Xbox 2 chip finished ; German site claimes 'Achtung!"

[hey69]

THE XBOX 2 CHIP MIGHT be already finished, according to a German web site. According to Gamestar.de, the graphics core is finalised and it may be used by both XboX 2 and a future Nintendo console. It seems that both Microsoft and Nintendo will license the same marchitecture and it's possible we will end up with the same graphic chip for both consoles.
Knowing Microsoft, I don’t see this happening and I would imagine that Nintendo might flee from ATI due to the nature of the Microsoft–ATI deal. I don’t think that Microsoft would be happy knowing that Nintendo would have the same core.

Last time I heard, this chip was codenamed R500, not the R520 that will be used for graphic cards only and will be directly derived from the R520 "Fudo" chip. We can expect at least Shader 3.0+ compatibility but we are not sure about the chip's specification.

We were told not to expect this console before the end of 2005 so it's still quite some way away.

You can find the original story
here

 

[jvd]

err ati said they were wraping it up in a confrence call as reported by dave a few days ago now at least

 

[McFly]

The German site says: "The gfx chip is as good as finished" ... That can meen different things even that only the design of the chip is finished as Dave told last week.

Fredi

 

[StefanS]

Re: Xbox 2 chip finished ; German site claimes 'Achtung!&quo

THE XBOX 2 CHIP MIGHT be already finished, according to a German web site. According to Gamestar.de, the graphics core is finalised and it may be used by both XboX 2 and a future Nintendo console. It seems that both Microsoft and Nintendo will license the same marchitecture and it's possible we will end up with the same graphic chip for both consoles.
Knowing Microsoft, I don’t see this happening and I would imagine that Nintendo might flee from ATI due to the nature of the Microsoft–ATI deal. I don’t think that Microsoft would be happy knowing that Nintendo would have the same core.
here

Obviously you don't know German. All it says that at the press conference which Dave attended ATI said it was wrapping up the Xbox 2 Chip. There's nothing about Nintendo or Microsoft sharing the same chip. The article asserts that both MS and Nintendo will produce their respective gpus in license which Nintendo already did this gen...

I repeat, Nintendo and MS do not share the same gpu...

 

[mboeller]

Gamestar.de and Hardware.....this is not good. They screw up all the time. Not reliable at all.

 

[hey69]

hey, don't blame the messenger, i didn't claim to speak german

ich bin ein berliner !

 

[Megadrive1988]

as far as I know....

The Xbox 2 and Nintendo console graphic processors are different, even *IF* they're both based on the same basic technologies, which is not totally clear at this time.

the Xbox 2 VPU has been developed primarily on the east coast in Mass. with contributions from the other major ATI design teams, in Orlando and 'The Valley' (Santa Clara, CA)

The Nintendo GCN2/GCNext/Revolution VPU has been designed primarily on the west coast in 'The Valley' (Santa Clara, CA) by many of the same people who designed the N64's Reality Co-Processor and Gamecube's Flipper. The other major ATI design teams (Mass, Orlando) have probably contrubuted to the Nintendo VPU also.

 

[McFly]

Gamestar.de and Hardware.....this is not good.

Yes, gamefront.de is much better.

Fredi

 

[Tysan]

Nintendo made Revolution GPU deal with ATI quite earlier than MS.

They allready said that there were two different teams, one designing Revolution graphic chip, and the other designing Xenon one, so I would say almost sure that both chips will be different although they will obviously share ATI technologies.

I also believe as Megadrive1988 coments that most of Revolution team comes from ArtX, and knowing what they achived with Flipper without being able to use ATI graphic patents they will surely make a nice chip.

 

[Ooh-videogames]

What I'm curious about is what patents does MS has, also the shader tech in OpenGL, I assume you can acheive the same effects as you would with DirectX.

From what I have read on this board and learned, I'm having time seeing how there could be any noticeble differences other than how the GPU does texture mapping.

Will the Rev do textures the same way as the GC, apply 8 textures in one pass? Is this tech Patent?

Is the doubled texel units in the Xbox Gpu, a MS patent?

 

[Megadrive1988]

What I'm curious about is what patents does MS has

I too am curious about what patents related to graphics MS has. It's known that MS acquired CagEnt in 1998. CagEnt is, more or less, the 3DO Systems group that developed the 3DO M2 (Mark II/Bulldog) and the MX (souped up M2) chipsets. some of these people have their roots in SGI. And God knows how many other graphics people and graphics patents MS has acquired over the years. I don't think much, if any, of this was applied to the NV2A in Xbox, but I assume MS has been making the best use of it all for Xenon's graphics, with the assistance of ATI.

Is the doubled texel units in the Xbox Gpu, a MS patent?

well if you are referring to the 2 tmus per pipe, 8 total, in Xbox GPU, I don't think that is a MS patent. that was inherited from Nvidia's previous GPUs: the NV15 and NV20.

 

[PC-Engine]

Heh we still don't even know if Xenon's GPU will have eDRAM or not same with Revolution's GPU...

 

[Inane_Dork]

What I'm curious about is what patents does MS has...

Unless I am mistaken, you won't find many MS graphics patents. At least, you won't find the kinds we see from IBM and Sony so frequently.

MS's graphics research branch is rather prestigious, though. Huges Hoppe, whose geometry work won him a SIGGRAPH award this year, works there. Jim Blinn and now Kurt Akeley also work there. Plus, MS has an Asian branch to that R&D group that is supposed to be cutting-edge.

Add in the developers for Direct3D and the related ATG guys, and you're looking at a considerable amount of talent in this one area. Why exactly they don't go for patents, I don't know.

The kind of patents you're probably thinking of would come from ATi, since they are making the VPU hardware.

 

[Wunderchu]

as far as I know....

The Xbox 2 and Nintendo console graphic processors are different, even *IF* they're both based on the same basic technologies, which is not totally clear at this time.

the Xbox 2 VPU has been developed primarily on the east coast in Mass. with contributions from the other major ATI design teams, in Orlando and 'The Valley' (Santa Clara, CA)

The Nintendo GCN2/GCNext/Revolution VPU has been designed primarily on the west coast in 'The Valley' (Santa Clara, CA) by many of the same people who designed the N64's Reality Co-Processor and Gamecube's Flipper. The other major ATI design teams (Mass, Orlando) have probably contrubuted to the Nintendo VPU also.

your assessment is basically correct, AFAIK 8)

 

[Megadrive1988]

Heh we still don't even know if Xenon's GPU will have eDRAM or not same with Revolution's GPU...

all indications are that Xenon's VPU has eDRAM. although that's not 100% confirmed.

we don't know anything about Revolution's VPU but we might assume it has eDRAM since its predecesso, Flipper, has some.

 

[nAo]

OT: It's not fair! we know a lot of stuff about XBox2 GPU...but we don't now a thing about PS3 GPU!

 

[Farid]

OT: It's not fair! we know a lot of stuff about XBox2 GPU...but we don't now a thing about PS3 GPU!

Lots of fillrate, no mip mapping, no clipping, expect dot3 BM maybe in two passes, no MSAA, no blending ops, lots of fillrate, oh, and like we discovered lately, expect, also, a very nice point sampling.

8)

 

[nAo]

LOL! the disturbing thing is that you may be right...ouch

 

[Spidermate]

OT: It's not fair! we know a lot of stuff about XBox2 GPU...but we don't now a thing about PS3 GPU!

I consider that a good thing,especially this early.That way people can't really jump to too many conclusions.

 

[Megadrive1988]

Lots of fillrate, no mip mapping, no clipping, expect dot3 BM maybe in two passes, no MSAA, no blending ops, lots of fillrate, oh, and like we discovered lately, expect, also, a very nice point sampling.

<pessimistic mode on>
sadly this could be the truth, aside from 2-3 new features beyond the PS2's GS.
</pessimistic mode off>