midnightguy
Member
IBM preparing to build ATI R500 for Xbox 360
Microsoft spec, ATI design, IBM build
By Fuad Abazovic: Tuesday 12 July 2005, 07:17
ATI WON'T BE making R500 chips for Microsoft's Xbox 360. ATI's job was to design those chips and to give the designs back to Microsoft to get them produced.
ATI would have had to help Microsoft with tape outs and with design tweaking, as those guys at ATI designed the R500 Xbox 360 GPU. But developers are now getting the "Real" hardware still based on G5 MACs but this time with real R500 graphic cards inside. This means that R500 chip is taped out and that it is working but we dont know whether this is the final chip that Microsoft plans to ship at later date.
Microsoft plans to ship hundreds of thousands if not even millions of Xbox 360 consoles world wide from October, so it has to have at least that many R500 chips to power those consoles.
We heard few times that Microsoft will get both R500 and CPUs from IBMs Fishkill factory in New York. We cannot confirm this at this date but it sounds very likely to us.
Its interesting to note that ATI might work with the people who were not so successful in bringing Nvidias NV30 chip, as this chip was made at IBMs Fishkill Fab. We should not blame IBMs factory as it was Nvidias fault mostly - but still we find Microsoft's choice of Fab quite interesting.
We think the Vole knows what its doing as it really wants half of the console market. It has a nasty competitor called Sony and its Playstation 3 as you probably know by now.
We already wrote that Nvidia and Sony will get RSX GPUs from Sony's Nagasaki Fab2 facility as well as at OTSS. You can check for more details here. µ
http://theinquirer.net/?article=24539
I thought TSMC was going to manufacture the main GPU and NEC was to manufacture the eDRAM module.
I believe the change would be (if it is happening) that IBM would be taking over TSMC's role of producing the main parent GPU and that NEC will still be producting the eDRAM module.