IBM, Microsoft Get Ready for Christmas

By Ed Sperling -- Electronic News, 10/25/2005

IBM and Microsoft today will uncork the newest processor for the Xbox 360, based on the Power architecture, boasting they shaved as much as a year off the time it took to get the chip from design into volume production.

The normal time to develop and debug a complex processor is about 30 to 36 months. The new chip was produced in less than 24 months. IBM has been working to cut the time it takes to bring chips to market, using everything from pre-fab design kits to its own internal EDA tools. The chips will allow Microsoft to ramp up production of its new Xbox within a month of the Christmas season.

IBM currently has development contracts for all three major gaming platforms, the Xbox, Sony’s Playstation 3 and the next version of Nintendo. While Sony’s Playstation will be based on the cell processor, Xbox will use the power architecture that has been used in PowerPC chips for the past decade.

“This is very current and has about as much capability as any platform available today,” said Clay Ryder, president of the Sageza Group. “The advantage for Microsoft is they’ve got the technology in just under two years from design. Three years for a chip like this is not uncommon.”

The new 90nm silicon-on-insulator chip has three cores, each running two threads at 3.2GHz, as well as a custom floating point unit for accelerating gaming applications, according to Jim Comfort, VP of IBM’s systems and technology group. The chip is expected to be produced in volume this year and next year by both IBM and its foundry partner, Chartered Semiconductor, with the Xbox 360 launch scheduled for Nov. 22 in the United States.

IBM inked both design and foundry contracts with Microsoft, Comfort said. But a Microsoft spokeswoman said the company owns the design, which allows Microsoft to shop the design around at different fabs to reduce the cost. She noted that the chip will be shipped to three contract manufacturers in China, Flextronics, Celestica and Wistron.