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XBox (Games) IBM Microsoft Entertainment Games

More On IBM's Next-Gen Xbox Chipset Win 570

Posted by simoniker from the jump-up-showdown dept.
Pieroxy writes "EE Times reports further details on Microsoft's use of IBM chips in its next generation Xbox game and consumer electronics devices, dealing a blow to Intel and providing a much needed boost for IBM's lossmaking chip business." An analyst claims that "IBM is likely to modify its most advanced G5 PowerPC silicon, which is being used in Apple Computer's fastest Macintosh desktops, for the embedded market, reducing the cache and cutting power consumption", and further comments: "This is likely to heat things up at Intel, but it is competition that is healthy for the industry. It's ironic that IBM, with its roots in the computer industry, doesn't supply the processors for the main portion of the personal computer industry. Intel does." We covered IBM's initial announcement as a section-specific story earlier today.
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More On IBM's Next-Gen Xbox Chipset Win More

More On IBM's Next-Gen Xbox Chipset Win

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  • Whose roots where? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by csnydermvpsoft ( 596111 ) on Monday November 03, 2003 @06:17PM (#7381567)
    It's ironic that IBM, with its roots in the computer industry, doesn't supply the processors for the main portion of the personal computer industry. Intel does.

    Wouldn't it be more like the "computer industry, with its roots in IBM," not the other way around? Though that's not entirely accurate either - maybe if it was changed to be the personal computer industry.
    • Yes, your clarification where you added "personal" changes everything. That statement says more about the ignorance of the one who uttered it than it does about IBM's "market" position (whatever that means).
    • Wouldn't it be more like the "computer industry, with its roots in IBM," not the other way around? Though that's not entirely accurate either - maybe if it was changed to be the personal computer industry.

      And the mainframe industry, and the software industry, and...

      Other companies were involved, sure, but they invented FORTRAN and built at least half of the computing industry as we know it, both from their successes and their failures.
    • Considering Intel developed the first microprocessor, you could swing the statement around toward them as well. Perhaps its best if we just stick to the present.

      Personally, this isnt too much of a surprise. Consoles generally use a chip specialized for their specific needs (much like the architecture of the XBox was specialized for it, rather than being a straight PC). Intel is most likely too big to do something that is both relatively (to Intel) small scale and essentially a single-purpose chip.

      IBM, on

  • What about today's Xbox? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by O ( 90420 ) on Monday November 03, 2003 @06:17PM (#7381568)
    Are they not going to have backward compatibility? That seems like a big mistake in the game console market to me.

    • Re:What about today's Xbox? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by chill ( 34294 ) on Monday November 03, 2003 @06:25PM (#7381659) Journal
      Are they not going to have backward compatibility? That seems like a big mistake in the game console market to me.

      By the time the X2 comes out, Celeron 733s will probably be cheap enough to put on an add-on card and sell for $49.

      That is the price of 1 game. Lot of people with existing X-Box titles would buy that.

    • there will be backwards compatibility (Score:5, Insightful)

      by spir0 ( 319821 ) on Monday November 03, 2003 @06:25PM (#7381666) Homepage Journal
      as mentioned in Financial Times [ft.com], Microsoft will likely be using their recently acquired Virtual PC software. This software is the way mac users run windows software on PPC chips. VPC technology will allow MS to provide backwards compatibility under Intel emulation.
      • Ironic, VPC can't run on the G5.

      • One wrinkle using the VPC code from Connectix... (Score:4, Informative)

        by LionMage ( 318500 ) on Monday November 03, 2003 @07:00PM (#7382035) Homepage
        as mentioned in Financial Times, Microsoft will likely be using their recently acquired Virtual PC software

        Except that if Microsoft uses the G5 (PPC970) chip, as everyone is speculating, they'll have to tweak the Virtual PC code base to run on the G5. Why? Because the G5 silicon lacks the special "virtual little endian mode" that the Virtual PC code from Connectix relies upon for performance on the G3 and G4 chips.

        Of course, a highly optimal bit of PPC assembly could be written to replace the missing mode and instructions on the G5.

        Then again, Microsoft could twist IBM's arm and get them to make a custom variant of the G5 that includes this mode, and maybe chops some cache for cost conservation. I sincerely doubt that the chip IBM winds up fabbing for the next Xbox is going to be identical to the version currently shipping in Apple's G5 desktops.
        • I have yet to see anything substantiating that claim. Heck, there never was a "virtual little endian mode". When somebody (esp. Microsoft) invents new names for something to prove they don't exist (anymore), I feel uneasy.
          3.1.4 PowerPC Byte Ordering

          The PowerPC architecture supports both big and little-endian byte ordering. The default byte ordering is bigendian. However, the code sequence used to switch from big to little-endian mode may differ among processors.

          The PowerPC architecture defines two bits in the MSR for specifying byte ordering--LE (little-endian mode) and ILE (exception little-endian mode). The LE bit specifies the endian mode in which the processor is currently operating and ILE specifies the mode to be used when an exception handler is invoked. That is, when an exception occurs, the ILE bit (as set for the interrupted process) is copied into MSR[LE] to select the endian mode for the context established by the exception. For both bits, a value of 0 specifies big-endian mode and a value of 1 specifies little-endian mode.

          The PowerPC architecture also provides load and store instructions that reverse byte ordering. These instructions have the effect of loading and storing data in the endian mode opposite from that which the processor is operating. See Section 4.2.3.4 Integer Load and Store with Byte-Reverse Instructions for more information on these instructions.

          I have yet to see anything by IBM saying that there were changes in that behaviour in the 970.

    • Microsoft wants you to throw out all of your old stuff and buy new stuff. This is, after all, their business model. Don't use Windows 2000 with Office 2000 anymore! Throw it out and buy Windows XP and Office XP instead. Then throw all that out and buy Office 2003 and run it on, oh wait, we have no Windows 2003 for the desktop - doh! Just missed an opportunity to sell a new round of OS upgrades - cr*p!

  • A question (Score:4, Interesting)

    by FreeBSD Goddess ( 721137 ) on Monday November 03, 2003 @06:18PM (#7381576)
    Forgive me if I'm being moronic about this, but if it's based off the G5, it has a completely different instruction set. Does this mean that the modified Windows 2000 kernel used with the current XBox will be upgraded and ported to G5, or that we might see a completely different and new kernel?

    • Re:A question (Score:3, Insightful)

      by NanoGator ( 522640 )
      "Does this mean that the modified Windows 2000 kernel used with the current XBox will be upgraded and ported to G5, or that we might see a completely different and new kernel? "

      Probably a little bit of both. First a recompile followed by some hand-tweaking in the slower areas of the code. Microsoft has operated with other processors before, so I doubt this'd catch their dev teams completely off-guard.
    • Apparently, MS is considering using it's recently--acquired Connectix stuff to do emulation of the X86 instruction set.

      This should be quite interesting. Given that MS can change the specs of the box at will, I wonder how long it will take for the Xbox Linux hackers to keep up.
    • ms had a ppc version of nt back in the day. they never released it though, and i believe it was supposed to be a secret, but i played on an old ibm chirp box running nt when i was there...

    • Re:A question (Score:5, Interesting)

      by laird ( 2705 ) <lairdp@@@gmail...com> on Monday November 03, 2003 @07:04PM (#7382062) Journal
      Actually, NT 3.x (and, possibly 4.0) ran on many CPU's including the PowerPC. If you remember back when the PPC was being promoted as the CPU of the Common Hardware Reference Platform, you could run MacOS, Linux, and NT on the same hardware. Anyway, I would hope that MS has retained that portability in the core of the OS (the same way Apple makes sure that MacOS X still runs on the x86) in order to keep its options open.

      So it'd be easy for new "Xbox 2" games to run natively on PPC. That being said, they'd still need an x86 emulator to run the Xbox games. I bet a 2 GHz G5 could emulate an Xbox pretty well...

    • Re:A question (Score:3, Funny)

      by jafac ( 1449 )
      Prediction:
      This will be the one PPC Platform where Microsoft will deliver a version of Virtual PC that works with the G5.

  • Will this affect users? (Score:3, Informative)

    by Ed Avis ( 5917 ) <ed@membled.com> on Monday November 03, 2003 @06:18PM (#7381577) Homepage
    Time was, when the choice of CPU meant something. If two machines used the same CPU you had a good chance of getting a speedy emulation of one using the other - for example the Mac emulators for the Amiga which were close to 100% compatible. But even though this is a Power-derived processor it doesn't seem likely anyone will be running AIX or Mac OS X on the Xbox2, or the other way round.
    • No, but what about Linux or xBSD? They both already run on that architecture. The article mentioned that MS was pissed about people turning their heavily subsidized game platform into a PC without buying the games that make it a profitable product. Those folks aren't running windows on it anyhow. Now maybe if it was an "extended" power architecture, something not publicly documented, it could delay the hacks.
  • Uhhh, won't MS have to rewrite the whole OS, directX, etc for the XBox2? It seems that porting Windows to PowerPC may be harder than just getting a new Intel processor in there. Of course if MS does port XP to the G5, maybe the Apple guys can install something besides a real OS :)

    • Re:Won't MS have to rewrite everything? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by stratjakt ( 596332 ) on Monday November 03, 2003 @06:25PM (#7381660) Journal
      Yah, MS and IBM are stupid, you better call 'em and set them straight!

      Some things to consider:

      1) NT ran on PowerPC long ago, porting it wont be hard.

      2) Wasn't IBM working on a new mega-chip that can run x86 and PowerPC codes side by side?

      3) Perhaps making the Xbox so close to a PC blew up in MSFTs face, and they don't plan to do it again. You can turn your noses at "security through obscurity" all you want, but the Xbox, once initiall cracked, has been blown wide open - it's a no brainer to port PC emulators and apps to it. The GCN or PS2, however, have taken much longer, and are still an obfuscated mess to try and develop custom stuff for.
      • Lets not even begin to talk about CE, which could run on literally a dozen different architectures!

        It isn't that fcking hard. There IS a reason that Linux runs on so many different arch's. Its the effort of supporting each user space and chip maker politics that keeps Windows from being released to Architecture XYZ.

        When .NET's CLR rules the earth, instantly every Chip maker will become comodity to microsoft. MS can then vice grip any chip manufacturer to their will since MS now has the keys to switch arch
    • ...but they're not going to be porting "Windows" in any meaningful way. DirectX will have to be fiddled with - but even that will be a much simpler enterprise in this case as they won't need to port the old interfaces.
    • Windows NT and its successors were designed to be portable. NT ran on x86, PPC and Alpha. 2k had a beta Alpha version that got killed near the end for reasons I do not know. XP has already been ported to IA-64. Windows CE runs on tons of different chips.

      While it will require some reworking, it won't be a whole hell of a lot. Just because Windows doesn't run on PPC doesn't mean it can't fairly easily be ported to it.

  • Bodes well for Apple too! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MarcQuadra ( 129430 ) * on Monday November 03, 2003 @06:19PM (#7381585)
    Who thinks that IBM is going to turn around and sell these things to Aplle as the CPU for the G5 laptop?

    This bodes VERY well for IBM, Apple, Microsoft, and anyone else interested in low-power-draw PowerPC systems. It sucks for Motorola, but they lost my favor years ago, and they really charge ludicrous prices for their wares.

    Also, Could IBM be developing their G3+AltiVec chip for this? It seems to me that if the G3 series was dead IBM would stop working on it, but there are 750GX CPUs due soon (just a 750FX with 1MB on-die cache), and rumors of a G3 with SIMD coming down the pipe. It seems to me that if IBM bastardized some of the SIMD logic from the 970 and strapped it to the 750 they'd have a pretty decent low-power SIMD chip that Apple could market as a 'G3', 'G4' or a 'G5.'

    Maybe I'm just a hopeless romantic, but the G3 was the CPU best-suited for what I do, and I hope it doesn't disappear. I have little use for SIMD, and I really appreciate running a CPU without a fan strapped to it, it's just so... elegant.

  • Backwards Compatible? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by realdpk ( 116490 ) on Monday November 03, 2003 @06:20PM (#7381598) Homepage Journal
    It seems that it would be prudent for Microsoft to announce something about backwards compatibility if they're going to make such a dramatic platform change. That's one of the greatest things for early adopters of the PS2 - they could still play their PS1 games on 'em.
    • There will be no backwards compatibility between the XBox 2 and the XBox. Trust me on this one.
      • Perhaps MS's recent purchase of emulation software (Virtual PC) plays into this?

        Link [slashdot.org]
        • Nope. With the current design specifications of the XBox 2, it would be impossible even with the use of Virtual PC for them to make it backwards compatible with the XBox 1. I suppose if they released the XBox 2 in, say, 2010 or with different specifications than they are currently using, they could do it. But it won't happen. The XBox 2 will not run games from the XBox 1.
    • It would still be possible for backwards compatibilty in some form or another. Remember, MS owns Virtual PC.

      What I want to know is if it will be easy for cross development between Xbox2 and the Gamecube... seeing as how they both use a PPC/ATi setup.

  • Stupid for MS (Score:3, Insightful)

    by afidel ( 530433 ) on Monday November 03, 2003 @06:20PM (#7381599)
    One of the few competitive advantages MS has with the XBox is that games created for it take little work to port over to the PC arena. By using a PPC chip much of that ease of porting is eliminated and along with it one of the few selling points for title owners.

    • Re:Stupid for MS (Score:4, Insightful)

      by terminal.dk ( 102718 ) on Monday November 03, 2003 @07:13PM (#7382130) Homepage
      Are you a developer without a clue ? Or have you been smoking the funny stuff ?

      The CPU does mean shit when it comes to porting games. Games can only be written to the API since the hardware box is closed, and as long as the API is frozen, all it takes is a recompile. But there is a chance MS will use the longhorn API by then, and maybe even say C# - so they can be platform independent. Remember, C# is portable bytecode like Java.

      There was a time when all it took was a recompile, and your Windows app would run on PowerPC or MIPS, Alpha or even Intel :)

      A PowerPC in 2005 should also be able to do pretty well emulating the 733 MHz P3.

  • Other links (Score:5, Informative)

    by iJed ( 594606 ) on Monday November 03, 2003 @06:21PM (#7381607) Homepage
    This has also been mentioned on the following sites:

    It would be interesting to know exactly why they have picked an IBM chip rather than Intel or AMD. I wouldn't think the IBM (PPC?) chip would be more cost effective than the Intel/AMD but you never know...

  • Erm... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by athakur999 ( 44340 ) on Monday November 03, 2003 @06:24PM (#7381643) Journal
    and then adding a pirated disk drive


    This is just pure ignorance. Apparently going to Best Buy and buying a hard drive is now "piracy".

    • Re:Erm... (Score:5, Funny)

      by cK-Gunslinger ( 443452 ) on Monday November 03, 2003 @06:31PM (#7381749) Journal
      Apparently going to Best Buy and buying a hard drive is now "piracy".

      Yes, but only because 80% of these people return home via ship and swing on a rope into their homes. Arrrrgh!
    • I did have to ask myself what the heck they were talking about. I guess a lot of XBox owners are further reducing the cost of the conversion project by boarding trucks while in traffic and absconding with Maxtor drives.

      Avast ye scurvy trucker, prepare to be boarded!
    • Unless copyright enforcement features are disabled, the only penalty I see that could stick is that the warranty could be voided.

  • Yeah, but can it run Mac OS X?

    NOT!

  • I can't wait for the Morpheus II Mod-chip that lets you run OS X on the Xbox2.

  • PowerPC was *supposed* to become a commodity chip (Score:3, Interesting)

    by KojakBang ( 721296 ) on Monday November 03, 2003 @06:24PM (#7381652)
    IBM was going to come out with personal powerpc systems which would even have a common motherboard reference design with Macs. The volume of production would drive down costs dramatically. But IBM didn't and Apple basically got screwed on that deal.

    Interestly enough, the reason IBM canned the personal powerpc systems was that OS2 for PPC completely blew its schedule several times over. IBM had a personal AIX edition for PPC ready but chose not to go with that. The reason. Unix would never make it as a mainstream operating system for PCs.

  • It's ironic that IBM, with its roots in the computer industry, doesn't supply the processors for the main portion of the personal computer industry. Intel does.

    Disregarding the fact that the statement isn't ironic, I have been wondering when IBM is going to release a new line of Intellistations using Power5 chips. Does anybody know when we might be seeing these? Or when Linux will be running on them? I think I remember hearing that some people got Linux running on them, but not 64-bit...

    For all the

  • Okay, now this could be awesome. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by iamdrscience ( 541136 ) on Monday November 03, 2003 @06:25PM (#7381669) Homepage
    Assuming that this "next generation xbox" thing will be as hackable as the current Xbox (and the Dreamcast and the PS2, etc.) this could lead to a reasonably priced PowerPC machine to mess around with. This could be very cool. The current Xbox isn't especially competitive with a comparable low budget x86 system, but right now the only way you can mess with a G5 is to spend a couple grand on a new mac and likely once this new system comes out a cheap G5 system will still be the better part of a grand.

  • interesting move for xbox.. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Thrakkerzog ( 7580 ) on Monday November 03, 2003 @06:27PM (#7381685)
    Wasn't one of the "Benefits" for people making games for xbox the ability to code just like they did for pc games?

    perhaps they are trying to lure developers away from GCN by offering a similar cpu architecture?

    • "perhaps they are trying to lure developers away from GCN by offering a similar cpu architecture?"

      Away from GCN? I doubt it. But they could be after getting more ports from GCN games, that wouldn't be all that surprising.

      I dunno if the processor matters as much as it used to anymore. I mean, you've got your time developing the engine etc, but a good deal of time spent making a game involves creating the assets. Building maps, creating 3D models and textures, sound effects, etc. Those formats are pr
      • how much assembly do you think goes into the drawing routines?

        You have to work with your byte order flipped.. there could still be a considerable amount of changes.

        I don't think nintendo will ever port any of their 1st or 2nd party games to xbox.. other than that, there are not many gcn exclusives..

  • So is it a fair assumption... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by NanoGator ( 522640 ) on Monday November 03, 2003 @06:27PM (#7381686) Homepage Journal
    ... that backwards compatibility isn't part of Microsoft's game here? I suppose they could do like the PS2 did and use the original Intel processor to act as a controller or something, but somehow I doubt that'd be cost effective enough.

    Emulator? Eck I hope not. Well.. maybe that wouldn't be so bad. Maybe they could do a combination emulator and wrapper. The emulator would be for the processor instructions, and the wrapper would be to send the graphics commands to the new GPU. Presumably, the difference between the two GPUs wouldn't be big enough as to prevent that from working.

    Eh I dunno. Personally, I'm hoping Microsoft does something a little more interesting than just throwing next-gen hardware into a box as an upgrade. Pushing polygons around is nice, but I really like how small and cheap my GameCube is. *Hint hint*

  • Let me get this straight... (Score:5, Funny)

    by HoldmyCauls ( 239328 ) on Monday November 03, 2003 @06:27PM (#7381699) Journal
    That's IBM... supplying Microsoft... with PowerPC processors... for a gaming console...?

    If anyone needs me, I'll be conferring with my local pastor as to whether or not Hell has frozen over.

  • I don't see anything about XBox2 using IBM chips.. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by downix ( 84795 ) on Monday November 03, 2003 @06:27PM (#7381701) Homepage
    What I do see is Microsoft hedging its bets by licensing technology. Now, it can go to both Intel *and* AMD and go "if you two won't give us a better price, we'll cut you both off."

    When businesses compete, the consumer wins.

  • Ironic (Score:4, Informative)

    by Gregoyle ( 122532 ) on Monday November 03, 2003 @06:27PM (#7381705)
    It's ironic that IBM, with its roots in the computer industry, doesn't supply the processors for the main portion of the personal computer industry. Intel does.

    That's not ironic. It would be ironic if IBM declared the PC industry dead, and said that the embedded industry was all that was viable, made this processor for the embedded industry, and someone used it to revitalize the PC industry and put IBM back on top there. The fact that they are not on top of an industry that they helped start is interesting, but it's a far cry from ironic.

    Not to pick nits, but misuse of the word "irony" is one of my pet peeves.

  • intel/amd/ppc (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Sebastopol ( 189276 ) on Monday November 03, 2003 @06:28PM (#7381718) Homepage

    Intel went after Xbox originally so that AMD wouldn't get the win, but Intel still took it in the shorts, or so it is claimed, by offering a nutrageously low price to outbid AMD. Probably even at a loss given the timeframe.

    Intel doesn't give a crap about PPC, as it isn't even a remote threat, what at 4% of the market. Intel could have EASILY played the same power-play and had another design win, but at the cost of lower ASPs for a niche market (compared to its $20b a year market, xbox isn't worth it).

    just my $0.02.

  • Geez. (Score:2)

    by Zenki ( 31868 )
    MS isn't going to go PowerPC. Back in the day, the PowerPC port of NT was done by IBM for MS. More likely, IBM is going to be making the ATI designed video chip for Xbox. ATI probably worked out a deal where they sell MS the license to use the graphics chip design and leave the manufacturing problem to MS to work out. MS is probably just getting a deal with IBM so they can use IBM's fabs to churn out that chip for Xbox 2 and maybe other bits too.

  • X86 emulation under PowerPC (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ahchem ( 62628 ) on Monday November 03, 2003 @06:33PM (#7381787)
    This is actually a very interesting move on MS's part. Not too long ago they purchased the premier x86 on PPC emulator. Now they are going with IBM's PPC as there next Xbox. Maybe they are ready to have a win-tel divorce and declare their independence from Intel, or maybe just shake the relationship up a bit.
    • This would be great as far as I am concerned. However, ix86 is still the cheapest instruction set for the performance available for a general-purpose PC. I don't see any benefit, and considerable problems, with Microsoft divorcing itself from the ix86 instruction set. Don't forget, of course, that Microsoft already tried something similar back in the NT days and ended up abandoning all non-ix86 platforms.

      Of course, ix86 isn't the be-all and end-all, not by a long shot. I'd rather run PowerPC, myself, i
  • Could you imagine if Microsoft enjoys the PowerPC platform so much that they end up porting Windows to the MORE STABLE PowerPC platform? I mean they're going to have to port their APIs and such to make this sort of move easy for the developers anyway. This would enable consumers to buy any random intel box or buy a nice IBM Box [ibm.com]. This would rekindle the love/hate relationship that DOS encouraged. IBM would sell the machines, microsoft would supply the OS. Most of the intel systems IBM sells are for Lin

  • Windows for PPC (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Sri Lumpa ( 147664 ) on Monday November 03, 2003 @06:46PM (#7381904) Homepage

    I must say I absolutely didn't see that coming and if somebody had told be beforehand I probably would have chuckled.

    This means a version of Windows for PowerPC and, if they use the G5, a 64 bit version of Windows.

    I think the former used to exist a while ago (NT4?) and the latter is available in a more or less broken form but the fact that XBox2 would be a fixed hardware platform may allow them to make a better version.

    I'm no MS fan but I can only see that as a good sign as long as they don't use the 32 bit subset of the PPC architecture, it could help them with a better 64 bit Windows which would help drive the adoption of such systems up and therefore drive the price down; which would help enlarging the 64 bit Linux userbase.

    Ok, it's a lot of "if's" but at least it opens the possibility a bit wider.

  • History Repeats Itself (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ewhac ( 5844 ) on Monday November 03, 2003 @06:49PM (#7381939) Homepage Journal

    Not long after the 3DO Interactive Multiplayer came out, we started designing the next-generation platform. The machine was to be PowerPC-based with true 3D rendering capabilities (triangle engine, MIP-mapping, perspective-correct textures, 32-bit rendering, etc.).

    The CPU was supplied by IBM. What we ended up with was the PowerPC 602, which was essentially a 603 (?) with a smaller cache and single-precision floating point operations that executed in a single cycle, which were essential for 3D gaming. The part ran at 66MHz.

    It was a really nice machine. Sadly, it essentially died on the vine, as Matsushita chose not to exploit its gaming potential, relegating it instead to "kiosk" activities.

    IBM also manufactured the triangle engine. It was a five layer chip -- at that time, a rather sophisticated process -- occupying 144 square millimetres.

    Schwab

  • The Financial Times has the best summary [ft.com] of this that I've read so far.
  • So not only is the xbox 2 going to use a completely different graphics processor but also a totally different CPU? Isn't this going to cause some slight (but not impossible) big-endian/little-endian problems as far as the cpu is concerned. It doesn't even say anything about problems with xbox 1 games writing directly to the GPU hardware being able to run on xbox 2 graphics hardware.

    I'm sure xbox 1 games will run on xbox 2 but at what speed hit and general compatibility?

    The PS2 runs PS1 games so well bec

  • My Prediction (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Goyuix ( 698012 ) on Monday November 03, 2003 @06:57PM (#7382016) Homepage
    Just as with the original XBox, there were plans to use AMD chips, at least that is what most of the speculation on the internet said, up until they announced the specs and low and behold Intel had "won" the contract instead.

    I could very easily see this deal with IBM as a backdoor sneaky tatic to get nVidia hardware under the hood again, especially with their cozy arrangements as of late. For that matter, AMD and IBM are also in bed so it wouldn't be surprising at all the see ATI booted and AMD/NV offering becoming the real guts of the console. IBM would be the fab for the chips and assembly for the mainboard... heck they might even just roll the whole thing and take a cool percentage.

    Off the wall? Perhaps. But I think this xb0x0r war is far from over. There are no published specs and these talks of industry deals are by no means what the final product will necessarily be.
    • Deciding between AMD and Intel, both using ix86, is a lot different between deciding between Intel (or AMD) (ix86) and IBM (PowerPC). These are completely different instruction sets. I just don't see Microsoft trying this tactic as a means to get NVidia as their graphics chip supplier, it just seems too much of a stretch.

  • C'mon, there are lots of non-x86 chips out there (Score:5, Informative)

    by Junks Jerzey ( 54586 ) on Monday November 03, 2003 @06:59PM (#7382030)
    Most embedded CPUs are not x86-based. They're not PowerPC or ARM based either. It's just that most people aren't familiar with what CPUs are out there, only what's available for PC boxes.

    That said, consider that the PlayStation 1 and PlayStation 2 use MIPS processors. The Sega Saturn used a Hitachi SH-2. The Dreamcast used an SH-4. The 3DO console was ARM based. The Nintendo 64 uses a MIPS. The GameCube uses a PowerPC. The Game Boy Color is Z80 based. The Game Boy Advance uses an ARM. The Nokia N-Gage also uses an ARM.

    In short, non-x86 based game consoles are the norm, not the exception. You simply can't put a super hot P4 in an embedded environment. Intel knows this. That's not the market they're after with the P4. This is basic embedded systems design.

  • IBM could have offered more customizations..... (Score:3, Informative)

    by JollyFinn ( 267972 ) on Monday November 03, 2003 @07:15PM (#7382151)
    IBM microelectronics make custom asics with PPC cores in them, and IBM:s chip designing is in higher level stuff than AMD so they can modify that cheaper at expense of clock speed that they get... But now at 0.9u the PPC970 is supposed to be quite tiny so what ELSE they will put in there besides the CPU core and cache? Instead of using altivec they might go something more excess like putting 16 FMACS. Which would give microsoft both superiour numbers and performance but also guarantee that other chips wouldn't be compatible with it, as they would have instructions that no one else has, and in other way their developement package might be really only way to port software for it, and the customizations might even make reverse engineering the thing without full developement package from microsoft impossible. They could offer packaging with low latency mainmemory in the package, and something like 4-8 channels to the memory chip, inside the package. And only put outside interface to graphic chip outside the package and put all the other supporting logic in the same chip with CPU. Hey IBM has LOTS of options and modifications and stuff that they could have offered for microsoft besides price point. IBM could have made point hey we offer you 4 times as much memory bandwith and 4 times as many flops as our competitors in same price if you take the reduction of other chips in the system in account. And AMD and INTEL in their highly tuned hand optimized design methologies where not able to offer something even resembling the beast that IBM could customize for microsoft, at reasonable price. IBM makes great business selling G3:s with lots of custom stuff attached to it on single chip. They might even maker HARDWARE decryption on the processor chip for instructions stream, that could mean a LOT harder modifications for it than for original xbox.

  • OS X on XBox?!? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by illumin8 ( 148082 ) on Tuesday November 04, 2003 @12:43AM (#7384108) Journal
    Wow... I can see the potential implications now:

    Microsoft releases XBox 2 with a PPC 970 running at 2 ghz.

    XBox hackers break the encryption and are able to run unsigned code on the PPC 970 processor.

    XBox hackers use MacOnLinux to run a full-fledged Mac OS X on cheap Xbox hardware.

    ???

    Profit!!!

    Just kidding about the profit part... But who wouldn't want a 2 ghz. G5 running Mac OS X for about $300. This would be a killer workstation and would run circles around the existing Xbox 1 running Linux. Can you imagine?

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