Microsoft's first video game console, the Xbox, sold more than 20 million units worldwide since it was introduced in 2001. Despite the Xbox's impressive power, the list of big-name video game titles to support it and the success of the Xbox's online component, Xbox Live, the console was still outsold considerably by Sony's PlayStation 2.
As the game industry moves toward the next generation of video game technology, Microsoft wants to make sure it dethrones Sony's PlayStation. Enter the Xbox 360.
Photo courtesy Microsoft Corp.
Xbox 360
Microsoft has rebuilt the Xbox from the ground up. From the name to the look to hardware and features, the Xbox 360 is a radically different and more powerful machine than its predecessor. Far more than a video game console, the Xbox 360 is a total media center that allows users to play, network, rip, stream and download all types of media, including high-definition movies, music, digital pictures and game content.
In this article, we will learn about the hardware and features that make the Xbox 360 a leap forward into the next generation of gaming consoles.
Microsoft released two versions of the Xbox 360 in November 2005: the Xbox 360 Premium Package and Xbox 360 Core System. The Core System is "plug and play" -- in addition to the console, it includes a wired controller and an AV cable. The Xbox 360 Premium Package comes with a wireless controller, an HD AV cable, an Ethernet connectivity cable, a headset and a removable 20-GB hard drive. Initially it also included a DVD remote, but this is no longer available as part of a package.
Because of delays in manufacturing, there were not enough Xbox 360s to meet the demand of the 2005 holiday season. As a result, Xbox 360s were selling for as much as $2,000 on sites like eBay and initial sales figures were poor. However, Microsoft still got a jump on its competitors, as the PlayStation 3 and the Nintendo Wii did not release until 2006.
The Xbox 360, like all video game consoles, is just a computer with hardware and software dedicated to the function of running video game software. The original Xbox was in essence a Windows PC with a modified Pentium III processor, some relatively powerful graphics and audio hardware and a modified version of the Microsoft operating system Windows 2000, all packaged in that distinctive black box. The Xbox 360 is also a specially packaged computer, but once you look inside, you realize that this console has quite a bit under the hood.
Sunday, February 18, 2007
Xbox 360 Specs
Custom IBM PowerPC-based CPU
Three symmetrical cores running at 3.2 GHz each
Two hardware threads per core; six hardware threads total
One VMX-128 vector unit per core; three total
128 VMX-128 registers per hardware thread
1 MB L2 cache
CPU Game Math Performance
9 billion dot product operations per second
The Xbox 360 debuted at the 2005 E3 Expo Microsoft booth.
Custom ATI Graphics Processor
10 MB of embedded DRAM
48-way parallel floating-point dynamically scheduled shader pipelines
Unified shader architecture
Polygon Performance
500 million triangles per second
Pixel Fill Rate
16 gigasamples per second fill rate using 4x MSAA
Shader Performance
48 billion shader operations per second
Memory
512 MB of 700-MHz GDDR3 RAM
Unified memory architecture
Memory Bandwidth
22.4 GB/s memory interface bus bandwidth
256 GB/s memory bandwidth to EDRAM
21.6 GB/s front-side bus
Overall System Floating-Point Performance
1 teraflop
Storage
Detachable and upgradeable 20-GB hard drive*
12x dual-layer DVD-ROM
Memory unit support starting at 64 MB
*Xbox 360 bundle only
I/O
Support for up to four wireless game controllers
Three USB 2.0 ports
Two memory unit slots
Optimized for Online
Instant, out-of-the-box access to Xbox Live features with broadband service, including Xbox Live Marketplace for downloadable content, gamer profile for digital identity and voice chat to talk to friends while playing games, watching movies or listening to music
Built-in Ethernet port
Wi-Fi ready: 802.11a, 802.11b and 802.11g
Video-camera ready
Digital Media Support
Support for DVD-Video, DVD-ROM, DVD-R/RW, DVD+R/RW, CD-DA, CD-ROM, CD-R, CD-RW, WMA CD, MP3 CD, JPEG Photo CD
Ability to stream media from portable music devices, digital cameras and Windows XP-based PCs
Ability to rip music to the Xbox 360 hard drive
Custom playlists in every game
Built-in Media Center Extender for Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005
Interactive, full-screen 3-D visualizers
High-Definition Game Support
All games supported at 16:9, 720p and 1080i, anti-aliasing
Standard-definition and high-definition video output supported
Audio
Multi-channel surround-sound output
Supports 48-KHz 16-bit audio
320 independent decompression channels
32-bit audio processing
More than 256 audio channels
System Orientation
Stands vertically or horizontally
Customizable Face Plates
Interchangeable to personalize the console
Three symmetrical cores running at 3.2 GHz each
Two hardware threads per core; six hardware threads total
One VMX-128 vector unit per core; three total
128 VMX-128 registers per hardware thread
1 MB L2 cache
CPU Game Math Performance
9 billion dot product operations per second
The Xbox 360 debuted at the 2005 E3 Expo Microsoft booth.
Custom ATI Graphics Processor
10 MB of embedded DRAM
48-way parallel floating-point dynamically scheduled shader pipelines
Unified shader architecture
Polygon Performance
500 million triangles per second
Pixel Fill Rate
16 gigasamples per second fill rate using 4x MSAA
Shader Performance
48 billion shader operations per second
Memory
512 MB of 700-MHz GDDR3 RAM
Unified memory architecture
Memory Bandwidth
22.4 GB/s memory interface bus bandwidth
256 GB/s memory bandwidth to EDRAM
21.6 GB/s front-side bus
Overall System Floating-Point Performance
1 teraflop
Storage
Detachable and upgradeable 20-GB hard drive*
12x dual-layer DVD-ROM
Memory unit support starting at 64 MB
*Xbox 360 bundle only
I/O
Support for up to four wireless game controllers
Three USB 2.0 ports
Two memory unit slots
Optimized for Online
Instant, out-of-the-box access to Xbox Live features with broadband service, including Xbox Live Marketplace for downloadable content, gamer profile for digital identity and voice chat to talk to friends while playing games, watching movies or listening to music
Built-in Ethernet port
Wi-Fi ready: 802.11a, 802.11b and 802.11g
Video-camera ready
Digital Media Support
Support for DVD-Video, DVD-ROM, DVD-R/RW, DVD+R/RW, CD-DA, CD-ROM, CD-R, CD-RW, WMA CD, MP3 CD, JPEG Photo CD
Ability to stream media from portable music devices, digital cameras and Windows XP-based PCs
Ability to rip music to the Xbox 360 hard drive
Custom playlists in every game
Built-in Media Center Extender for Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005
Interactive, full-screen 3-D visualizers
High-Definition Game Support
All games supported at 16:9, 720p and 1080i, anti-aliasing
Standard-definition and high-definition video output supported
Audio
Multi-channel surround-sound output
Supports 48-KHz 16-bit audio
320 independent decompression channels
32-bit audio processing
More than 256 audio channels
System Orientation
Stands vertically or horizontally
Customizable Face Plates
Interchangeable to personalize the console
CPU: The Heart of the 360
Like any computer, the CPU is the heart of the Xbox 360. Microsoft has outfitted the 360 with a 165-million transistor, multi-core processor running three 3.2-GHz PowerPC cores.
A core is another name for a processor. Recently, hardware manufacturers have started combining several cores, or processors, onto one chip. This is a multi-core processor. Multi-core processors offer a combination of tremendous computing capabilities and efficient power consumption. They split heavy work loads over multiple powerful processors rather than giving all the work to one super-powerful processor.
The other interesting thing to note about the Xbox 360 CPU is that each core is capable of processing two threads simultaneously. Think of a thread as a set of instructions for a program's job. The core processes these instructions and does the heavy lifting to get the job done. A conventional processor is traditionally capable of running a single execution thread. Because the Xbox 360 cores can each handle two threads at a time, the 360 CPU is the equivalent of having six conventional processors in one machine.
What this means when you are playing video games is that the Xbox 360 can dedicate one core entirely to producing sound, while another may split running the game's collision and physics engine. The system may allocate an entire processor just to rendering hi-def graphics. It's really up to the game developers how the system's considerable resources are used. With a multi-core processor, the system is powerful enough to pull off the computational demands needed for an amazing gaming experience without even breaking a sweat.
360 Degrees
According to J Allard, Microsoft Corporate Vice President and chief XNA architect, in an interview with Gamespot, "If we were building another console in the 3D era, we'd just call it Xbox 2 ... So, we eliminated Xbox 2 from the list. So, the name that we came up with was Xbox 360, because we are putting the gamer at the center of the experience."
A core is another name for a processor. Recently, hardware manufacturers have started combining several cores, or processors, onto one chip. This is a multi-core processor. Multi-core processors offer a combination of tremendous computing capabilities and efficient power consumption. They split heavy work loads over multiple powerful processors rather than giving all the work to one super-powerful processor.
The other interesting thing to note about the Xbox 360 CPU is that each core is capable of processing two threads simultaneously. Think of a thread as a set of instructions for a program's job. The core processes these instructions and does the heavy lifting to get the job done. A conventional processor is traditionally capable of running a single execution thread. Because the Xbox 360 cores can each handle two threads at a time, the 360 CPU is the equivalent of having six conventional processors in one machine.
What this means when you are playing video games is that the Xbox 360 can dedicate one core entirely to producing sound, while another may split running the game's collision and physics engine. The system may allocate an entire processor just to rendering hi-def graphics. It's really up to the game developers how the system's considerable resources are used. With a multi-core processor, the system is powerful enough to pull off the computational demands needed for an amazing gaming experience without even breaking a sweat.
360 Degrees
According to J Allard, Microsoft Corporate Vice President and chief XNA architect, in an interview with Gamespot, "If we were building another console in the 3D era, we'd just call it Xbox 2 ... So, we eliminated Xbox 2 from the list. So, the name that we came up with was Xbox 360, because we are putting the gamer at the center of the experience."
The GPU
Another powerful asset in the Xbox 360 is the Graphics Processor Unit (GPU). The Xbox 360 boasts the new, custom-built 500-MHz ATI Graphics Processor card with 10 MB of embedded DRAM. While the 500-MHZ graphics processor is powerful, and 10 MB of DRAM provides ample memory for the GPU to do its job, the most innovative thing about this card is that it is built on unified shader architecture.
Shaders are computer programs that determine the final look of what you see on the screen when you're looking at computer animation. Shaders take rendered 3-D objects that are built on polygons (the building blocks of 3-D animation) and make them look more realistic. There are two types of shaders: pixel shaders and vertex shaders.
Pixel shaders can be used to alter the lighting, color and surface of each pixel. This in turn affects the overall color, texture and shape of 3-D objects built from these pixels. Pixel shaders help to "smooth out" 3-D objects, giving them a more organic texture.
Vertex shaders work by manipulating an object's position in 3-D space. "Vertex" refers to the intersection of two coordinates in space. You would map the position of an animated object in 3-D space by giving it a value. These values are the x, y and z coordinates. By manipulating these variables, a vertex shader can create realistic animation and special effects such as "morphing." To read more about vertex shaders, see What are Gouraud shading and texture mapping in 3-D video games?
In real-time graphics, like the kind you see in video games, shaders work with the graphics processor. The shaders make billions of computations a second in order to perform their specific tasks. These computations are worked in steps over a series of computational components. Think of an assembly line. In the world of hardware, these assembly lines are called pipelines.
Traditionally, pixel shaders and vertex shaders have dedicated pipelines because each one has very specific and differing needs. As we learned before, the new ATI graphics card in the Xbox 360 has unified shader architecture. What that means is that now, both shader types share the same pipelines. ATI figured out a way at the hardware level to address the needs of both types of shaders using the same pipeline.
The apparent advantage of sharing pipelines is to add more assembly lines, making computation that much faster. ATI claims that this unified shader architecture allows for 48 billion shader operations per second. The Xbox 360 is the first device to use this type of architecture.
Shaders are computer programs that determine the final look of what you see on the screen when you're looking at computer animation. Shaders take rendered 3-D objects that are built on polygons (the building blocks of 3-D animation) and make them look more realistic. There are two types of shaders: pixel shaders and vertex shaders.
Pixel shaders can be used to alter the lighting, color and surface of each pixel. This in turn affects the overall color, texture and shape of 3-D objects built from these pixels. Pixel shaders help to "smooth out" 3-D objects, giving them a more organic texture.
Vertex shaders work by manipulating an object's position in 3-D space. "Vertex" refers to the intersection of two coordinates in space. You would map the position of an animated object in 3-D space by giving it a value. These values are the x, y and z coordinates. By manipulating these variables, a vertex shader can create realistic animation and special effects such as "morphing." To read more about vertex shaders, see What are Gouraud shading and texture mapping in 3-D video games?
In real-time graphics, like the kind you see in video games, shaders work with the graphics processor. The shaders make billions of computations a second in order to perform their specific tasks. These computations are worked in steps over a series of computational components. Think of an assembly line. In the world of hardware, these assembly lines are called pipelines.
Traditionally, pixel shaders and vertex shaders have dedicated pipelines because each one has very specific and differing needs. As we learned before, the new ATI graphics card in the Xbox 360 has unified shader architecture. What that means is that now, both shader types share the same pipelines. ATI figured out a way at the hardware level to address the needs of both types of shaders using the same pipeline.
The apparent advantage of sharing pipelines is to add more assembly lines, making computation that much faster. ATI claims that this unified shader architecture allows for 48 billion shader operations per second. The Xbox 360 is the first device to use this type of architecture.
The Controller
The most noticeable difference in the new Xbox controllers is that they are wireless. Microsoft created a proprietary technology to deal with some of the latency and bandwidth issues that can be a problem for some wireless controllers. The Xbox 360 can support up to four wireless controllers at a time.
The wireless controller is only available in the Xbox 360 bundle -- if you buy the Xbox Console System, you'll get a wired controller with a nine-foot cable. Everything else about the design is the same.
Control Issues
When the original Xbox was released in 2001, one of the most common complaints about the new console was the controller. Gamers worldwide criticized it for being too large and having poor button spacing. In Japan, where the Xbox sales were already suffering, Japanese gamers all but refused to use the large Xbox controllers, opting instead for smaller, third-party ones. This compelled Microsoft to create a smaller, redesigned controller for Asian markets that was released in winter 2002.
Shortly after that, Microsoft released a slightly improved version of the Japanese controller in the West called the Controller S. The Controller S is now the standard Xbox controller that is shipped with all Xbox consoles.
The wireless controller is only available in the Xbox 360 bundle -- if you buy the Xbox Console System, you'll get a wired controller with a nine-foot cable. Everything else about the design is the same.
Control Issues
When the original Xbox was released in 2001, one of the most common complaints about the new console was the controller. Gamers worldwide criticized it for being too large and having poor button spacing. In Japan, where the Xbox sales were already suffering, Japanese gamers all but refused to use the large Xbox controllers, opting instead for smaller, third-party ones. This compelled Microsoft to create a smaller, redesigned controller for Asian markets that was released in winter 2002.
Shortly after that, Microsoft released a slightly improved version of the Japanese controller in the West called the Controller S. The Controller S is now the standard Xbox controller that is shipped with all Xbox consoles.
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