Welcome to Valhalla: Inside the New 250GB Xbox 360 Slim
by Anand Lal Shimpi on June 18, 2010 1:59 AM ESTFinal Words
Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony are all trying to change the rules of the game for the next generation of consoles. Five years ago we were eagerly awaiting the arrival of the Xbox 360 and today we are still left without a replacement. Microsoft and Sony want to push the current cycle of consoles through 2012 in order to recover investment dollars. Thankfully despite the age of these consoles, the quality of titles only seems to be improving.
The Xbox 360 slim is often referred to as what the first 360 should have been. It is smaller, quieter and hopefully much more reliable than what Microsoft first shipped five years ago. If it is indeed using 40nm components from TSMC I wouldn't expect a quick ramp. It may be that the slim remains at the $299 price point for a while until Microsoft can get enough silicon back to bring it to lower price points. Update: It looks like the CGPU is made at Chartered, now Global Foundries at 45nm. We may see a quicker ramp than I first assumed as a result.
Coupled with Kinect and some exciting titles due out later this year and next (not to mention the 360's media streaming capabilities), there should be enough life in the 360 to make an investment in the new box today worthwhile.
That being said, I really do hope that we see just as many eager game developers take advantage of the tremendous increase in CPU and GPU horsepower we've been given over the past five years. When the 360's CPU was first announced no desktop CPU could manage 6 threads, today we can have twice that paired with over 12 times the amount of cache on the 360's CPU. Today's GPUs are similarly impressive and are going to be even more affordable this year, and faster next.
Just as the high end grows more powerful, so will mobile gaming devices. We are not that far away from having the power of an Xbox 360 in a smartphone. An in-order triple core CPU should be doable in an SoC within 4 years, and the GPU within a similar amount of time. And there are companies working on both. Eventually the 360's library may be the "arcade classic" titles you'll be playing on your smartphone.
Sweet.
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Visual - Friday, June 18, 2010 - link
does the wifi module work on a PC?does another type of wifi module that was ment for PCs work with the xbox?
are you able to open the hdd case and replace the hdd inside?
Ganesh_balan - Friday, June 18, 2010 - link
Anand,Could you please give us an insight into the fan details? Is that a Coolermaster make as it came out in the initial batch of leaked pics from the Chinese website? What size/rpm?
jigglywiggly - Friday, June 18, 2010 - link
Uhm, I am going to be the first to say this...It's hardly any smaller! (Not that the 360 is big)
Also it looks like a normal 360 and someone got a heatgun on the faceplate and it bent inwards.
michal1980 - Friday, June 18, 2010 - link
You need a special port for this add on?biohazard75 - Friday, June 18, 2010 - link
Yes and no. The Kinect connects to the 360 via a USB port, however it also requires more power than can be supplied by the USB port.So the 'new' Kinect port on the new 360 allows the Kinect to be connected via a single wire.
Connecting the Kinect to an old 360 requires an additional power lead (probably a power injected USB connector will be supplied).
(I never want to type Kinect/Connect again...)
can - Friday, June 18, 2010 - link
With both chips being proprietary items (ATI and PowerPC) Who integrated them on one die? I guess I find it hard to believe that each company would give up it's design specs so that someone could engineer it for a single chip.piroroadkill - Friday, June 18, 2010 - link
We need that heatspread off.bill4 - Friday, June 18, 2010 - link
From what I know it's unlikely the EDRAM was integrated. That's another reason it'd be nice to see the heatspreader off.But as for who would do it, Microsoft?
The deal for X360 was such that MS owned the CPU and GPU IP, to a point anyway, so they can go fab it wherever. That was a big difference to the original Xbox, where Ms was forced to pay Intel and Nvidia whatever they wanted.
can - Friday, June 18, 2010 - link
I wasn't aware of that, thank you. Makes me wonder how much info (specs, design) was given to whom and by whom? Still leaves me with questions, but it's a useful answer.xboxknow - Saturday, June 19, 2010 - link
IBM did the design and IBM and Chartered build the CGPU chips, mostly IBM at this point. It's indeed 45nmThere are 2 chips underneath, a large die containing the CPU /
GPU function and a smaller EDRAM, procured elsewhere