IBM to build chips for XBox 2
Straight from Microsoft comes the news that IBM has been awarded the contract to build the chips for the XBox 2. This, of course, has gotten all sorts of rumour mills flowing.
What if XBox 2 gets built on IBM's "state-of-the-art processors" (which at this time would be the PowerPC 970 a.k.a. G5)? Read on for some rumours that are wilder than Apple on Intel...
Update: no longer a rumour - see this Wired story
Update 2: And they're going to support backwards-compatibility through emulation from their Connectix purchase
Of course, IBM is already involved with building the next Nintendo and Sony platforms as well. But still, I can only imagine the PR storm if MS is really going to go with a PPC-powered platform. Nevermind the fact that it would be completely incompatible with the current platform. Hmmm...last rumour speculation: Microsoft is so afraid of G5 performance that they're hedging their bets by investing in Virtual PC technology.
More snippets of info from ArsTechnica.
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on 2nd thot...
it might be the power4 core at play here. That's what is in the PS/3's parallel processor. The CPU is not as important in a console, it's the GPU and the I/O which limit performance. The PS/3 chip has 4 cores I think, which would be better than single 970, plus the graphics pipelines. So I ouldn't be surprised to see the xb chip with 2 or 4 cores.
Not 970
Yeah, there is no chance this could be the 970, though one has to wonder why both Microsoft and Sony would let IBM put the Cell technology in both consoles.
And wasn't the Sony graphics API criticized as being extremely difficult to program for?
What I am more interested in is what Sony will do for the PS3 graphics unit, whether they will go to a specialized company like ATI or nVidia, or if they will do their own in-house chip and what they will learn from from the PS2.
The graphics pipelines of the Cell
can be on board or separate on the Visualizer chip (there'll be multiple variants of Cell). it's a parallel setup (multiples of 4 Pixel Engines) which I've linked-to some months back on this site.
People say the PS2 graphics is hard to fine-tune, but from what I can see that's just because it's not DX and something new for coders to learn. Now everyone has learned it. Coding PS3 graphics will be different again.
IBM can't use Cell for MS xb, it's not theirs to use. There was new article today.
the xb is a directx machine
micr0s0ft has already ported directx to several platforms, so it probably has a cleaned-up codebase and will be easy to port to ppc. They also badly needs a way to keep Int3l honest, since whipping boy 4MD can't.
MS has little choice in this matter, as ibm is the only fab which has processes with performance as good as Int3l's; capable of SOI, copper planes, more than 10 layers, and 65nm. Int3l deploys their top processes only for their own bread & butter chips.