Slashdot Mirror
Updated CPU For 360 Next Year
Next Generation reports that Microsoft has already lined up a new CPU for their next-gen console. Production with the new chip should begin next year. From the article: "Singapore-based Chartered has been a supplier of less-advanced 90nm SOI CPU products since the Xbox 360 console launch. By implementing the newer 65nm SOI technology, the system's transistors will retain less charge, allowing the microprocessor to operate faster."
The overheating defects in the 360 are:
1) The faulty powersupply design
2) The ATI graphics card overheating
The CPU in the 360 is pretty much the only thing in the system that is not showing signs of defects or heat problems.
This should help Microsoft to reduce the manufacturing cost of the system a bit. However, Microsoft needs to get a handle on the massive defects problems like yesterday if they want to have anyone still interested in the system by the time this updated CPU is ready to go.
I just thought I'd point out that a lot of consoles have had this happen. The PS2 has gone through a bunch of revisions, and I remember reading that when Nintendo redesigned the Super NES, part of the reason was to reduce the number of chips they had to put into it.
Some people have commented negatively about a change in specs in the middle of the production run. There's prior art for this, though: apparently the Playstation 2 has two processor speeds, 294MHz and 299MHz.
The fact that this has had so little impact that nobody realizes it has already happened speaks to the fact that it can be done without a whole lot of problems.
The days of being able to count cycles and depend on the timing that way are long gone anyhow. Console games need to use timers and handle the fact that sometimes the game will bog down anyhow. Tweaking the clock speed a little is something that everything ought to be able to handle in stride, or they're going to have big problems as soon as there's one too many polygons on the screen.
On the topic of changing specs mid-stream, it has occurred to me to wonder if Nintendo's HD solution for the Revolution will be to release an HD-capable Revolution about two years after the initial release. 3D games up-sample pretty well, even if the first-gen games won't look quite as good as dedicated HD games, but on that note, even XBox 360 games need to work at SD, as well. They'll be able to still release that console at most likely the original price-point, and they'll be selling into a market where more people have HD displays than today. It'll be tricky, but since they could design the graphics card with the explicit purpose of having the same capabilities as the old one, just with the ability to do all the old stuff in HD in the same amount of time, it should be doable.
If this is their plan, they may be right; jamming all that expensive hardware into the PS3 and the XBox 360 may not be cost effective if you lock out a lot of people who would otherwise have purchased one.
They were actually used to clock the processor DOWN. i.e. "Turbo" meant the processor ran at the full 25MHz or whatever, whereas with turbo disabled the processor ran at something like 4.77MHz to allow old DOS games and the like to run properly.
Take a dollar, divide it by 100, take two and call me in the morning.
This was most definitely the case with the 8088 and 80286. But I BELIEVE that some intel processors utilized dynamic logic, and as such, had a minimum clock frequency. With these processors you could not just reduce the clock, so they would simulate the slowing of the clock by disabling the cache which is very effective in slowing down your system.
--jeffk++
ipv6 is my vpn
You're acting as if this is the first time in history that a console's hardware has been tweaked. Sony were constantly improving the PS1 and PS2 (eg. the CPU and video processor were combined into one chip), there's a myriad of variations of the Saturn, the Megadrive went through three redesigns etc. It shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone that the 360 would undergo the same process.
If you download DosBox, you can set the clock speed used to run old DOS games, and it works wonders. I know Magic Carpet works under it well, since just last week I helped my roommate get it up and running under it.
:wq