Xbox 360 Specification

[asian1]

Three days before the official launch at MTV, the specification was leaked to the public. The console have 3 PowerPC based custom CPU:

http://news.gaminghorizon.com/media2/1115678065.926.html

Custom IBM PowerPC-based CPU
3 symmetrical cores at 3.2 GHz each
2 hardware threads per core
1 VMX-128 vector unit per core
1 MB L2 cache

[asian1]

Nintendo plan to launch their new console next week. The product will be released to the market in 2006.
Does the new console use Quad Cores PowerPC G5?

From Reuters:

Nintendo Co. will launch its new video game console sometime next year, missing the key 2005 holiday shopping season and putting it a step behind Microsoft Corp. in the battle for the next-generation game machine, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun reported on Saturday. The report comes two days after Microsoft announced its new console, called Xbox 360, will be in stores in time for the 2005 year-end shopping season, giving it a head-start on the competition if Sony Corp. and Nintendo don't introduce their new consoles until next year.  The Nihon Keizai said it obtained the information from Nintendo on Friday, without citing sources. Nintendo has not officially set a date for its next generation console, code-named "Revolution," although a 2006 launch has been widely expected.
Nintendo officials were not immediately available for comment.
Based in the ancient Japan capital of Kyoto, Nintendo was the dominant brand in home video game consoles for much of the 1980s and early 1990s until Sony entered the market with its PlayStation and Microsoft later introduced its Xbox machine. Nintendo has said that Revolution will be ready for wireless Internet gaming and be backward-compatible with the current generation GameCube, which is now in third place in the console market behind Sony's PlayStation 2 (PS2) and the Xbox.
The new console will be powered by a chip developed by IBM code-named "Broadway" and a graphics processor from ATI Technologies Inc. code-named "Hollywood."  Revolution will use 12 cm optical discs and be about the size of three DVD cases stacked together, the Nihon Keizai said.
Sony has not said when it will release its next-generation console, tentatively named PS3, although industry watchers generally expect it to hit stores sometime next year.  Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft are expected to show off their next-generation gaming consoles to developers next week at the annual Electronics Entertainment Expo, or E3, as all three companies seek to entrench themselves deeper into living rooms with advanced computing, graphics and multimedia features.

[asian1]

Todd Holmdahl, the designer of Xbox 360 chipset:

http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/612/612995p1.html

"We want to design the most powerful, elegant and useful design for developers to create games with Xbox 360," said the impressively tall, lanky Holmdahl. "With the Xbox we had a merchant semi-conductor relationship. With Xbox 360 we have designed and own the chipset, so we can go to whomever we want with it. We're not paying Intel and Nvidia this time," he explained, referring to the exorbitant price paid out each time an Xbox was manufactured.

The heart of Microsoft's new system is the CPU, a triple core of 3.2 GHz processors, each capable of running two threads simultaneously, meaning the CPU can generate six threads at once. This power enables, among other things, programmers to give an immense amount of commands to the Central Processing Unit without strain. It also provides programmers with the ability to invent new algorithms in the future, giving them a healthy flexibility in the way they code games. General memory bandwidth is 5.4 GHz, with 21.6 gigabytes per second on the frontside bus connecting the CPU and the GPU.

The CPU is an amazing piece of technology, as it's built with 165 million transistors in it, many the size of mere nanometers. IBM had three plants working on the development of the chips.

The CPU is joined by the GPU, the Graphic Processing Unit, which handles the graphic output of the system (and which has 150 million transistors in it), the Southbridge, which enables all of the Ethernet and controller issues, and the TV encoder, which handles resolution issues, such as progressive scan, interlacing and other TV related issues.