Inside Microsoft's Xbox 360
by Anand Lal Shimpi, Kristopher Kubicki & Tuan Nguyen on November 16, 2005 5:09 AM EST- Posted in
- Systems
The Xbox 360 Chipset
As we mentioned before, the Xbox 360's North Bridge is integrated into the GPU, similar to most PC chipsets with integrated graphics. The North Bridge is on the main die of the GPU and shares the same 128-bit GDDR3 memory controller that the graphics core uses to access the Xbox 360's 512MB of memory. This bus runs at 1.4GHz offering just over 22GB/s of bandwidth to main memory.
On the other side of the North Bridge there's the CPU's FSB interface, which offers 10.8GB/s of bandwidth in each direction (21.6GB/s total). You can see the serial FSB laid out in the image below:
The North Bridge also features a 500MB/s interface to the Xbox 360's South Bridge, which was designed by SiS (pictured below).
Once again, you don't see any non-Microsoft logos on any of these chips. It's clear this time around who the IP belongs to. The South Bridge is responsible for communication with the audio codec, storage devices, USB ports, controllers, and any other I/O devices.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
91 Comments
View All Comments
yacoub - Thursday, November 17, 2005 - link
Considering they were corrected by someone else in a previous article about "dies/dice" and are still making the same mistake, it's important to make sure they fix it this time before it becomes a permanent fixture of this site.And yes, that's really all I thought was worthy of mentioning. The review is pretty cool.
Anand Lal Shimpi - Thursday, November 17, 2005 - link
According to Microsoft and Intel, the plural of 'die' when referring to a CPU die, is 'dice'.Microsoft's internal documentation talking about the Xbox 360 also refers to the ATI Xenos GPU as having two dice.
I am waiting for responses on other chip makers to make sure that the correct form of the word is dice.
Take care,
Anand
gamigin - Thursday, November 17, 2005 - link
Anand,Do you have any evidence to back up the following quote in spite of game developers claiming otherwise?
"game developers shouldn't run into capacity limitations on Xbox 360 discs anytime soon"
BTW, the plural of a manufacturing die is dies. If Microsoft or Intel said dice, then they are just wrong.
Phantronius - Thursday, November 17, 2005 - link
Who are you, my fucking English teacher?yacoub - Thursday, November 17, 2005 - link
Very interesting! Thanks for taking the time to respond, Anand.I wouldn't be surprised if it simply slipped through marketing department editing, considering dictionary.com is saying it should be "dies". "Dice" is normally only ever for the six-sided tools of chance/gambling.
If they're creating a new use for the term, that in itself would be pretty noteworthy as well.
Anand Lal Shimpi - Thursday, November 17, 2005 - link
Well the term dice is what the CPU architects use, so I don't think it's a marketing/PR mishap.Take care,
Anand
gamigin - Thursday, November 17, 2005 - link
Most CPU architects certainly do not use the term "dice" as the plural to a manufacturing die.It's probably the same Microsoft guys who standardized the non-word "canonicalize"
Kilim - Thursday, November 17, 2005 - link
Ah dude, are you saying that "normal" dice are only for six sided dice? Ohhhh, someone is trying to get the D&D guys to start flaming him, lol. =p.linuxOwnzIfUrLeet - Thursday, November 17, 2005 - link
I lost the link to the mod chip can someone post?LoneWolf15 - Thursday, November 17, 2005 - link
1) If I buy the cheaper XBox360, how easy is it to add my own notebook hard disk later if I want it? Would have been very useful to know, and wasn't made clear.2) Media playback compatibility info --I'm sure the unit can play DVD's, and probably MP3's, but can it play DivX content? Xvid? MPEG-4 or HD WMV? These would be good things to know. A video game console has moderate usefulness to me; a video game console with broad media playback capabilities far more so.
Finally, a comment to Microsoft: If the Xbox360 had Media Center compatibility (read: PVR), I'd have bought it in a heartbeat without having to think about it. It would be the perfect home theater convergence device. It's really too bad this wasn't an option.