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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."

3 of 347 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Xenon vs Xeon by vought · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I can't answer your question, after a moment of confusion (during which I chalked up a seeming "mistake" to the quality of Slashdot's editorial staff) I figured it out.

    I do have to give IBM credit for naming the processor after something that actually exists, rather than formulating a marketing driven non-word for their new product. Xenon is a gas that when excited, produces brilliant light...not a bad association.

    I mean, what the hell is a Xeon anyway? Xenon, now that's something we can all relate to. Perhaps the name for IBM's new XBox processor was chosen after perusing the Greek root of Xenon xenos, which means "strange".

  2. CPU so what? by logik3x · · Score: 4, Interesting

    who gives a damm what their console runs... the point of a console is playing games... I had way more fun on my SNES & N64 then on PS2 and PS2 is like a 99999 times faster... ok you can have better graphics WOW but really the point his to have fun not make a reality "show" game... the most popular game in pc history where never the pretiest ones... for shure the engine was powerfull but the details were no that impressive... you think people played CS for graphics ...lol?

  3. Procedural scenery is not new by Animats · · Score: 4, Interesting
    "Procedural synthesis" has been around for a while. First came fractal synthesis of mountain ranges and clouds, then came L-system for trees and shrubbery. SpeedTree has been doing this for years, and has the best production system. Here are high resolution screenshots. "Windblown trees and grass, subtle lighting effects and hundreds of thousands of trees, plants, palms, cacti, grasses, spread across vast terrains covering hundreds of square miles." One of their older demos is the "million tree forest". The grass, trees, and leaves sway in the wind, just like the claims for the new Xbox.

    Yes, this is real time. You can download the demo. That demo requires a high-end PC, and will give you a sense of what SpeedTree will look like on the new XBox.

    Because that's what the somewhat clueless original article is about. SpeedTree will be available for the new XBox. This was announced back in March.

    The trick is cramming something like SpeedTree into a wierd architecture like the new XBox. That's a headache, but not a breakthrough.