R400 reshuffling due to Xbox 2 contract?

Curiously enough, I appear to have been wrong about the DD enacode though - that was one of the few bits that was cited as being NV IP. I'd be surpiseed if there wasn't something that could be pruchased by Dolby though, and NVIDIA also said that it could probably be achieved through MS routines anyway.

All in all, there doesn't appear to be many compatibility concerns and certainly not from the graphics side. I had always thought that MS wouldn't be dumb enough to engineer themselves down a the route of a single supplier all the time as it leads them to getting stuffed even more on price than they feel they are at the moment!

 

Excellent point. I hope you're right. Bakward compatibility is definitely going to make or break the Xbox 2.

Tommy McClain

 

Their MCU (sound processor), and dolby digital encoding, was based on the Parthus Mozart Core, so presumably others could have licensed it also. Of course, Parthus has end of lifed the IP and no longer sells it so NVIDIA may have purchased the complete rights to it (assuming nobody else previously licensed Mozart)

 

If the quote about 2006 for the next xBox is accurate, that's an ocean of time in the biz and I just can't see any direct linkage to R400. If the R420 rumors are correct (nomenclature) that simply says to me that they've opted to improve their original R400 plans, but that R4xx is at least on track for a product announcement this year--if not a ship date this year.

I think M$ is feeling the heat for xBox losses and has been transferring that pressure to nVidia in terms of pricing, which M$ wants to force downward. As a result I think nVidia is tiring of the M$ xBox deal and sees it as a drain on its resources--reading between the lines of the latest nVidia conference call I didn't get the sense that nVidia was exuberant about continuing the xBox relationship.

I also got the feeling that M$ would like to advance the hardware base for xBox more rapidly--some mention of "floating"--that nVidia isn't particularly thrilled about. To be honest I'm not sure what was meant by "floating" and am just making some guesses about that. The fact that they've already been through arbitration indicates the relationship has soured. I think we might make a much better guess as to ATi's intentions and/or xBox probabilities if we knew a lot more about the nature of the problems currently afflicting the xBox nVidia-M$ relationship. Is it just over costs--or is their a technological aspect involved?

 

Yes, this would make a lot of sense considering how close to a PC the basic xBox software paradigm is. This could be a real advantage for M$ over the other console makers as the company could actually do annual hardware upgrades to the basic platform "silently" so to speak as the technology and pricing allows while still retaining full backwards compatability with the software base. xBox could theoretically benefit from the same product cycling and economies of scale the PC market enjoys. At ~$300 a year people could afford to purchase new boxes annually if they desired.

I wonder, though, about games already written for current xBox hardware which I would have thought would have to have been highly optimized for the current xBox hardware in order to perform well. Hmmm...just don't know that much about it.

 

If ATI were to gain the contract, they have the benefit of not being the first to attempt a PC in a box console. I pretty much think they would shove in their latest P4 chipset, and next Radeon. Not do what NV did and develop the lot from effectivly nothing (on their $400M advance payment I might add).

Do the decent thing...

Shove in their integrated RS400 (next gen), add an external sound chip... done. Keep the money.

Haven't you people see the heiniken Beer adverts?

 

Looks like the 2006 date was incorrect--it's actually 2005, now.

http://news.com.com/2100-1043_3-1019181.html?tag=fd_top

It's funny, but I swear I saw this somewhere (TR?) and they'd originally put 2005 as the date but when I looked back it had been changed to 2006...thought the old peepers were acting out again... Guess not.

Anyway, it's certainly not inconceivable that a propspective xBox contract for 2005 production might have ATi shuffling around at present...However, the '05 date is one bandied about by analysts and not M$, so who knows...

 

That's crazy IMO. NVidia has much more development resources than ATI, and they're not tied to developing a GPU for Nintendo, which I believe ATI is still committed to. Also, I think both ATI and NVidia are weary of the financial drain that developing for the XB2 would be, not the actually challenging of the PS3.

 

Consoles tend to be sold at a loss, and make money on the games. Therefore it doesn't make sense to provide incentives for people to upgrade every year.

The hardware will be several times more powerful. I see no reason why old games will run any worse, even if they're not optimised for the new architecture.

 

That's M$'s central problem right now with xBox--they're losing money on them. And M$ pushing hard for lower prices from nVidia to stem the red ink is what's behind the problems between the companies, according to reports I've read. It's at least part of the problem. An intelligent console maker will want to break even on his hardware if he can.

The central idea behind a console is price. If you could keep the prices in line and at least break even at the ~$300 mark (costs between $250 and $275 per unit) and manage to upgrade the hardware 3-5x more often than your competition, you could make a huge drive into the market and greatly expand your software revenues. What I'm saying is that by virtue of what xBox is it need not be bounded by the same kind of hardware restraints that afflict PS2. xBox need not be afflicted by the need to "start over" every 5 years, etc.

Good point, but I was referring to more definitive hardware optimization that might involve code which directly interfaces the hardware to wring the most performance out of it. Don't really know how much if any of that goes in xBox software, however...

 

Dolby do licence an "interactive encoding for entertainment" system.

http://www.dolby.com/ht/co_br_0110_IntroductionToInteractive.html

Cmedia have a software version of the system available for their CMI9739 AC'97 CODEC, so in a worst case situation, ATI could use a software solution to the DD5.1 encode problem/

 

Doesn't surprise me too much either.
M$ may be big and fat and greedy and mean, but they're not so stupid as to make themselves totally dependent to a single chip designer/IHV.

One other thing though:
I hope the Xbox2 project doesn't screw up Ati's product cycles the same way it did with nVidias.
I know there where other reasons, but it was a big factor, wasn't it?
Do I worry too much?

Cheers,
Mac

 

While I do not doubt that the XBox contract took a lot of engineers off other products I think people use that to more of an escape goat. Most of nV product cycles troubles is not based off a lack of engineers but rather by risky call(s) by management. Sometimes those calls work..some times they don't...

 

I see the R400 as being in the right place for inclusion in the next Xbox. I may be wrong on this, but doesn't a console need to be finished hardware wise around 6 month to a year before release? For the developers?

 

Yes and no. No because early developers work off a dev kit that runs on a PC and merely simulates the characteristics of the final console design. This is periodically updated as the design gets more and more finalized.

Yes because the design needs to be finished easily 6 months prior to release just to work out manufacturing kinks and get the thing made and stockpiled in large enough quantities. Unlike GPUs, it is not acceptable for consoles to have a floating pseudo-release date and for hardware to slowly trickle into stores in the weeks and months following! And even GPUs have to have their design finalized several months before release to allow for testing and manufacturing.

Nearly everything in the hardware business takes longer than it seems on the outside.

 

Nonamer, actually, Doom is right. ATI has a huge # of development teams spread out across North America. Remember that they have at least 2 teams for PC development alone. Look at the breathe of their product lineup, it gives you an indication of just how many teams at their disposal. They are staffing up like mad now so I think that is an indication that they plan on putting as many teams together as needed with no impact to their current development plans.

 

You sure of that? AFAIK, nVidia has something like 4 developement teams. Anyhow, the "breathe" of ATI's line is actually pretty thin. It's just the R300, R350, and RV350 in the past year, all minor iterations of each other. Despite NV's current woes, they've release the NV30, 31, 34, 35, as well as the nForce2 boards.

 

ATI's done a lot more than just the R300, R350 & RV350.

 

Just to point out that ATI also have the set top box chips and the handheld chips plus P4 and athlon chipsets for both desktops and mobiles.

BTW I'm not claiming to know how big ATIs development teams are comp to Nvidias. Just pointing out that your not looking at all ATIs product lines.