No Hard Drive in Xbox 2 Confirmed

[max-pain]

http://news.teamxbox.com/content.php?id=5518

In an interview with Globe, M-Systems President and CEO Dov Moran confirmed what gamers have been speculating for months. Xbox 2 won't have a hard disc. When asked about its technology development agreement with Microsoft Corporation, Mr Moran said:

â€￾It’s a cooperation agreement. The potential isn’t clear, but it’s in the billions of dollars. Microsoft has taken the hard disk out of its Xbox. The only thing left will be a CD; that’s all. At some point, when users want to save their e-mail messages, copy music, or anything like that, the only storage they’ll have is what we give them. It’s worth hundreds of millions to the company, spread over a few years, and we’ll be the main supplier for it; and I hope the sole supplier.


â€￾Meanwhile, development is intense, and requires expenses, although not major ones. We’ll start supply only in 2005.â€￾

 

[AzBat]

I was about to post the same thing. Just read it myself and still reading user comments. My first thoughts are that I think it's better than having a hard drive. Will be interesting to hear if it will big enough to replace the current drive or if it's used just for caching. Can't wait till GDC.

Tommy McClain

 

[Vince]

I was about to post the same thing. Just read it myself and still reading user comments. My first thoughts are that I think it's better than having a hard drive. Will be interesting to hear if it will big enough to replace the current drive or if it's used just for caching. Can't wait till GDC.

Tommy McClain

Yeah, will be interesting to see. I suppose it's expected with the gravity of the rumors recently, but I'm kind of unimpressed. Can't wait to see the XBox become a slave to the Microsoft PC though

 

[Clashman]

Interesting. Has it been confirmed what products from M-Systems they'll be using for the X-Box? This seems like a distinct possibility, and could maintain backwards compatibility, (sorry if this has already been posted somewhere else):

http://www.m-systems.com/Content/Products/FFDFamily.asp

FFD (Fast Flash Disk) products provide rugged, high-performance and highly reliable data storage. They withstand extreme temperatures, shocks and vibrations, even in harsh conditions, without compromising on data integrity.
FFD solid-state flash drives are a drop-in replacement for IDE and SCSI mechanical disks, eliminating seek time, latency and potential failures inherent in conventional rotating disks. FFD reduces the Total Cost of Ownership while enhancing reliability in the field.

Wide Range of Fast, High-Capacity Flash Disks

Solid-state flash disks (non-volatile memory)
2.5" & 3.5" standard form factors
Ultra-Wide SCSI, Narrow SCSI and ATA/IDE interfaces
Slim packages: down to 8mm case height
Standard connectors: 40, 44, 50, 68 and 80 pins
Up to 100.0 MB/sec burst R/W rates
Up to 40.0 MB/sec sustained Read rate
Up to 40.0 MB/sec sustained Write rate
Access time <0.02 msec
Up to 90GB capacity
Hot swapping support (hot insertion)
Sanitize/Purge/Declassify in seconds

Top Reliability & Endurance

99.999% reliability
>700,000 hours of actual (in the field) MTBF
On-the-fly EDC/ECC (48-bit Reed-Solomon based algorithm)
Data integrity under power-cycling
TrueFFS® technology: bad blocks mapping-out and dynamic wear-leveling algorithms
> 5,000,000 Write/Erase cycles; Read unlimited
5-year warranty

Highly Rugged

No moving parts
Operating temperature: -40°C to +85°C
Storage temperature: -55°C to +95°C
Operating altitude: +80,000 feet
Operating shock: 1,500G per MIL-STD-810F
Operating vibration: 16.3G RMS per MIL-STD-810F,
(Random, 20-2000Hz, 3 vibrations axes)
Humidity: 5% to 95% relative, non-condensing

Tier 1 Customer List

M-Systems' FFD customers are among the most successful in the telecommunication, military and aerospace markets, and other mission-critical applications, including: AirShow, Aselsan, Astronautics, Boeing, Bombardier, Cisco Systems, Daewoo, DSO, DSTA, ECI Telecom, Elbit, Elta, Ericsson, FLIR Systems, GE, General Dynamics, Harris, Hitachi, Huawei, IAI-Israel Aircraft Industries, IBM, Kontron, Konsberg, L-3, LG, Lockheed Martin, Matsushita, Melco, Miltope, Motorola, NEC, Nortel Networks, Northrop Grumman, OKI, Heim-Systems, Rafael, Raytheon, RUAG Aerospace, SaabTech, Siemens, Smiths Aerospace, Sonus networks, SES, Staubli, Tadiran Telecom, Targa, Thales Computers & Toshiba.

IDE 3000: Cost-Effective Flash Disk

Form Factor: 2.5"
Capacity: up to 1 GByte
IDE Interface
Low power consumption
6mm case height
Warranty : 3 Year

Wonder how much a large one of these, (say > 4gb), would cost though.

 

[arhra]

Interesting. Has it been confirmed what products from M-Systems they'll be using for the X-Box?

"What we're going to offer for the Xbox doesn't currently exist," Ronit Maor, Chief Financial Officer of the Israel-based unit said.

Whatever that means...

 

[gurgi]

Im liking Xbox2 more and more with every new morsel of news.

 

[Clashman]

Sorry, missed that.

 

[Geeforcer]

To me, this seems to be a step back.

 

[Clashman]

In what sense? If they have something similar to what I posted there, it could be superiour in terms of latency and reliability, and could still be used to maintain backwards compatibility with the previous XBox.

 

[max-pain]

In what sense?

Maybe in price and capacity?

 

[AzBat]

I was about to post the same thing. Just read it myself and still reading user comments. My first thoughts are that I think it's better than having a hard drive. Will be interesting to hear if it will big enough to replace the current drive or if it's used just for caching. Can't wait till GDC.

Tommy McClain

Yeah, will be interesting to see. I suppose it's expected with the gravity of the rumors recently, but I'm kind of unimpressed. Can't wait to see the XBox become a slave to the Microsoft PC though

LOL, like I said in earlier messages, the new Media Center Extender strategy announced earlier this year shows to me that Microsoft is definitely interested in making a XP PC the master to the Xbox slave. Though I doubt it will be their only storage solution. It wouldn't make sense to require people to buy a XP to go with the Xbox2. Guess we'll see soon.

BTW, it's pretty funny watching all of the kids on TeamXbox getting pissed off with this news and saying they're going for the PS3 because they believe the PS3 will have a hard drive. I'm not sure if that was ever confirmed, but still it's still too soon to be making purchasing decisions on products that won't be available for at least another 20 months.

Tommy McClain

 

[arhra]

To me, this seems to be a step back.

Depends on the capacity and capability of whatever storage solution they end up going with (along with whether or not they include any out of the box, and if so, how much).

Economically speaking, going with solid-state storage makes sense, since the cost can be reduced by process shrinks, and other similar improvements, whereas the Xbox's hard drive probably hasn't got significantly cheaper over the lifetime of the system (hard drives tend to get larger, rather than getting significantly cheaper). They'll probably be able to reduce the cost of flash at a far steeper rate than they can the cost of a HD, so even if they're paying more per-byte at the start of the system's life, they may well end up paying less over the entire lifetime.

They seem to have learned a lesson from Sony here (which is evident in what we know of the rest of the system, too) - be prepared to eat some significant costs at the start of the system's life, but design everything so you can aggresively drive down the manufacturing cost as soon and as quickly as possible.

 

[PARANOiA]

Call this a stupid question, but can this flash technology be mounted as a drive?

I ask because say, for example, an XBox1 game uses the hard disk, and I have a 20gb Flash Disk connected to my XBox, wouldn't that mean the lack of a hard disk is no longer an issue for backwards compatability (of course, not counting video, sound, controller, etc incompatabilities..) ?

Thanks smart people :]

 

[AzBat]

Call this a stupid question, but can this flash technology be mounted as a drive?

I ask because say, for example, an XBox1 game uses the hard disk, and I have a 20gb Flash Disk connected to my XBox, wouldn't that mean the lack of a hard disk is no longer an issue for backwards compatability (of course, not counting video, sound, controller, etc incompatabilities..) ?

Thanks smart people :]

Simple answer: YES

For more info on M-System's DiskOnChip and FastFlashDisk technologies go to www.m-systems.com. They provide capacities up to 90gb currently.

Tommy McClain

 

[Megadrive1988]

cool.


go go solid state !

 

[max-pain]

http://www.mpi.ch/item247.html

M-System IDE-FD18-80 (1.8" IDE Flash Disk 80MB): 150.00 CHF (116 USD)

 

[AzBat]

http://www.mpi.ch/item247.html

M-System IDE-FD18-80 (1.8" IDE Flash Disk 80MB): 150.00 CHF (116 USD)

What we're going to offer for the Xbox doesn't currently exist.

Meanwhile, development is intense, and requires expenses, although not major ones. We’ll start supply only in 2005.

With that said, I don't think you can rightfully compare current technology and prices with technology that has yet to come. Let's wait till we hear what Microsoft announces before we start doing that.

Tommy McClain

 

[Geeforcer]

In what sense? If they have something similar to what I posted there, it could be superiour in terms of latency and reliability, and could still be used to maintain backwards compatibility with the previous XBox.

Yes, but at a very steep price (which granted are coming down). It seems almost certain that Xbox2 will have less build-in storage then it's predecessor, which would be a step backwards.

 

[Geeforcer]

With that said, I don't think you can rightfully compare current technology and prices with technology that has yet to come. Let's wait till we hear what Microsoft announces before we start doing that.

Point taken.

 

[max-pain]

With that said, I don't think you can rightfully compare current technology and prices with technology that has yet to come. Let's wait till we hear what Microsoft announces before we start doing that.

Tommy McClain

That's true, but i don't think that we will see a 8GB flash drive for below 100$ in the near future (in 2-4 years).