OG XBox was planned to launch with an AMD CPU until last minute.

[Deleted member 13524]

Father of XBox Seamus Blackley just came up with a surprise on twitter in the form of an apology:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1447988357464686599

https://twitter.com/x/status/1447991955095388161

https://www.techspot.com/news/91749-xbox-creator-apologizes-amd-over-last-minute-switch.html


Wow, imagine you're an engineer who put your effort on those working prototypes, sitting on the front row of the announcement event just to find out you've been ditched during the presentation. Auch.


So what AMD CPU went into the OG Xbox? It ended up with a parent of the Coppermine Celeron, probably the same 180nm 28million transistor Coppermine as the Pentiums with half its L2 cache disabled but maintaining 8-way associativity.

Should we guess it was going to take an Thunderbird Athlon? Thunderbird was pretty much neck and neck with Coppermine at the time, both in performance and die size.

I also guess switching a Socket A CPU for a Socket 370 one was a relatively easy task at the time, which is why such a last minute change was possible.

AMD acquiring ATi was still a ways off at the time, so should we assume it would still use the NV2A?


Also, could this have resulted in any difference in the software development front? For example, could game devs have used 3DNow! instead of SSE?

 

[Deleted member 11852]

I thought this was well known? What wasn't publicly acknowledged - or at least I've never read or heard about it - was the AMD engineers weren't informed before Microsoft's official reveal where they announced the Intel CPU.

It's certain AMD knew, just not the specific engineers who worked on the original Xbox.

 

[PSman1700]

We will never know, how things would have looked performance wise for the og xbox if it went with amd/ati cpu and gpu hardware. I think a thunderbird wouldn't make all that much of a difference, perhaps somewhat faster. Wonder if a 1ghz thunderbird could have made it to the console? I remember that around those times (early 2000) amd offering better performance for the value for their cpu's atleast.

For the GPU i think AMD was abit ahead during the xbox's development time, R8500 was the direct GF3Ti-500 competitor and on paper was more advanced, but drivers held it back i think.
If amd could have offered features present in their future lineup (2002) like nv did (twin vertex shaders like the GF4x00 series), they could very well have had a very competitive GPU against the NV2A for sure.

I thought this was well known? What wasn't publicly acknowledged - or at least I've never read or heard about it - was the AMD engineers weren't informed before Microsoft's official reveal where they announced the Intel CPU.

It's certain AMD knew, just not the specific engineers who worked on the original Xbox.

Wasnt it called Pippin or something?

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Here's a VentureBeat article from 2011, which actually does cover that detail. I'd obviously long since forgotten this.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

Here's a VentureBeat article from 2011, which actually does cover that detail. I'd obviously long since forgotten this.

You're right! How did I miss this?

Similarly, Advanced Micro Devices thought it had a deal clinched to provide the microprocessor for the Xbox. That was true until the night before the announcement. Paul Otellini, one of the top executives at Intel, convinced Bill Gates that Intel could provide the chips. Intel clinched the deal and the AMD employees were dumbfounded when they heard the news at the announcement.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

You're right! How did I miss this?

Maybe you forgot? I had long forgotten this, it was only the news coverage of Seamus Blackley's Wednesday tweet that jogged it back into my memory then I recall reading about it years ago.

The Venture Beat article (and the second part) are a really good read for anybody who owned a PS2 or original Xbox.

 

[swaaye]

I've also read that the chipset is essentially based on AMD 760 and so nForce/XBox are actually mostly an AMD chipset that NVidia bought the rights to modify.

https://xboxdevwiki.net/NForce

• The AMD and nForce AMD IDE controllers are fully compatible. (Linux kernel: "AMD 755/756/766/8111 and nVidia nForce/2/2s/3/3s/CK804/MCP04 IDE driver for Linux." [12])
• The I2C/SMBus controller on the nForce is fully AMD-756/766/68 compatible. [13]
• The audio controller is i810 compatible - as is the audio controller of the AMD-768 and the AMD-8111.
• The nForce and AMD-768 modems are compatible.
• At least one register ("VGA_en") in the nForce PCI-to-AGP bridge is compatible with the AMD chipset (AMD-761, 24081.pdf, page 136).
• The nForce uses HyperTransport.

 

[orangpelupa]

Here's a VentureBeat article from 2011, which actually does cover that detail. I'd obviously long since forgotten this.

I got a serious feeling of Mandella effect or some such reading that.

In my head 9/11 was much later, and OG Xbox was muuuuuch earlier

 

[Theeoo]

An athlon t-bird would probably have run significantly hotter than that pentium 3 though, at the same clocks that is. I believe they had better gaming performance at the time though iirc.

 

[Lurkmass]

Microsoft probably wasn't confident that AMD would be able to sustain the potential orders in case their console ended up being a breakout success. This was back when AMD was an IDM before transitioning to fabless where they never came close to the manufacturing might offered by Intel during the past. To Microsoft there was no added risk switching from AMD to Intel as the CPU supplier. If their console was a massive success then they might've eventually came to regret assigning AMD since they couldn't fulfill their orders. If it was failure then no harm, no foul because AMD wasn't missing out on much ...

TBH, I'm glad that 3DNow! is deprecated because we needed a new clean slate and extensible design for SIMD functionality. 3DNow! I believe was absolutely not the way forward since it was a really messy design. Reusing the shared x87 FPU/MMX register set complicated state state changes between these instruction sets. 3DNow! was also only capable of operating on 2 DWords as well. While SSE had some flaws in it's foundations that became apparent later on when AVX arrived it was comparatively a big improvement over either MMX or 3DNow! since it had a new set of registers and was capable of operating 4 DWords in total ...

 

[PSman1700]

AMD wasn't missing out on much ...

While nowhere near the PS2's monstrous 155+ million units sold, would still have been 24+m amd chips in the console.

 

[Lurkmass]

While nowhere near the PS2's monstrous 155+ million units sold, would still have been 24+m amd chips in the console.

Either way it wasn't too big of a deal if it was a failure since console margins were a pittance so even if AMD did secure the contract, they'd see little benefit assuming identical sales trajectory ...

 

[function]

While nowhere near the PS2's monstrous 155+ million units sold, would still have been 24+m amd chips in the console.

Might have led into the Xbox 360 too. Athlon 64 X2 would have been about as fast as the Xenon CPU in the 360 (according to Capcom when developing their Framework engine) but would have been easier to work with for developers. Might have been fiddly to incorporate what with the unified main memory pool in the 360, and the A64 having it's own DDR1 controller. Would probably have required a custom chip and not an off the shelf part like in the OG Xbox.

The technology landscape we have now with consoles is spookily like the OG Box. In some ways MS were ahead of the game, but they messed up parts of the implementation and the licensing.

 

[PSman1700]

The technology landscape we have now with consoles is spookily like the OG Box. In some ways MS were ahead of the game, but they messed up parts of the implementation and the licensing.

Was thinking that, they came with the hdd for the console space, which must have been a rather large improvement over just disc access and speeds, aswell as ethernet and the pc parts instead of exotic stuff. Very much like today indeed. While exotic things like the emotion engine where intresting at the time and had its own advantages, i think the current situation is much better, both for developers and the end users.

I think MS landed 2nd place, selling more units than Nintendo did with the gamecube. Not that bad for a first attempt, also considering how the public view was towards microsoft going game consoles.

 

[see colon]

I think MS landed 2nd place, selling more units than Nintendo did with the gamecube. Not that bad for a first attempt, also considering how the public view was towards microsoft going game consoles.

The Xbox did very well for a console that sold almost so few units outside NA. Gamecube had a footprint in Japan. Xbox didn't even have a toe print.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Microsoft probably wasn't confident that AMD would be able to sustain the potential orders in case their console ended up being a breakout success.

Then why collaborate with AMD in the first place? Microsoft and AMD had been working together for years at this point.

 

[Lurkmass]

Then why collaborate with AMD in the first place? Microsoft and AMD had been working together for years at this point.

They were at prototyping stage so no hard decisions or supply evaluations were made then and I think it was Andy from Intel who gave an offer to Bill after collaborating with AMD. If Intel didn't make an offer to Microsoft late in development then they probably would've originally stuck with AMD ...

 

[Deleted member 11852]

They were at prototyping stage so no hard decisions or supply evaluations were made then and I think it was Andy from Intel who gave an offer to Bill after collaborating with AMD. If Intel didn't make an offer to Microsoft late in development then they probably would've originally stuck with AMD ...

This feels utterly short-sighted if true. If you are making a consumer device, your ability to produce enough consumer devices - which depends on your suppliers - is rather important.

This doesn't feel right. The original Xbox designer called the switch "pure politics" and this seems more likely than Microsoft being blind to the realities of consumer device production.

 

[Lurkmass]

This feels utterly short-sighted if true. If you are making a consumer device, your ability to produce enough consumer devices - which depends on your suppliers - is rather important.

This doesn't feel right. The original Xbox designer called the switch "pure politics" and this seems more likely than Microsoft being blind to the realities of consumer device production.

I assume that Intel wasn't sure that they'd be entirely on board with Microsoft's project until later on in development so Microsoft had to work with AMD in case Intel didn't give them any options ...

 

[Deleted member 11852]

I assume that Intel wasn't sure that they'd be entirely on board with Microsoft's project until later on in development so Microsoft had to work with AMD in case Intel didn't give them any options ...

Which is a very different proposition. And - if true - explains why Intel are very much in the position they find themselves in today: diminished, backed into a corner, partners deserting them and lacking options.