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Under the Hood of the Xbox 360
An anonymous reader writes "IBM DeveloperWorks is running a behind the design story for the making of the Xbox 360. The 360 has but a single chip with 165 million transistors for it's CPU " From the article: "This chip is in fact a three-way symmetric multiprocessor design. The three PowerPC cores are identical, except that they are physically reflected through the X and Y axis. Each of the CPU cores is a specialized PowerPC chip with a VMX128 extension related to (and partially compatible with) the VMX instructions in the G4 and G5 CPUs. The three CPU cores share a 1MB Level2 cache. Each processor has 32KB each of data and instruction Level1 cache. The chip's front-side bus/physical interface has a 21.6GB/second bandwidth, and runs at 5.4GHz."
You're still comparing apples to oranges.
This is about the CPU. You can't find a quad core CPU at 3.5ghz for 300 bucks yet alone a console with 512 megs ram, the worlds fastest GPU and a quad core 3.5ghz CPU with a backplane and interconnect speed to boot for 300 bucks. I could care less if ms is loosing 100+ per console that still makes it cheaper then i can get a dual core cpu today.
Comparing that to the NES is like saying console should always be 8 but cartridge based machies. The nintendo found a niche and created a market that they have long since been able to succeed in. However that market has never been defigned until today and if you would rather preach proprietary hardware as being cool and a console built from somewhat reliable and existing technology as a pc in a smaller case then that is your own misconception to deal with. Even the NES is just a "pc" dedicated to gaming.
Show me where i can get a quad (or even dual) 3.5 PC with 512 megs ram an ATI 1800 video card, USB, 20 gig hard drive for 300 bucks.
Hype? the 360 is out, check out the graphics yourself. Try and pick one up before you hypothetically compare things the way you think they are because of whatever bias you have.