Note: those afraid of tech-speak should skip the first paragraph.
According to
Cens.com, the first 65nm GPU chip equipped Xbox 360s -- codenamed
Jasper, the successor to current
Falcon 360s, which incorporate a 65nm CPU but use a larger GPU -- will start showing up in by August of this year. IBM will reportedly manufacture and test the CPU chips, while Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) has reportedly been contracted to manufacture and the graphics chips, which will in turn be tested and packaged by Advanced Semiconductor Engineering Inc. (ASE). Nanya will be responsible for supplying flip-chip packaging substrates (don't ask us). Furthermore, CENS reports that industry watchers are betting on TSMC to win contracts to manufacture chips for Japser's successor,
Valhalla, which will combine both the CPU and graphics chips into one super chip.
The upshot of all this is that new chips should be arriving this August, making for cooler, quieter 360s everywhere. that's something we can all enjoy, right? Oh, and no, there was no mention of Microsoft
cramming Blu-Ray drives into either the Jasper or Valhalla.
[Via
Joystiq]
Update: Clarified differences between Falcon and Jasper units
In a follow up to the news that the 360's internal hardware will be changed to the "Jasper" setup, there is now the news that the "Valhalla" update mentioned in that story is more than just a CPU and GPU on the same chip. TG Daily thinks that the Valhalla chip will be the heart of a complete hardware revision in Fall 2009, ala the slimline PS2. While that would seem the logical course of action, all that we know for sure is that the Valhalla chip will indeed be used in the "mid-cycle refresh" of the hardware, and that it is in fact an "all-in-one" chip. Whether or not Microsoft will actually change the outer shell or not is unknown, and the Valhalla hardware update could come and go without changing the outer look of the console at all.
