IBM bastardized some of the SIMD logic from the 970 and strapped it to the 750 they'd have a pretty decent low-power SIMD chip that Apple could market as a 'G3', 'G4' or a 'G5.'

Maybe I'm just a hopeless romantic, but the G3 was the CPU best-suited for what I do, and I hope it doesn't disappear. I have little use for SIMD, and I really appreciate running a CPU without a fan strapped to it, it's just so... elegant.

Backwards Compatible?

[realdpk]

It seems that it would be prudent for Microsoft to announce something about backwards compatibility if they're going to make such a dramatic platform change. That's one of the greatest things for early adopters of the PS2 - they could still play their PS1 games on 'em.

Re:Backwards Compatible?

[yamla]

Nothing has been officially announced but I will bet you the purchase and shipping price of an XBox 2 that it will not run XBox 1 games.

There are several reasons why this is true, not least of which the use of the CPU which would make emulation troublesome at best. I am not sure what speed of G5 the XBox 2 will contain but it wouldn't be fast enough to provide a 733 Mhz x86 in emulation. IBM is already talking about stripping down the CPU, removing some of the cache, etc.

You can count this as FUD if you want. You can assume I know no more than you do about the XBox 2. But you'll see when they announce the full specs, the XBox 2 cannot run XBox 1 games.

Re:Backwards Compatible?

[yamla]

I agree that the PowerPC architecture is fairly good at emulating Intel's. But it just isn't _that_ good. The stats I've seen show the G5 at 2 Ghz capable of emulating an Intel P3 at approximately 400 Mhz. Now, I could be out by an order of magnitude here but I don't think so. There's also some benefit potentially realisable from Microsoft dynamically recompiling ix86-code to PowerPC code in the XBox 2. But it just wouldn't help enough.

Based on what happened with the Xbox 1 and the fact that Microsoft needs to be getting the hardware to their developers fairly soon, we are likely looking at a modification of the G5 processor running between 1.5 Ghz and 2.0 Ghz. 1.5 Ghz is pretty much the minimum, I expect, but I'd be slightly surprised to see a 2.0 Ghz chip in the Xbox 2. The modifications, however, will slow things down compared to Apple's G5. Less cache, optimised for reduced heat, lower power, that sort of thing. Sure, the XBox 2 will have better dedicated video and probably dedicated audio processing than the current top-end Apple G5 systems but the CPU itself will be less powerful.

And you'd struggle to emulate ix86 at 733 Mhz on a current 2.0 Ghz G5. Cripple the chip (aka optimise-for-console) and maintain fairly strict requirements of being able to emulate everything the ix86 can do at 733 Mhz, and you just cannot pull it off.

Give it a 4 Ghz G5 with all the bells and whistles and this isn't a problem any more (most likely).

Erm...

[athakur999]

and then adding a pirated disk drive

This is just pure ignorance. Apparently going to Best Buy and buying a hard drive is now "piracy".

PowerPC was *supposed* to become a commodity chip

[KojakBang]

IBM was going to come out with personal powerpc systems which would even have a common motherboard reference design with Macs. The volume of production would drive down costs dramatically. But IBM didn't and Apple basically got screwed on that deal.

Interestly enough, the reason IBM canned the personal powerpc systems was that OS2 for PPC completely blew its schedule several times over. IBM had a personal AIX edition for PPC ready but chose not to go with that. The reason. Unix would never make it as a mainstream operating system for PCs.

Re:What about today's Xbox?

[chill]

Are they not going to have backward compatibility? That seems like a big mistake in the game console market to me.

By the time the X2 comes out, Celeron 733s will probably be cheap enough to put on an add-on card and sell for $49.

That is the price of 1 game. Lot of people with existing X-Box titles would buy that.

Re:Other links

[Anonymous Coward]

So far it has not been stated that microsoft is using an IBM chip. Merely that they are licensing technology from IBM. This could mean a chip deal. But it might not. Any statement that the x-box 2 will contain an IBM chip is pure conjecture at this point.

It is wierd that the news sites are presenting conjecture as if it were a certainty. Overall I think both the slashsites and the register are guilty of very sloppy journalism here.

Okay, now this could be awesome.

[iamdrscience]

Assuming that this "next generation xbox" thing will be as hackable as the current Xbox (and the Dreamcast and the PS2, etc.) this could lead to a reasonably priced PowerPC machine to mess around with. This could be very cool. The current Xbox isn't especially competitive with a comparable low budget x86 system, but right now the only way you can mess with a G5 is to spend a couple grand on a new mac and likely once this new system comes out a cheap G5 system will still be the better part of a grand.

interesting move for xbox..

[Thrakkerzog]

Wasn't one of the "Benefits" for people making games for xbox the ability to code just like they did for pc games?

perhaps they are trying to lure developers away from GCN by offering a similar cpu architecture?

So is it a fair assumption...

[NanoGator]

... that backwards compatibility isn't part of Microsoft's game here? I suppose they could do like the PS2 did and use the original Intel processor to act as a controller or something, but somehow I doubt that'd be cost effective enough.

Emulator? Eck I hope not. Well.. maybe that wouldn't be so bad. Maybe they could do a combination emulator and wrapper. The emulator would be for the processor instructions, and the wrapper would be to send the graphics commands to the new GPU. Presumably, the difference between the two GPUs wouldn't be big enough as to prevent that from working.

Eh I dunno. Personally, I'm hoping Microsoft does something a little more interesting than just throwing next-gen hardware into a box as an upgrade. Pushing polygons around is nice, but I really like how small and cheap my GameCube is. *Hint hint*

Re:What about today's Xbox?

[no reason to be here]

The sales numbers for the Xbox and Game Cube are fairly comparable; however, the PS2, which was backwards compatible with the PS1, blows them both out of the water. Part of the reason that Nintendo has done so well in the portable arena is because the newer iterations of the Gameboy were backwards compatible with the older versions.

intel/amd/ppc

[Sebastopol]

Intel went after Xbox originally so that AMD wouldn't get the win, but Intel still took it in the shorts, or so it is claimed, by offering a nutrageously low price to outbid AMD. Probably even at a loss given the timeframe.

Intel doesn't give a crap about PPC, as it isn't even a remote threat, what at 4% of the market. Intel could have EASILY played the same power-play and had another design win, but at the cost of lower ASPs for a niche market (compared to its $20b a year market, xbox isn't worth it).

just my $0.02.

Re:Will this affect users?

[nate1138]

No, but what about Linux or xBSD? They both already run on that architecture. The article mentioned that MS was pissed about people turning their heavily subsidized game platform into a PC without buying the games that make it a profitable product. Those folks aren't running windows on it anyhow. Now maybe if it was an "extended" power architecture, something not publicly documented, it could delay the hacks.

X86 emulation under PowerPC

[ahchem]

This is actually a very interesting move on MS's part. Not too long ago they purchased the premier x86 on PPC emulator. Now they are going with IBM's PPC as there next Xbox. Maybe they are ready to have a win-tel divorce and declare their independence from Intel, or maybe just shake the relationship up a bit.

Re:X86 emulation under PowerPC

[yamla]

This would be great as far as I am concerned. However, ix86 is still the cheapest instruction set for the performance available for a general-purpose PC. I don't see any benefit, and considerable problems, with Microsoft divorcing itself from the ix86 instruction set. Don't forget, of course, that Microsoft already tried something similar back in the NT days and ended up abandoning all non-ix86 platforms.

Of course, ix86 isn't the be-all and end-all, not by a long shot. I'd rather run PowerPC, myself, if the price was right.

Windows for PPC

[Sri Lumpa]

I must say I absolutely didn't see that coming and if somebody had told be beforehand I probably would have chuckled.

This means a version of Windows for PowerPC and, if they use the G5, a 64 bit version of Windows.

I think the former used to exist a while ago (NT4?) and the latter is available in a more or less broken form but the fact that XBox2 would be a fixed hardware platform may allow them to make a better version.

I'm no MS fan but I can only see that as a good sign as long as they don't use the 32 bit subset of the PPC architecture, it could help them with a better 64 bit Windows which would help drive the adoption of such systems up and therefore drive the price down; which would help enlarging the 64 bit Linux userbase.

Ok, it's a lot of "if's" but at least it opens the possibility a bit wider.

History Repeats Itself

[ewhac]

Not long after the 3DO Interactive Multiplayer came out, we started designing the next-generation platform. The machine was to be PowerPC-based with true 3D rendering capabilities (triangle engine, MIP-mapping, perspective-correct textures, 32-bit rendering, etc.).

The CPU was supplied by IBM. What we ended up with was the PowerPC 602, which was essentially a 603 (?) with a smaller cache and single-precision floating point operations that executed in a single cycle, which were essential for 3D gaming. The part ran at 66MHz.

It was a really nice machine. Sadly, it essentially died on the vine, as Matsushita chose not to exploit its gaming potential, relegating it instead to "kiosk" activities.

IBM also manufactured the triangle engine. It was a five layer chip -- at that time, a rather sophisticated process -- occupying 144 square millimetres.

Schwab

Re:i'd buy an xbox if osx ran on it

[Jesrad]

You probably want to speak with Apple, instead.

Unfortunately Apple already tried to get in the videogame console market, with the Pippin, which was a monumental failure. Steve Jobs is not likely to send Apple this way again anytime soon.

My Prediction

[Goyuix]

Just as with the original XBox, there were plans to use AMD chips, at least that is what most of the speculation on the internet said, up until they announced the specs and low and behold Intel had "won" the contract instead.

I could very easily see this deal with IBM as a backdoor sneaky tatic to get nVidia hardware under the hood again, especially with their cozy arrangements as of late. For that matter, AMD and IBM are also in bed so it wouldn't be surprising at all the see ATI booted and AMD/NV offering becoming the real guts of the console. IBM would be the fab for the chips and assembly for the mainboard... heck they might even just roll the whole thing and take a cool percentage.

Off the wall? Perhaps. But I think this xb0x0r war is far from over. There are no published specs and these talks of industry deals are by no means what the final product will necessarily be.

Re:What about today's Xbox?

[AuMatar]

I do. I own about 6 PS1 games to every PS2 game. Never owned a PS1, I was in college when it came out, had no money. So being able to do both was great, I could play all the games I missed.

In addition, if I had had a PS1, I'd still find it a great feature since it would let me get rid of a piece of hardware and remove clutter.

Re:Hope it's...

[AtaruMoroboshi]

Frankly, what are you talking about? Performance issues?

The Gamecube is way more powerful than the PS2, most importantly with none of the jaggie aliasing problems nor the atrocious load times..

Yes, most of the time those 2 issues are no longer a big deal on the PS2 but it took a lot of developer cleverness to do it.

Re:What about today's Xbox?

[Osty]

Of course, the XBox didn't have this stable of games (and really only has KotOR now) upon release. I don't recall what the PS2 had. If it had GT3, that was almost enough to carry the platform there and then even without PS1 compatibility.

What? It's generally accepted that XBox has had the strongest launch lineup of any recent console (perhaps of any console?). With Halo, Project: Gotham Racing, Amped, NFL Fever, Oddworld, DoA3, and a bunch of other titles, the XBox did quite well for itself. The PS2 on the other hand had a pretty weak launch library, so weak in fact that I can't even recall what titles launched with the system (probably a Madden title, maybe the first SSX?). GT3 was released a year or more after the launch of the PS2, and was eventually bundled with the PS2 for a while, but it was definitely not a system seller for the PS2 launch except by anticipation, ie "Why should I buy a Dreamcast with a bunch of great games right now when I could buy a PS2 and get Gran Turismo 3 in a year even though there's really nothing worth playing yet?"

The question really comes down to this. How many people do you know who own a PS2 and play PS1 games on it? Not a single person I know does this. That's not to say that _you_ might not know people who do, only that this does not represent the average user. Most people who buy a PS2 only want to play PS2 games on it. They are unlikely to buy a PS1 game. They may already own some PS1 games but if so, they could just use their PS1 to play them on.

I know exactly two people who have a PS2 (and thus, I'm probably not typical, but oh well), and both of them use their PS2 for PS1 games. Mostly, they play Square's PS1 games like the Final Fantasy series and re-releases (Anthologies, Chronicles, Origins). Nobody is going to buy a PS2 so that they can play the PS1 version of John Madden Football, but I could see someone buying a PS2 because they want to play Gran Turismo 2 (they'll probably also get GT3, but the hardcore will dig up copies of 1 and 2 as well). And as for just playing the PS1 games on the old PS1, why bother? Do you really want to have another box connected to your TV/home theater system? More importantly, the PS2 does smooth the graphics somewhat of PS1 games, making them look a bit better, so except for the very few games that don't work with the PS2's PSOne-on-a-chip, there's no reason you wouldn't want to play your PS1 games on your PS2.

OS X on XBox?!?

[illumin8]

Wow... I can see the potential implications now:

Microsoft releases XBox 2 with a PPC 970 running at 2 ghz.

XBox hackers break the encryption and are able to run unsigned code on the PPC 970 processor.

XBox hackers use MacOnLinux to run a full-fledged Mac OS X on cheap Xbox hardware.

???

Profit!!!

Just kidding about the profit part... But who wouldn't want a 2 ghz. G5 running Mac OS X for about $300. This would be a killer workstation and would run circles around the existing Xbox 1 running Linux. Can you imagine?

Re:One wrinkle using the VPC code from Connectix..

[Lars T.]

I have yet to see anything substantiating that claim. Heck, there never was a "virtual little endian mode". When somebody (esp. Microsoft) invents new names for something to prove they don't exist (anymore), I feel uneasy.

3.1.4 PowerPC Byte Ordering

The PowerPC architecture supports both big and little-endian byte ordering. The default byte ordering is bigendian. However, the code sequence used to switch from big to little-endian mode may differ among processors.

The PowerPC architecture defines two bits in the MSR for specifying byte ordering--LE (little-endian mode) and ILE (exception little-endian mode). The LE bit specifies the endian mode in which the processor is currently operating and ILE specifies the mode to be used when an exception handler is invoked. That is, when an exception occurs, the ILE bit (as set for the interrupted process) is copied into MSR[LE] to select the endian mode for the context established by the exception. For both bits, a value of 0 specifies big-endian mode and a value of 1 specifies little-endian mode.

The PowerPC architecture also provides load and store instructions that reverse byte ordering. These instructions have the effect of loading and storing data in the endian mode opposite from that which the processor is operating. See Section 4.2.3.4 Integer Load and Store with Byte-Reverse Instructions for more information on these instructions.

I have yet to see anything by IBM saying that there were changes in that behaviour in the 970.

Congratulations - Its a GameCube?

[justin_saunders]

What do you get when add an ATI graphics chip and a PowerPC processor? - thats right, the XBox 2 is a GameCube!.

But seriously folks, what does this mean for GameCube 2's "air supply". With ATI and IBM tied up (legally,financially) with exclusive tech deals with M$, how is the GameCube 2 going to retain backwards compatibility without using "second best" technology.

Scary

[Anonymous Coward]

Now it would be scary if both the ATI (GameCube gpu) and the IBM (GameCube cpu) deal were done only to block Nintendo's source for quality chips, and that they really just put the next bigger Intel and NVidia chips into Xbox 2...