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Under the Hood of the Xbox 360

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the love-the-smell-of-solder-in-the-morning dept.

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."

3 of 374 comments (clear)

  1. Re:PowerPCs? by JohnnyDoesLinux · · Score: 0, Redundant

    And Apple is using Intel.. (the room is spinning)

    End.

  2. Oh the irony (probably intended) by SmallFurryCreature · · Score: 0, Redundant

    The PlayStation 3 will be made by Sony, a company which distributes software that renders a personal computer quite unstable and open to attack by malfeasant users from across the Internet. As oppossed to Microsoft maker of windows? Geez, sure sure xp and 2k3 are nowadays a lot more stable then the crash fest that the 9x series and ME well lets just not go there. Yet it is still Windows that is THE zombie paradise. Oh and on wich OS did the sony rootkit install anyway? I wonder wich company distributes software that allows just anyone to install a rootkit? Frankly if you are talking evil empires then this is like choosing between the nazi's and the japs. With nintendo perhaps being the italians. Perhaps the dreamcast relaunch mentioned earlier is d-day? Oh and the 360 stability. I seen it in 3 stores. 2x it was in a crashed state. Wonderfull.

    --

    MMO Quests are like orgasms:

    You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.

  3. 3.2 Ghz by jmichaelg · · Score: 0, Redundant
    The part that caught my eye was
    three 3.2GHz high-frequency PowerPC processor cores...
    Seems not too long ago, Mac fanatics were dissing IBM for not hitting Jobs' 3GHz target. It appears from the article IBM not only hit it, they surpassed it three ways to Sunday. A little later in the article, there's a discussion of how parts of the chip shut down when not in use to minimize heat production. Perhaps the earlier speculation about the Mac to Intel switch that Jobs just didn't want to pay IBM's asking price is closer to the mark.

    Three identical cores, each with its own embedded vector and fpu units along with 128 registers - the chip sure looks like it's the fastest cpu out there. Wouldn't it be ironic if Apple ends up running on crufty old x86 and Vista ends up running on PowerPc - a proprietary PowerPc to boot?