Xbox 360 Secret Chip Revealed: "Ana"

[Blackmage]

there seems to be news of a newly discovered chip in the xbox 360.

http://www.news4gamers.com/industryn...Com-18961.aspx

http://arstechnica.com/articles/headstart.ars/2

[dangel]

Is anyone keeping a list of all the things Sony has stuffed up with the PS3?

[j.o.s.h.1408]

yea i am and i laugh at each and every single ps3 fanboy who got a ps3 just because its made by sony hehe.

[theuncharmed]

Good article

Goes to show how similar they are. Glad I have a 360.

[Pulse]

Also looking at graphics, you can see a big difference

[kalniel]

Isn't the idea with the PS3 that you don't actually need so many specialised co-processors, because you've got 5 or so powerful general purpose ones going free to do that for you?

[j.o.s.h.1408]

Nope, you still need a dedicated chip to do that. maybe a software update could do it for the ps3 but has it stands, the 360 has the true HD experience. Every single game on the 360 can be played on true HD 1080i/p with ease

Great move by microsoft

[kalniel]

Why do you need a dedicated chip though? Surely you can process the same instructions on a processor? Sure, you might use up 100% load on one (as per a PC without hardware accelerated HD playback) but that's fine.

[Tom Scott]

Why do you need a dedicated chip though? Surely you can process the same instructions on a processor? Sure, you might use up 100% load on one (as per a PC without hardware accelerated HD playback) but that's fine.

http://loot-ninja.com/2006/11/19/ps3...er-annoyances/

The PS3 could do it with part of the cell chip I suppose, problem is you're then putting more load on the CPU which could be used for more useful things, a dedicated chip takes that strain off the CPU and onto that chip. You're also not relying on software to do the scaling for you either.

Think 3 years down the line when games are really pushing the consoles, developers will have to budget a percentage of the cpu to scaling dependant on what resolution a user has chosen. The 360 won't need to budget that percentage in as its all done by hardware.

[kalniel]

http://loot-ninja.com/2006/11/19/ps3...er-annoyances/

The PS3 could do it with part of the cell chip I suppose, problem is you're then putting more load on the CPU which could be used for more useful things

The point I was trying to make was you can't use spare processors on the cell for more useful things if all the useful things are already being done by other processors - even if you had 3-4 taken up with the game+physics, and 1 for I/O, you've still got at least 2 processors doing nothing, so taking up one of those with 100% load for scaling isn't a problem.

I could be wrong, but I think that the cell was intended to be used in just such a fashion.

I doubt it will really make much difference - having multiple general processors vs multiple dedicated chips. You gain flexibility with the former and cost savings with the latter. Obviously at the moment there's a quality problem, but that's almost certainly software/driver related - just as this 'extra' chip in the x360 wasn't active when the console was first launched.

[Tom Scott]

I could be wrong, but I think that the cell was intended to be used in just such a fashion.

If it was surely it'd do it properly from day 1? I mean Sony have only had a few years to get that little problem sorted.

[kalniel]

If it was surely it'd do it properly from day 1? I mean Sony have only had a few years to get that little problem sorted.

Heh you could say the similar about MS and the X360 or better yet XP/Vista, or Nvidia and the 6800GT (the drivers are STILL buggy for some games, several years on) etc. etc.

For various reason, manufacturers, developers etc. will never find as many bugs in limited testing as the general public will on release. That's just the nature of technology unfortunately.

[Veles]

The the problem with upscaling with any spare cell processors, is that some games might not leave any free in the first place, and even with the added chip, it still is a lot cheaper than the PS3 is.

[charleski]

I suspect that part of the problem in using the PS3's spare processors for scaling is that only the main CPU has the I/O links needed to offload the data to the graphics chip. Even so, surely the main CPU isn't so slow that it can't decode and scale HD movies on its own, unless the reality is that the PS3 is a lot less powerful than we've been led to believe.

[steve threlfall]

Before all the fanboys start saying ps3 haz b33n 0wn50r3d... maybe it has its own secret chip

[j.o.s.h.1408]

lol u wish it had one haha