Sony Inadvertently Helped Design the Xbox 360 CPU

[SamUK]

fairly comical if true.

The Wall Street Journal has the scoop on an upcoming book from two IBM engineers that spills the beans on one of the most shocking events in the video game industry. In "The Race for a New Game Machine," David Shippy and Mickie Phipps tell the story of the development of the Cell for Sony, revealing that the processor that powers the PlayStation 3 helped in the design of another central processor unit: Xenon, the three-core CPU that powers the Xbox 360. From the WSJ:

When the companies entered into their partnership in 2001, Sony, Toshiba and IBM committed themselves to spending $400 million over five years to design the Cell, not counting the millions of dollars it would take to build two production facilities for making the chip itself. IBM provided the bulk of the manpower, with the design team headquartered at its Austin, Texas, offices. Sony and Toshiba sent teams of engineers to Austin to live and work with their partners in an effort to have the Cell ready for the Playstation 3's target launch, Christmas 2005.

But a funny thing happened along the way: A new "partner" entered the picture. In late 2002, Microsoft approached IBM about making the chip for Microsoft's rival game console, the (as yet unnamed) Xbox 360. In 2003, IBM's Adam Bennett showed Microsoft specs for the still-in-development Cell core. Microsoft was interested and contracted with IBM for their own chip, to be built around the core that IBM was still building with Sony.

All three of the original partners had agreed that IBM would eventually sell the Cell to other clients. But it does not seem to have occurred to Sony that IBM would sell key parts of the Cell before it was complete and to Sony's primary videogame-console competitor. The result was that Sony's R&D money was spent creating a component for Microsoft to use against it.

[Andy Jones]

fairly comical if true.

Yup, Read that yesterday

[matt_mr2t]

Sony = Bills b1tch! Nice find there.

[Goto10]

It's the only reason the 360 is any good, powered by Sony :)

[SamUK]

MS took it and made it useful in a games console

[matt_mr2t]

It's the only reason the 360 is any good, powered by Sony

And Sony paid for it!

[thai boxer]

It's the only reason the 360 is any good, powered by Sony

And Sony paid for it!

[matt_mr2t]

It's the only reason the 360 is any good, powered by Sony

And Sony paid for it!

And the Xbox came out 2 years earlier, established itself and is now vastly cheaper. All because Sony helped them.

[RichardK]

Both use PowerPC cores. You may as well say "Apple helped pay to develop the PS3" or something similar.

IBM's core - the Power architecture - is behind a lot of "conflicting" products. What makes the Cell different is merely the packaging; the Xbox is closer to a PowerMac G5 (which the development systems were originally on - Macs in Microsoft! What a scoop...), the Cell is "more efficient, lower power, but more CPUs" in a very simplified nutshell.

But all are Power architectures.

[matt_mr2t]

Both use PowerPC cores. You may as well say "Apple helped pay to develop the PS3" or something similar.

IBM's core - the Power architecture - is behind a lot of "conflicting" products. What makes the Cell different is merely the packaging; the Xbox is closer to a PowerMac G5 (which the development systems were originally on - Macs in Microsoft! What a scoop...), the Cell is "more efficient, lower power, but more CPUs" in a very simplified nutshell.

But all are Power architectures.

Pah, far too mature a reply, and therefore boring.

[thai boxer]

Both use PowerPC cores. You may as well say "Apple helped pay to develop the PS3" or something similar.

IBM's core - the Power architecture - is behind a lot of "conflicting" products. What makes the Cell different is merely the packaging; the Xbox is closer to a PowerMac G5 (which the development systems were originally on - Macs in Microsoft! What a scoop...), the Cell is "more efficient, lower power, but more CPUs" in a very simplified nutshell.

But all are Power architectures.

Pah, far too mature a reply, and therefore boring.

hahaha! That made me laugh!

[RichardK]

Both use PowerPC cores. You may as well say "Apple helped pay to develop the PS3" or something similar.

IBM's core - the Power architecture - is behind a lot of "conflicting" products. What makes the Cell different is merely the packaging; the Xbox is closer to a PowerMac G5 (which the development systems were originally on - Macs in Microsoft! What a scoop...), the Cell is "more efficient, lower power, but more CPUs" in a very simplified nutshell.

But all are Power architectures.

Pah, far too mature a reply, and therefore boring.

"You can prove anything with facts".
Stewart Lee

[matt_mr2t]

Both use PowerPC cores. You may as well say "Apple helped pay to develop the PS3" or something similar.

IBM's core - the Power architecture - is behind a lot of "conflicting" products. What makes the Cell different is merely the packaging; the Xbox is closer to a PowerMac G5 (which the development systems were originally on - Macs in Microsoft! What a scoop...), the Cell is "more efficient, lower power, but more CPUs" in a very simplified nutshell.

But all are Power architectures.

Pah, far too mature a reply, and therefore boring.

"You can prove anything with facts".
Stewart Lee

Or you can point fingers and say ner ner.

[pistol pete]

Pah, far too mature a reply, and therefore boring.

"You can prove anything with facts".
Stewart Lee

Or you can point fingers and say ner ner.

[mr2daz]

Another potentially interesting read turns into a Bill Gates fanboy thread.
Group hug anyone?

That better?

[toxo]

Both use PowerPC cores. You may as well say "Apple helped pay to develop the PS3" blah blah etc etc

Surely Motorola designed the powerpc architecture...