Updated CPU For 360 Next Year 124
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."
Faster or cooler (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Faster or cooler (Score:1, Funny)
Re:Faster or cooler (Score:2)
Adjustable Turbo (Score:1)
I would venture to say most algorithms are simple. They check to see if the input is occurring faster than humanly possible and if so, ignore it.
However, if you could adjust the rate of rapid fire, and add some small amount of noise to the period of the rate, you could probably fool most rapid fire detection algorithms.
At least, that was the premise when I was building my hack of the DualShock 2 controller.
Re:Adjustable Turbo (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm surprised that I didn't immediately assume "Turbo" meant "repeating button presses"
He was refering to the turbo button on old computers. It was essentially a button that increased the clock multiplier. I think the one on my 486 made it go from 100 to 133MHz, or 50 to 66MHz or something. It was so long ago, I don' remember.
And then there was the 286 I had. The turbo button switched it from like 10MHz to 12MHz. Or was it KHz back then?
Re:Adjustable Turbo (Score:1)
Re:Adjustable Turbo (Score:1)
--jeffk++
Re:Adjustable Turbo (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Adjustable Turbo (Score:4, Insightful)
Mod parent up, this is correct. A lot of really old software used the CPU timing instead of real-world time intervals. I remember in particular a biplane shoot-em-up that ran at ludicrous speed on a 486/33 in "turbo" mode.
Turbo - That way at first... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Adjustable Turbo (Score:1)
> 486/33 in "turbo" mode.
I know a guy who wrote some PC games. He was told to leave them running too fast with turbo enabled (rather than make the guts of the game faster/better but not have the input that fast...if you see what I mean), but was told to leave it `too fast` as people who spent that much money on their PC wanted to see it running really fast.
Re:Adjustable Turbo (Score:3, Informative)
--jeffk++
Re:Adjustable Turbo (Score:2)
Would that by any chance be 'sopwith'? http://sopwith.classicgaming.gamespy.com/ [gamespy.com]
I remember trying to actually play that game with turbo enabled -- that was some hardcore fps
Re:Adjustable Turbo (Score:2)
Re:Adjustable Turbo (Score:2)
So scary that I know that =\
jesus I'm old.
--chitlenz
Re:Adjustable Turbo (Score:1)
Barf: We better get out of here in a hurry
Lonestar: Switch to secret hyper jets
Barf: Switching to secret hyper jets
Lonestar: Buckle up back there we're going to
Colonel Sanders: We're closing in on them sir. In less than a minute Lonestar will be ours
Dark Helmet: Good. Prepare to attack
Colonel Sanders: Prepare to attack
Dark Helmet: On the count of three...One...Two...WAIT!? What happened? Where are they?
Colonel Sanders:
Re:Adjustable Turbo (Score:1)
Re:Adjustable Turbo (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Adjustable Turbo (Score:2)
Re:Adjustable Turbo (Score:1)
Re:Adjustable Turbo (Score:1)
Re:Adjustable Turbo (Score:1)
Haha, it's been so long since I've seen one of those buttons, and with doing that controller project a year ago, the Recency Effect [wikipedia.org] kicked in.
I thought something seemed amiss about that statement...haha
Re:Adjustable Turbo (Score:2, Funny)
You must be at least ^this^ old to have gotten the joke. For further information, see here [wikipedia.org].
Re:Faster or cooler (Score:1)
Re:Faster or cooler (Score:2)
A have and have-not culture in the console world is a dangerous thing; look how badly the Jaguar CD failed, or the Mega 32X. Microsoft are already playing with fire by shipping Xboxen with and without hard drives. Do they really need to add pressure by shipping them with different optical drives? Imagine the first publisher to release an HD DVD only title, and then the shrieking of everyone with a regular DVD Xbox360 ...
Re:Faster or cooler (Score:2)
Upgrades all round! (Score:1)
Or... (Score:1, Troll)
Re:Or... (Score:1)
Re:Or... (Score:4, Insightful)
People are speculating about higher speeds simply BECAUSE a die shrink would probably ENABLE higher speeds. That doesn't mean that Microsoft will do anything with clockspeed. They probably won't.
That said, they wouldn't be setting a precedent if they did raise clockspeed. Anybody remember the addon for the N64 that added more graphics memory? It enabled some games to run at higher framerates, with more detail. How is that any different from higher clockspeed in the 360? You have your "normal" mode that the game is targetted at, then you have your "enhanced" mode where more CPU power enables some more detail or features. That is no different than what Nintendo did with the N64.
Re:Or... (Score:1)
Re:Or... (Score:2)
Re:Or... (Score:2)
Re:Or... (Score:2)
Except it's complete
Not faster -- cooler and cheaper (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not faster -- cooler and cheaper (Score:2)
Or something like that.
I remember commenting on the 90nm --> 65nm design when the Xbox360 first came out. It makes sense to wait for the gen 2 hardware that has a cooler CPU and the bugs worked out.
This is true of almost all consoles (Score:3, Insightful)
This includes both of the playstations and most certainly the ps3 as well, not sure about nintendo, but definately the genesis and older systems.
Re:Not faster -- cooler and cheaper (Score:1)
Microsoft could make the system for $50 and still charge everyone $399.99 just like Sony would or Nintendo would.
Re:Not faster -- cooler and cheaper (Score:2)
Second, all companies in this industry make their money off of game liscensing fees. If they can make a minor profit on the console that's just icing on the cake (but they will take a loss on it if necessary).
If MS could afford to build these things for $50, you can bet there would be $100 Xbox 360's on the shelves.
Well why not... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Well why not... (Score:2)
1)Any bugs in the new processor could break existing apps. And a console can't patch them.
2)Console games are typically optimized for the hardware. Some games may break due to timing changes of a faster processor.
Re:Well why not... (Score:2)
And I don't think it would break timing of anything. It's just technically slightly faster - the real key is the chip is cheaper to fab.
Re:Well why not... (Score:2)
And it can break timing (not will, but can). THe idea of a console is that it never changes hardware. Some devs take advantage of that, and assume things will happen in time. If they don't, we'll get glitches or breaks in games. This one isn't an "it will happen", but an "it can happen". THe first is something
Re:Well why not... (Score:2)
More to your point, assume the original processor had some bug / undocumented feature / behaviour that was mistakenly used (i.e conceptual bug) in some game, but works fine on the older chip. The new chip might change something minor like allowing instructions X and Y to run in parallel when they previously weren't, and then the software bug rears its head and crash.
When you have software that needs to work and cannot be changed later, you quite surely test it as thoroughly as possible. So if you
I don't see why that's an issue. (Score:2)
Same goes for the timing, sure they might be able to run the new version at a higher clock rate, but they won't. Since it's the exact same design, the timing will be the same when run at the same rate.
Re:I don't see why that's an issue. (Score:2)
I belive that a die shrink often involves changes in the physical layout of a chip, due to various electrical/thermal/spooky effects. But you're right in that the logic of the chip shouldn't change...
Can someone who knows more comment on this?
Re:Well why not... (Score:2)
Decreasing the feature size will increase the yield, and so the cost per chip will drop. This is the primary reason for the reduction. Your first point isn't technically wrong, just very unlikely. The behav
That would be cool (Score:2)
Prediction (Score:2, Troll)
At least I have a real first name, J Allard (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:At least I have a real first name, J Allard (Score:2)
They have no real strategy or vision beyond "make money." They will do whateve
Re:At least I have a real first name, J Allard (Score:2)
If you truly buy into this being just a "update" to make it cooler and cheaper, then your view is understood... but if you honestly believe that then you have been drinking the kool-aid.
Re:At least I have a real first name, J Allard (Score:2)
The PS2 went through nine similar revisions, before the slim PStwo was released. Hell, later Xboxes got 10gb drives instead of the original 8gb drives, so what did Microsoft do? They disabled the extra 2gb so early adopters wouldn't feel cheated.
Re:At least I have a real first name, J Allard (Score:2)
Honestly, how much would it suck to pop in a game and be told "Woops, sorry. Your Xbox harddrive is too small. Please, buy a new Xbox."
Re:At least I have a real first name, J Allard (Score:2)
Hopefully MS again recognizes its hardcore fans who acquired the 360 early in the production cycle will expect some sort of compensation for their willingness to purchase a console with apparent heat/performance issues.
In other words, you want to be paid (instead of paying for) to be a Beta tester?
Re:At least I have a real first name, J Allard (Score:2, Informative)
Re:At least I have a real first name, J Allard (Score:2)
Why should consoles be different?
Re:At least I have a real first name, J Allard (Score:3, Insightful)
They already have. You get to play the 360 for an extra year.
Beta Testers Take A Bow! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Beta Testers Take A Bow! (Score:2)
Could be a little faster without problems (Score:2)
Mostly, I think it'll just run cooler and put less load on the power brick though, which is a good thing.
Re:Could be a little faster without problems (Score:2)
Re:Could be a little faster without problems (Score:2)
Why doubled? Wouldn't they only need to test the parts of their software that could be affected by the chips' significant operational differences?
Re:Could be a little faster without problems (Score:2)
Ideally, yes. But it's rarely safe to make assumptions about what could or could not be affected by a change like that.
Re:Could be a little faster without problems (Score:2)
Re:Could be a little faster without problems (Score:2)
Not really. I mean, I doubt the 360 dev kits use the exact same hardware as production 360's do, down to the revision numbers on each individual chip, and yet code written on the former runs flawlessly on the latter 9999 times out of 10000.
Not Going To Help Anything But Manufacturing Costs (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Historical (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Historical (Score:2)
I was a video game salesman back in 95/96. The original PSOnes frequently went defective not long after the 90 day warranty, usually resulting in skipping etc. On top of that, there was a trick that involved booting the PSOne with the door op
Re:Historical (Score:1)
I remember reading something before the US launch of the PS2 (it may have been EGM). The reporter was in a warehouse where all the launch-day machines were sitting, waiting to be shipped out. He said something like "I dunno if the logistics of moving all these machines is a bigger job than launching the space shuttle, but it's close".
Even Sony and Nintendo do this!! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Even Sony and Nintendo do this!! (Score:1)
Re:Even Sony and Nintendo do this!! (Score:2)
The 360 was launched in 2005, and they're talking about a new hardware revision to come in 2007. That doesn't qualify?
Nintendo does exactly one revision of their home consoles
The initial release of the 8-bit Famicom in Japan was so plagued with hardware problems that Nintendo actually had to recall them for repairs. The second Famicom model fared much better. Then, another revision came with the front-loading NES released in the United States a
Re:Even Sony and Nintendo do this!! (Score:1)
Re:Even Sony and Nintendo do this!! (Score:1)
The old-shaped PS2 went through some twelve revisions, and the new model has already had at least three versions. Other consoles have also undergone a significant number of revisions.
There's three versions of the Gamecube: the original, one without the second expansion port and one with both the expansion port and digital A/V-out removed.
Changing specs (Score:5, Informative)
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.
I'd be wary of faster processors (Score:1)
Back then, game developers often clocked their games to the CPU speed. You could more or less rely on it. By the time the processor speed outmatched the routines you had to take care of "too fast" models, your game was outdated anyway.
Anyone who tried to run Wing Commander on a 486 or faster knows the result.
Now, game devs for PCs have wised up. They use time as the measurement now to calcula
Re:I'd be wary of faster processors (Score:1)
Now, game devs for PCs have wised up. They use time as the measurement now to calculate how "fast" the game may run. I'm not sure if devs for console games, who (at least until now) could rely on a fairly uniform platform, take that into account.
Vertical retrace happens at 60 Hz on all NTSC models of the NES, the Super NES, the N64, the GameCube, and the Nintendo Revolution, and in all models of Game Boy or Nintendo DS system in all regions. Console games have based their timing on vertical retrace sinc
Re:I'd be wary of faster processors (Score:1)
Generations haven't really climbed any faster than they ever have: its been a steady 5-6 year gap between significant hardware jumps.
Atari 2600- 1977
NES- 1983 (japan) 1984 US
Genesis- 1988 (japan) 1989 US
Jaguar- 1993 (ok, so the jag tanked HARD, but it WAS a 32/64 bit system)
DC- 1998 (japan) 1999 US
360- 2005 (worldwide)
Re:I'd be wary of faster processors (Score:1)
Even every 360 in the world right now has the same feature. But when this new "faster" chip c
Wrong! (Score:2)
Re:I'd be wary of faster processors (Score:2)
Great... (Score:2, Interesting)
That would be some update!
My 360 is great, so it makes no nevermind to me (Score:4, Interesting)
Xbox Live Marketplace provides a ton of demos and free stuff, the Achevement system is addictive (but meaningless like it should be), worldwide and friends sorted leaderboards are great (expecially for those live arcade titles), and the games are are a blast. Oblivion is one of the best games I have played in years.
I am not a fanboy but I certianly like my xbox enough to call myself a fan. If the PS3 and Revolution are this much fun I will buy those systems too, in a heart beat!
Hell a high end PC graphics card costs about as much as a 360 (and you will need a decent one to run Oblivion).
If MS wants to make the thing cooler and cheaper in the next year why do I care? I have my gaming goodness right now and I am happy.
Ves
This is totally normal. (Score:2)
What's with all the gnashing of teeth, and wringing of hands? This happens all the time in the console world. The Playstation purchased on launch day in 1995 was not the same beast as the Playstation bought in 1999. Chip consolidation and improved manufacturing techniques let Sony lower the price on the Playstation as they put the hardware through different revisions. But you wouldn't know if if you didn't read the model numbers.
Similarly, Nintendo has done this with the GameCube, dropping the compo
No, it won't be faster (Score:1)
Console manufacturers refactor hardware all the time. They do it to make the hardware better, cheaper, slimmer, cooler but NOT faster. Oh you thought the GBA, GBA Micro, GBA SP and the DS's GBA support were identical? Ditto the original PS2 vs the slim model? The Playstation vs. PSOne?
Don't you guys remember what consoles are? It's bad enough that both Sony and Microsoft have gone down the dark path of firmware an
Re:No, it won't be faster (Score:2)
Re:Friends don't let friends buy xbox 360's (Score:4, Insightful)
As others have pointed out, don't expect to see a speed increase from this process change. Instead, this will allow for more stable and cheaper consoles (cheaper for Microsoft; who knows when they'll give us a price drop?).
What does proprietary vs. non-proprietary have to do with it? The original Xbox was "proprietary", even though it was based on standard parts (the CPU was a one-off design, the GPU was a one-off design, and everything was surface-mounted. You couldn't swap the CPU, GPU, or add more memory unless you were awesome with soldering). Anyway, you do realize that the original Xbox went through eight different "versions" [llamma.com] ("revisions" may be a better word), right? Aside from getting screwed with a Thompson DVD drive (the version had little bearing on what drive you'd get, but that Thompson drives stopped shipping with later versions), all versions work exactly the same. In fact, the only reason you'd care about what version you have is if you need to do repairs yourself and need specific parts, or if you want to mod the box and need to make sure you get the right modchip package.
More importantly, this kind of product revision has always happened with consoles. Even Nintendo did it, way back with the NES. Sony does it, and obviously Microsoft does to. Expect to see a number of revisions of the 360 over the years, and unless they really screw something up (like Sony did with the PSTwo revision) you should expect all consoles to be equivalent.
Re:Friends don't let friends buy xbox 360's (Score:1)
I don't know if it counts but stores are already selling the XC premium bundled with King Kong for 380 Euros. Since the XC itself would cost 400 Euros that seems like a minor pricedrop to me, though it may have been motivated by slow sales rather than any official changes (as these stores really have large piles of XCs sitting around unsold).
Re:Friends don't let friends buy xbox 360's (Score:3, Interesting)
Go open up a first-run Playstation 1. The inside is a giant two-sided silicon board jam packed with chips and bits.
Now go open a last-run Playstation 1. It's a big empty shell with an itty bitty circuit board.
Re:Friends don't let friends buy xbox 360's (Score:2)
Console revisions predate even the NES. Atari 2600 boards were grossly divided into "Type A" and "Type B" (which included a chanel switch on the board) and were manufactured under license by a number of companies including: Atari, Inc. CA; Atari Ireland, Ltd., Ireland; Atari Taiwan Manufacturing Corp, Taiwan; Atari-Wong Ltd., Hong Kong; Dimerco Electronics, Taiwan; and TRU Elect
Re:wonderful...Same thing with Apple (Score:3, Insightful)
I could say the same thing about early adopters of Apple Intel-based Macs. In a few months (Q3 latest) a much improved processor with 64-bit processing and Virtualization Technology will replace the current Core Duo models, at likely the same price. It happens all over.
Re:wonderful...Same thing with Apple (Score:4, Insightful)
Also, I have to say most of the posters on this story are idiots. A CPU die-shrink is hardly worthy of all the stupid conspiracy theories posted here.
Re:wonderful...Same thing with Apple (Score:2)
(I can only dream of what I'll see in a year or two when my Dual G5 is due for replacement
Re:wonderful...Same thing with Apple (Score:1)
Microsoft suffers from a complete lack of focus and direction mixed with a total lack of customer service and greed. Yet they thrive, so they have no need to do otherwise.
Re:Yet More Evidence That MS (Score:3, Interesting)
The XBox360 is just a limited PC."
Neither do you, apparently. All consoles are "limited PC"s.
"How far can you actually get if you don't have an internet connection for all the bugfixes?"
US broadband penetration is at 64% of households, but you don't need bugfixes to play games either, only for fancy features that you're not going to use, as you're online. For the games that aren't backwards compatible out of the box, you can burn the updates to CD. New das
Re:Forever Updating (Score:2)
That's exactly the point.
Re:meh (Score:2)
Re:meh (Score:2)
...yet.
Re:too bad... (Score:2)