Chipworks Analyzes Xbox 360 Innards

Semi-conductor and system reverse engineering firm Chipworks have announced that they are analyzing the key chips for Microsoft's Xbox 360 console, and have made some initial conclusions, with more detailed analysis available directly from the company. "Microsoft has developed creative relationships with some of the leading-edge chip suppliers in order to meet the performance needs of the Xbox," said Gary Tomkins. manager of Technical Intelligence at Chipworks. "We wanted to see how advanced the process technology is that is being used, considering the pressure to keep the component costs down." "The extensive use of state-of-the-art technology in the Xbox illustrates the trend that the consumer market is driving technology these days," continued Tomkins. Dick James, senior technology analyst, also commented: "Earlier press announcements revealed that the Xbox's custom microprocessor was being fabbed by IBM, and the graphics processor was designed by ATI, both using 90-nm processes. Later, NEC announced that they were supplying the embedded DRAM to work with the ATI chip, and Infineon has also declared they will have parts in the console. ATI has used TSMC as a high performance foundry at the 130- and 110-nm process nodes, so we're curious to see if the relationship has continued." "Most of the dedicated parts have the Microsoft X-logo on them, including the silicon die markings, not the design or IDM origin. We could call this 'Microsoft inside'," added Tomkins. "So far we have identified the IBM, ATI, and NEC parts, Samsung GDDR3 SDRAM, Hynix NAND flash, and other chips whose origin we are investigating." The Chipworks website includes a page with pictures of the custom markings on the Xbox 360 chips. Chipworks also reports that the NEC embedded DRAM is co-packaged with the ATI processor, rather than being integrated into the same piece of silicon. This allows the processes to be optimized for the separate devices, without forcing a compromise to achieve what could be a false economy.