XBOX 360 Chip Source Reference

[Dave Baumann]

I wrote this down a little time ago, after some garbled reports about XBOX 360's chip sourcing; I may as well post it as a reference:

Component                                              Silicon Design Foundry Process
CPU                                                    IBM            IBM     90nm (?)
Graphics Controller / Northbridge (ATI Xenos - Parent) ATI            TSMC    90nm
Graphics Frambuffer Controller (ATI Xenos - Daughter)  ATI            NEC     90nm
SouthBridge                                            SiS            UMC     150nm

 

[Acert93]

Thanks for the info Dave! Is the scaler logic created by the WebTV group located in the south bridge?

 

[SanGreal]

Thanks for the info Dave! Is the scaler logic created by the WebTV group located in the south bridge?

No, its a seperate chip

http://img237.imageshack.us/img237/1590/xbox2schemebg2uw.gif

There are some differences in architecture since that block diagram, but I don't believe that is one of them.

 

[jvd]

why is the south bridge on such a big process ?

 

[Guden Oden]

South bridges aren't particulary large gate-wise and will likely be cheaper to manufacture on an older process than on one that is state of the art.

 

[Tim]

why is the south bridge on such a big process ?

That is pretty much standard for South bridges, the south bridge does not need a very modern process and the old process is cheap (the equipment is most likely fully depreciated).

 

[Dave Baumann]

Thanks for the info Dave! Is the scaler logic created by the WebTV group located in the south bridge?

Like SanGeneral, I believe this to be a separate chip - it'll be easier to upgrade. We can update the post if we find any more information.

why is the south bridge on such a big process ?

As others have said, its on a large process because it doesn't particularily need to be on a smaller process (with the number of I/O pins it has, I wonder if it might be slightly pad limited as well). It wouldn't surprise me to find that this is more or less an off the shelf Southbridge from SiS.

 

[AlNom]

any particular reason why the Ati parts are manufactured in different places? Where is the final assembly taking place?

edit: Thanks for the reply, Dave.

 

[Dave Baumann]

I should imagine that TSMC is ATI's preferred fab partner, but they may not have the eDRAM on a 90nm process yet - don't be surpised if this does all come from one supplier in the future (and probably even on a single core when a smaller process becomes available that can facilitate it all). The parts will come together at the company that packages the chips - ATI normally use several difference vendors for packaging, and one that has been mentioned in conjunction with XBOX 360 is ASE, which is one that ATI use currently.

 

[jvd]

As others have said, its on a large process because it doesn't particularily need to be on a smaller process (with the number of I/O pins it has, I wonder if it might be slightly pad limited as well). It wouldn't surprise me to find that this is more or less an off the shelf Southbridge from SiS.

THanks dave and everyone that answered .

If it is a off the shelf sb then perhaps there is some sound hardware built in ?

 

[Dave Baumann]

Yes, they are using standard 6 channel audio, which is up to the AC97 spec. I don't know if they'll go as far as Azalia level or not, but hopefully. The Southbridge won't have Dolby Encode capabilities tough, and if the developers want to do this then they will be taking that audio feed and encoding it via the CPU.

 

[jvd]

thanks dave. I assumed that the sound would be done completely by the cpu. This is good news

 

[Carl B]

NEC is a leader in the eDRAM space, so it only makes sense that they (or another one of the more expensive Japanese fabs) are taking point on that sub-component. The press release from a while back sums it up nicely.

http://www.necel.com/en/news/archive/0504/2603.html

I think NEC will be pretty secure in there contract for this component for quite a while as well. If and when Microsoft looks to put the eDRAM and the GPU on the same die, that's the only time I foresee a fabbign shake-up as far as NEC is concerned.

 

[LightHeaven]

Like SanGeneral, I believe this to be a separate chip - it'll be easier to upgrade. We can update the post if we find any more information.

What could they upgrade in that chip?

 

[Farid]

What could they upgrade in that chip?

If they ever release a HD-DVD/BRD version of the X360, they'd have to upgrade the output chip in oder to make it compatible with the videos format.

 

[a688]

If they ever release a HD-DVD/BRD version of the X360, they'd have to upgrade the output chip in oder to make it compatible with the videos format.

You mean support HDMI if it doesn't already? The output chip doesn't decode the video format.

 

[LightHeaven]

If they ever release a HD-DVD/BRD version of the X360, they'd have to upgrade the output chip in oder to make it compatible with the videos format.

Oh I see, thank you.

 

[Acert93]

If they ever release a HD-DVD/BRD version of the X360, they'd have to upgrade the output chip in oder to make it compatible with the videos format.

On that front, HDMI raises an interesting issue. I was on vacation visiting family and I noted that my dad had bought a small wide screen HDTV last year and it only has component--which means he cannot use HD-DVD or BR with it.

That got me thinking. Of the 10M HDTVs in the US (projected 15M by the end of 2005) a large percentage do NOT have HDMI support. Basically, these HDTV owners are down the river when it comes next gen high def optical formats.

Among the many reasons stated before MS decision not to support HD-DVD/BR out of the gates makes a lot of sense. The install base is quite small at this time.

Whether or not the 360 supports the encoding or not is an interesting question though.

Dave, do we know much about the scaler chip? Is MS holding out on any interesting info you can share

 

[Johnny Awesome]

That's a good point often overlooked. The reality is that HD-DVD/BR are going to be irrelevant to most consumers for at least another couple of years.

 

[Guden Oden]

Why wouldn't component be compatible with HDDVD/BR players? Component is perfectly capable of supporting the resolutions of these movie formats...!

If you have some ideas regarding component not supporting HDCP digital rights crap, well DUH, component isn't a digital format, so it wouldn't need it in the first place.