The truth about last year's Xbox 360 recall

[Kougar]

Further details at http://www.eetimes.com/news/latest/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=51TYZYXYRWUZUQSNDLSCK HA?articleID=208403010

ANAHEIM, Calif. — When Microsoft Corp. announced a mammoth global recall of its Xbox 360 a year ago, the software giant never disclosed the exact source of the game console's heat problem that led to the fiasco.


Now, in an unlikely venue at Design Automation Conference here, Bryan Lewis, research vice president and chief analyst at Gartner, disclosed that the problem started in a graphic chip. Lewis offered this offhand revelation while discussing the changing ASIC and ASSP landscape for his DAC audience.

The Xbox 360 recall a year ago happened because "Microsoft wanted to avoid an ASIC vendor," said Lewis. Microsoft designed the graphic chip on its own, cut a traditional ASIC vendor out of the process and went straight to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd., he explained.


Frankly I am not sure if I am even surprised. Micrososft trying to cut corners cut a little to much off, and paid for it royally with that expensive recall and continuing RMA issues over failing Xbox 360 systems... leave it to Microsoft to think they can design something that works efficiently. :ahhhhh:

[Miker]

They are lucky if what they make works at all, who cares about efficiently.

[Kougar]

True enough. But if it was an efficient GPU design then it wouldn't of been nearly as hot as it was, to begin with.

[PP Mguire]

Wait a second. What happend to ATI making the chip inside the 360? Thats what everybody has been toting since 6 months prior to release.

[Viper08]

Well inside the cooling isnt all that great. 2 fans and a crap heatsink, of course there is going to be heating problems. A friend and I tried to fix his, cause he had one working fan.

[Goliath182]

Wait a second. What happend to ATI making the chip inside the 360? Thats what everybody has been toting since 6 months prior to release.
Thats what im thinking. Ive seen Microsoft and ATI brag about the GPU.

[Schwarz]

The actual big reason was to be one step ahead of sony.
Releasing their machines before got them a lot more sales then sony...

[PP Mguire]

Ok well i call :flag_bs: on this becasue this would make everything else to be FALSE about the ATI GPU inside it.

[Kougar]

Ok well i call :flag_bs: on this becasue this would make everything else to be FALSE about the ATI GPU inside it.

That's a valid point I don't have a clear answer for.

From what I can gather Xenos wasn't purely an ATI design. The unusual hybrid design of the core and the second eDRAM core had a hand from several areas, and ATI was contracted to produce and help design the chip. NEC actually is the one that designed the eDRAM core that sits beside the GPU core sharing the same wafer.

After some digging however I can say that the Xenos GPU isn't just a GPU, it doubles as an actual northbridge for the Xbox 360. The CPU, system RAM, southbridge, and daughter eDRAM die all are routed directly to/through the GPU itself and use it as the I/O hub. ATI may of covered much of the design but it is a pretty safe bet Microsoft had at least a large portion in the design choices made, especially since this chip doubled as the northbridge for the entire circuit board. ATI had to build the GPU to meet Microsoft's needs and hardware designs of the 360, including the NEC eDRAM core that is part of the Xenos wafer.

[PP Mguire]

Ok now what you told me makes more sense. ATI probably created the graphics part of the chip but the rest is done by M$ and 3rd party. I didnt realize their GPU doubled and tripled as more.