MS Unveils Details of Slim 360's Shiny New Silicon

Didn't see this posted anywhere so apologies if old.

Long story short: The new 360's SoC is apparently "the first mass-market, desktop-c.lass processor to combine a CPU, GPU, memory, and I/O logic onto a single piece of silicon" with the main advantages being lower cost, lower power consumption, a smaller motherboard and a reduction of the number of fans/heatsinks needed for cooling.

Long story long

It's a surprisingly cool bit of tech from what seemed to be a very basic hardware refresh (with MS/IBM essentially beating Intel and AMD to market with this type of product). Now, feel free to crack RRoD jokes and argue about how much better/worse the Cell is for the next fifteen pages.

So, one more price drop? ;)

Didn't see this posted anywhere so apologies if old.

Long story short: The new 360's SoC is apparently "the first mass-market, desktop-c.lass processor to combine a CPU, GPU, memory, and I/O logic onto a single piece of silicon" with the main advantages being lower cost, lower power consumption, a smaller motherboard and a reduction of the number of fans/heatsinks needed for cooling.

Long story long

It's a surprisingly cool bit of tech from what seemed to be a very basic hardware refresh (with MS/IBM essentially beating Intel and AMD to market with this type of product). Now, feel free to crack RRoD jokes and argue about how much better/worse the Cell is for the next fifteen pages.

Cool stuff. Wonder if 1 of the big 3 will use SoC like this for their next-gen system? Would make for a nice compact system like the GC or Wii, which I really dig.

So, one more price drop? ;)

Orchid87

No, or at least, not anytime soon. If they were dropping the price for the holiday season, they would have released the new 250GB SKU at that price dropping the price only a couple of months after introducing it and effectively screwing thousands of new 360 owners out of $X would be a PR disaster).

It does raise the question of how much MS is making per 360 sold these days, though.

isn't that the slim addition that was uncovered in E3 ??? Why are you posting this ?omho88

As far as I know, this is the first time they've shown the new chip's design. They certainly didn't discuss it at E3, and AFAIK it hasn't come up before now.

AMDs version is coming around next year.

Didn't see this posted anywhere so apologies if old.

Long story short: The new 360's SoC is apparently "the first mass-market, desktop-c.lass processor to combine a CPU, GPU, memory, and I/O logic onto a single piece of silicon" with the main advantages being lower cost, lower power consumption, a smaller motherboard and a reduction of the number of fans/heatsinks needed for cooling.

Long story long

It's a surprisingly cool bit of tech from what seemed to be a very basic hardware refresh (with MS/IBM essentially beating Intel and AMD to market with this type of product). Now, feel free to crack RRoD jokes and argue about how much better/worse the Cell is for the next fifteen pages.

PBSnipes

Note that, Intel Core i5 includes Intel HD IGP and Dual Core Intel X64 CPU (4 threads, 8 instruction issues per cycle, four 128bit wide SSE (SIMD) ADD units, two 128bit wide SSE(SIMD) MUL units). Intel HD IGP is already rivaling AMD Radeon HD 4200 IGP and NV Geforce 9400 IGP.

IBM Xenon has a total6 threads,6 instruction issues per cycle,three VMX (SIMD) MUL-ADD units.

[QUOTE="PBSnipes"]

Didn't see this posted anywhere so apologies if old.

Long story short: The new 360's SoC is apparently "the first mass-market, desktop-c.lass processor to combine a CPU, GPU, memory, and I/O logic onto a single piece of silicon" with the main advantages being lower cost, lower power consumption, a smaller motherboard and a reduction of the number of fans/heatsinks needed for cooling.

Long story long

It's a surprisingly cool bit of tech from what seemed to be a very basic hardware refresh (with MS/IBM essentially beating Intel and AMD to market with this type of product). Now, feel free to crack RRoD jokes and argue about how much better/worse the Cell is for the next fifteen pages.

ronvalencia

Basically a bunch of mambo.. chumbo..

[QUOTE="ronvalencia"][QUOTE="PBSnipes"]

Didn't see this posted anywhere so apologies if old.

(CUT)

Long story short: The new 360's SoC is apparently "the first mass-market, desktop-c.lass processor to combine a CPU, GPU, memory, and I/O logic onto a single piece of silicon" with the main advantages being lower cost, lower power consumption, a smaller motherboard and a reduction of the number of fans/heatsinks needed for cooling.

Long story long

It's a surprisingly cool bit of tech from what seemed to be a very basic hardware refresh (with MS/IBM essentially beating Intel and AMD to market with this type of product). Now, feel free to crack RRoD jokes and argue about how much better/worse the Cell is for the next fifteen pages.

ThaGreatness007

Basically a bunch of mambo.. chumbo..

For desktop c.lass CPU and GPU fusion, the article's claims is false i.e. Intel Core i5-6x0 was before Xbox 360's CGPU.

Unlike Xbox360's CGPU, AMD Llano's includes the new 480 stream processors DX11 GPU(~1 TFLOPs, about the same as Radeon HD 5750). Fusing 5 year old CPU and GPU is not quite the same as fusing a new GPU design.

Very impressive hardware. So thats how they were able to add so many features into reach wowbigboss5ak

How would this effect Reachs features in any way? this is the same tech as any other 360, only its on a single chip.

Nice, I want me one of those, my 360 freezes at times anywways.:P

Very impressive hardware. So thats how they were able to add so many features into reach wowbigboss5ak

Awesome, I hope this design doesn't screw me over later on. lolStevo_the_gamer

Same here. As I was reading through the article I was thinking, "this is pretty cool and all, but I would feel a lot better with more fans/heatsinks." :lol:

[QUOTE="bigboss5ak"]Very impressive hardware. So thats how they were able to add so many features into reach wowChutebox

Very impressive hardware. So thats how they were able to add so many features into reach wowbigboss5ak

teh cell craps better hardware than that.

but seriously.

TEHH CELLLLLLLLLL

[QUOTE="bigboss5ak"]Very impressive hardware. So thats how they were able to add so many features into reach wowAnimal-Mother

Ive learned to mostly ignore him personaly. Its just that comment was so starnge that I had to comment on it.

[QUOTE="bigboss5ak"]Very impressive hardware. So thats how they were able to add so many features into reach wowAnimal-Mother

[QUOTE="Animal-Mother"][QUOTE="bigboss5ak"]Very impressive hardware. So thats how they were able to add so many features into reach wowStevo_the_gamer

teh cell craps better hardware than that.

but seriously.

TEHH CELLLLLLLLLL

iBear-

bah, the Cell is just the modern day blast processor me thinks.

[QUOTE="ThaGreatness007"]

[QUOTE="ronvalencia"] Note that, Intel Core i5 includes Intel HD IGP and Dual Core Intel X64 CPU (4 threads, 8 instruction issues per cycle, four 128bit wide SSE ADD units, two 128bit wide SSE MUL units). Intel HD IGP already is rivaling AMD Radeon HD 4200 IGP and NV Geforce 9400 IGP.ronvalencia

Basically a bunch of mambo.. chumbo..

For desktop c.lass CPU and GPU fusion, the article's claims is false i.e. Intel Core i5-6x0 was before Xbox 360's CGPU.

Unlike Xbox360's CGPU, AMD Llano's includes the new 480 stream processors DX11 GPU(~1 TFLOPs, about the same as Radeon HD 5750). Fusing 5 year old CPU and GPU is not quite the same as fusing a new GPU design.

[QUOTE="ronvalencia"]

[QUOTE="ThaGreatness007"]

Basically a bunch of mambo.. chumbo..

red12355

For desktop c.lass CPU and GPU fusion, the article's claims is false i.e. Intel Core i5-6x0 was before Xbox 360's CGPU.

Unlike Xbox360's CGPU, AMD Llano's includes the new 480 stream processors DX11 GPU(~1 TFLOPs, about the same as Radeon HD 5750). Fusing 5 year old CPU and GPU is not quite the same as fusing a new GPU design.

Intel's Pineview (Atom)CPU/GPU combo chip says Hi... It's shipped in January 2010.

Note that Intel Core i5 includes a full speed 4MB L3 cache. As you may already know, CPU's cache mirrors a small section of the main memory.

Like Intel Core i5-6x0,

1. Xbox 360 Slim's South Bridge** is still a seperate module.

2. memory modules** are still seperate module.

**Refer to yellow colored blocks.

In place of XCGPU's PCI-E South-Bridge I/O, Intel Core i5 has DMI South-Bridge I/O.

Intel Core i5-6x0 also includes 16 lane PCI-E 2.0 I/O.

That makes absolutely no sense. That means reach wouldn't run on the old 360's :?Animal-Mother

MS actually slightly gimped the new chipset to make sure it's identical to the older 360s performance-wise. From the article:

But the purpose of the "FSB replacement block" may not be obvious. This particular block essentially implements a kind of on-die "frontside bus" with the exact same latency and bandwidth characteristics as the older bus that connected the CPU and GPU when they were discrete parts.

It would have been easier and more natural to just connect the CPU and GPU with a high-bandwidth, low-latency internal connection, but that would have made the new SoC faster in some respects than the older systems, and that's not allowed. So they had to introduce this separate module onto the chip that could actually add latency between the CPU and GPU blocks, and generally behave like an off-die FSB.

what is this?? is this new 360 slim or another new model ??Leo-Magic

It's the new slim 360.

Wireless N? So we finally have the real 360? How many more prototypes will MS come out with before they get it right?X360PS3AMD05

[QUOTE="X360PS3AMD05"]Wireless N? So we finally have the real 360? How many more prototypes will MS come out with before they get it right?WilliamRLBaker

And yet PS3 has more features and still costs the same..........

[QUOTE="WilliamRLBaker"][QUOTE="X360PS3AMD05"]Wireless N? So we finally have the real 360? How many more prototypes will MS come out with before they get it right?1Stark1

And yet PS3 has more features and still costs the same..........

[QUOTE="X360PS3AMD05"]Wireless N? So we finally have the real 360? How many more prototypes will MS come out with before they get it right?WilliamRLBaker

As if the Red Ring box could ever have anything that can compete with the power of the cell. jg4xchamp

C'mon champ, you can do better than that.

Does this means that i bought a slim for nothing and this is has a better peformmance than the slim?johny300

Does this means that i bought a slim for nothing and this is has a better peformmance than the slim?johny300

This is the slim. For whatever reason MS waited until now to unveil the changes to the internals.

[QUOTE="johny300"]Does this means that i bought a slim for nothing and this is has a better peformmance than the slim?PBSnipes

This is the slim. For whatever reason MS waited until now to unveil the changes to the internals.

[QUOTE="WilliamRLBaker"][QUOTE="X360PS3AMD05"]Wireless N? So we finally have the real 360? How many more prototypes will MS come out with before they get it right?johny300

*looks at the post before his own post, then the reply, continuely looks back and forth* um...would you mind editing and saying never miss a chance to bash the 360? or how about say anything about the post I replied too. as well...this is system wars, if you dont like it leave it, this is what happens here.

But remember if its talking about the 360 you dont mind, till someone mentions the ps3 then you get your dander all up.

[QUOTE="WilliamRLBaker"][QUOTE="X360PS3AMD05"]Wireless N? So we finally have the real 360? How many more prototypes will MS come out with before they get it right?1Stark1

And yet PS3 has more features and still costs the same..........

[QUOTE="Animal-Mother"] That makes absolutely no sense. That means reach wouldn't run on the old 360's :?PBSnipes

MS actually slightly gimped the new chipset to make sure it's identical to the older 360s performance-wise. From the article:

But the purpose of the "FSB replacement block" may not be obvious. This particular block essentially implements a kind of on-die "frontside bus" with the exact same latency and bandwidth characteristics as the older bus that connected the CPU and GPU when they were discrete parts.

It would have been easier and more natural to just connect the CPU and GPU with a high-bandwidth, low-latency internal connection, but that would have made the new SoC faster in some respects than the older systems, and that's not allowed. So they had to introduce this separate module onto the chip that could actually add latency between the CPU and GPU blocks, and generally behave like an off-die FSB.

what is this?? is this new 360 slim or another new model ??Leo-Magic

It's the new slim 360.

Does the Ps3 have N?? IDK i'm not a fanboy, i do know that i didn't care for linux or BC so the removed features weren't a big deal to me. X360PS3AMD05

Does the Ps3 have N?? IDK i'm not a fanboy, i do know that i didn't care for linux or BC so the removed features weren't a big deal to me. X360PS3AMD05

No. When the PS3 launched in 2006 there was no wireless N. And I dont not think it was in the mass market(not sure) when Sony launched the Slim in 2009.

[QUOTE="X360PS3AMD05"]Does the Ps3 have N?? IDK i'm not a fanboy, i do know that i didn't care for linux or BC so the removed features weren't a big deal to me. Kahuna_1

No. When the PS3 launched in 2006 there was no wireless N. And I dont not think it was in the mass market(not sure) when Sony launched the Slim in 2009.