14 DAY TRIAL // The processor which will be included in the Microsoft Xbox 360 game console was presented by IBM during the Fall Processor Forum. Still, there's no surprise in what the company announced yesterday, as it only confirmed information available online for months now.
The multi-core PowerPC processor selected for the Xbox 360 includes three cores, and would be able to run up to two simultaneous tasks at the same time. The processor will run at a speed of 3.2 GHz. It is interesting to know that IBM managed to design and produce this processor in only two years, which means half the time it is usually required to build a chip from scratch.
"The Xbox 360 chip set was designed from the ground up specifically for high-definition gaming and entertainment," said Todd Holmdahl, Corporate Vice president, Hardware for Xbox. "Working with IBM gave us the flexibility to design a processor to give game developers the kind of targeted power they need to make great games."
According to IBM's statements, the chip included in the Xbox 360 will be the most powerful solution a gaming console has to offer. The 165 million-transistor 64-bit PowerPC CPU is manufactured in a 90 nm Silicon on Insulator (SOI) technology process. The multi-thread cores run at 3.2 GHz and have 1 MB of Level 2 cache memory. The total bandwidth provided by the chip is 21.6 GByte per second.