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Inside the Xbox 360

Posted by Zonk on from the tech-that-drives-the-beast dept.

QT writes "Ars Technica has an in-depth look at the Xenon processor that will power the Xbox 360. It's the first technical look at the CPU itself, its design goals, and some of the differences between it and IBM's Cell processor. The Xbox 360's procedural synthesis capabilities look quite impressive, and I'm not as convinced as I was before that the PS3 would spank the Xbox 360."

17 of 347 comments (clear)

  1. Whats with? by TheKidWho · · Score: 5, Insightful

    All the fanboyism?

    All three of these consoles are going to be wicked powerful, omfg just because ps3 is 1.32012535x faster then xbox360 doesn't mean that it sucks all of a sudden. Fanboys need to take some chill pills!

    Anyways, I await the revolution, im going to be dissapointed if its not revolutionary =(

    1. Re:Whats with? by coop0030 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I agree, the hardware is going to be so close. It is going to come down to the software.

      This is what Microsoft is betting on with releasing the console 6 months before. They are thinking that the earlier release is going to give them more time to have a strong library of games before the PS3 ever comes out.

      What would you buy? A PS3 with 20 decent launch games? Or an XBox 360 with 80 games, with a bunch of them that are great?

      I think most people will pick the second option. Look what Halo did for the Xbox. Now take that to the next generation, and not have any next-gen competition when they launch. People will be awestruck at the Xbox 360, even if the PS3 is more powerful (it won't matter because it hasn't launched yet at the time).

      This is going to be huge for Microsoft.

    2. Re:Whats with? by Fr33z0r · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Bear in mind that this is the first generation that's been online out of the box. Sure it's nothing for us PC gamers, but these consoles are going to open up a door for non-PC gamers to play all their favourite games against real people - the difference between AI and real people isn't something to be sniffed at as "same old song and dance"

      The past couple of years have been right up there IMHO, where in just a few months we've had the likes of Half Life 2, World of Warcraft, San Andreas, Silent Hill 4, Resident Evil 4, Halo 2, Doom III, Metroid Prime 2, Paper Mario TYD... There have been more great games released in the past year than there have been in any I can remember, and there's certainly enough on every format you busy for a long time, and what's coming up just looks better and better with every passing day (and that's ignoring the PSP and DS). Sure purists will say "those ones above are all sequels" but who cares, they're all great games, (with the possible exception of Doom III, heheh)

      Games are still as cool, fun and new as ever, it sounds like you're just getting a bit jaded, or maybe spoiled for choice?

    3. Re:Whats with? by jr87 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I think you just displayed some fanboyism...why is it so *cool* to bash nintendo these days? The gamecube is still a helluva lotta fun. Oh, GTA is nice, as is Halo, but Super Smash Bros. Melee is like crack with a couple friends around. start playing at 2pm, suddenly it's 2am and you haven't started that effing term paper....
      of course FF:(really big number) did that to me too.

      when the gaming gets good, my grades suffer.

  2. Xenon vs Xeon by timeOday · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Why would IBM name a PowerPC chip "Xenon", when Intel has been using the confusingly similar "Xeon" for years now?

  3. What's the deal-yo? by Gizzmonic · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The Xbox 360's procedural synthesis capabilities look quite impressive, and I'm not as convinced as I was before that the PS3 would spank the Xbox 360.

    What the heck? This is 99% speculation. Is there any reason to start off with a fanboy potshot?

    The only power that any next-gen system needs is the power to output an HD resolution. None of the graphics I've seen so far looks like they couldn't be done on a Gamecube or Xbox.

    Hopefully, now that we've got this nearly photorealistic power at our command, games will evolve the way that painting did when the camera was invented. Realism just becomes another style (and a boring and lazy one at that). Let's see some avante-garde approaches to video games for once. Stylistic innovation that I can butter my teeth with.

    --
    (-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
    1. Re:What's the deal-yo? by ciroknight · · Score: 2, Insightful

      While I get your point, it seems both companies are going for the same goal, just in different ways.

      Microsoft is pushing their "procedural synthesis" into extremly parallel processors, to offload work from artists, and still make games look better. Sony is pushing their Cell chip as an extremely parallel processor to offload the work of the game, putting all the weight on artists, and still making the games look better. None of this, however, helps gameplay, which is the reason I don't even own a current-gen console.

      Secondly, what would stop Sony, or anyone else for that matter, from making a "proceedural synthesis" system of their own? Really, the whole concept is to unroll the concept we had when we first started making video games ("Oh, computers are too slow, let's pre-compute everything for them" vs "Oh, computers are so fast they can afford to compute the data on the fly"). Instead of running your vector algorithms on the production-side, run it on the client side. The machines are there now.

      It's funny how the early paradigms for optimization in computers are now starting to work in reverse.. quality verses cost curve is reversing I guess.

      --
      "Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
    2. Re:What's the deal-yo? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      "Hopefully, now that we've got this nearly photorealistic power at our command..."

      Anyone who says that about video games should try looking out of the damn window sometime. Or even download some non-animated TV, they have it on bittorrent and everything. Photorealism is a decade away at the very least.

  4. dumb @ss by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    PS3 cell CPU is a paradigm shift. The impact is way way beyond a game console such as XBOX. I plan to use the PS3 for neural networks..

  5. Re:Multi-purpose CPU? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    I think they're both designed to play video games, but I could be wrong...

  6. I was at E3 and gaming journalism is broken by garagekubrick · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Because every developer on the floor knew that the most impressive demos for the PS3 were totally prerendered. They could even name the people who worked on them. And for some reason no one in the games journalism community would point blank persistently ask Sony and groups like Axis Animation what the deal was. Look at this article where it's all speculation and guessing. The public deserves to know that what they were shown is not exactly how a game is going to look on PS3. Meanwhile, closed door demos of the Xbox 360 were actually impressive. I don't work for either company or work in games for that matter, though I do love them. I am totally neutral about both machines. My bias is negative towards Microsoft as I'm a Mac zealot and my Xbox is my least favorite console. I went into E3 feeling Microsoft had blown it. Then I saw what it could do, held the controller in my hand, and now am impressed and rather excited about the Xbox 360. And privately a developer told me that they aren't anywhere near having the machines run full speed or utilizing their full power in the very obvious Mac G5 dev kits they're running everything from. But I will say this: HDTV is going to be a requirement. The PS3 remains vaporware in my mind - I recall claims of rendering scenes of the Final Fantasy movie on PS2's "emotion engine". And ultimately what's even sadder is there were a mere handful of games at E3 that made me excited. Okami, the new Zelda, We Love Kattamari, Shadow of the Collossus, Stubbs the Zombie, and that's pretty much it. Horsepower may be here, but games are as stunted, as juvenile, and as retreaded as ever. Future marines vs. monsters and bimbos galore. Meanwhile next gen gaming is going to cost more, Microsoft have shunted most PC development to the Xbox, killing the richness of PC games for the most part other than MMORPGs. And now we're going to have live updating advertising in games, along with additional content that will have to be purchased. Want that sword +2? You can buy it for $4.99. Welcome to gamer hell.

    --
    ** http://www.nkhumanrights.or.kr/ ** Human rights in North Korea. 1 million estimated dead from starvation.
  7. procedural synthesis by LWATCDR · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I don't get how this could be patented? How is this different than any of a 1000 fractal plant or landscape programs that are out there?

    --
    See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
  8. Who cares, just buy both by llZENll · · Score: 2, Insightful

    both will have some great games

  9. Why would you assume the PS3 would spank the Xbox? by bmajik · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You didn't think you were watching real footage of _anything_ from Sony did you? You didn't think that the PS3 they "showed" would be final form of the box, did you ? Do you think the "dualshockboomerang" is the final form of the controller?

    You don't actually beleive that giving the 7 SPE's hand coded routines to do (that accomplish nothing, btw) and then proclaiming it is the tflops king makes a better video game machine, do you ?

    Which of those 7 SPE's is going to run the IP stack for all the networked games (that wont have an online service comparable to xbox live).

    None of them.

    Sony made _ridiculous_ claims about the PS2, the fanboys ate them up, and sony way, way underdelivered. "The PS2 will do Toy Story in real time!!". Riiiiight. What part of Toy Story did Sony do, exactly? What do they know about making a Pixar quality film?

    For that matter, if the PS2/PS3 are so great, why aren't they _actually_ in the Top500 list? The best supercomputers from Japan aren't made by Sony - they're made by NEC. Where is their supercomputing architectural experience? How is it that a stereo/walkman manufacturer gets by claiming that it is building a faster machine than just about anybody thats been doing it for 30 years, and that they'll sell it for $300 to boot.

    The real tragedy here is that Sony fanboys didn't learn from PS2. Sony has the hype cranked up to 11, and people are eating it up, just like they did last time.

    I am sure that the PS3 will allow you to have fun playing games.

    I am also sure that it will NOT be the hardware equivalent of the return of Christ. Please see through the BS.

    --
    My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
  10. The parent post is crap. by shrubya · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ARRRLovin has never even seen a single page of detailed chip ANALYSIS generated by HANNIBAL at ARSTECHNICA. It's nice to see the ancient art of "trolling" still being practiced.........but not really.

    (IOW, RTFA)

  11. The Wheel of Life by argent · · Score: 4, Insightful
    It's funny how the early paradigms for optimization in computers are now starting to work in reverse.

    "Starting to"? As long as computers have been around, the trade-offs between the CPU, coprocessors, and I/O processors have been changing.

    The earliest reference to it that I know of it dates back to the early '70s:
    cycle of reincarnation
    [coined by Ivan Sutherland ca. 1970] n. Term used to refer to a well-known effect whereby function in a computing system family is migrated out to special-purpose peripheral hardware for speed, then the peripheral evolves toward more computing power as it does its job, then somebody notices that it is inefficient to support two asymmetrical processors in the architecture and folds the function back into the main CPU, at which point the cycle begins again. Several iterations of this cycle have been observed in graphics-processor design, and at least one or two in communications and floating-point processors. Also known as `the Wheel of Life', `the Wheel of Samsara', and other variations of the basic Hindu/Buddhist theological idea.
  12. Re:Procedural scenery is not new by caswelmo · · Score: 2, Insightful

    It's seems like every time I hear about something "new" in the computer science field (like procedural synthesis) it is actually an idea that some smart dude thought of 40 years ago and just couldn't implement on vaccuum tubes. I don't think we're as smart as we think we are.