Next Xbox might use ARM

From the Register

While TI said that in 2-3 years time their OMAP CPUs will have the power of a PS3, it would still be the power of a (by then) 6-7 year old console, which is already close to lowend specs.

Will the next Xbox be like the Wii? who knows...

 

What, not a **** chance in hell.

 

Whoever wrote that article needs a slap. There are many reasons why Microsoft might be interested in ARM technology, but none of them involve the CPU of the next Xbox.

 

One word: Smartphones. WinCE ran on ARM and a few other arches, WinMo only on ARM - adapting/optimizing the CPU would be a logical next step I guess.

 

The article does have a point on being too late for the release of WPS7. The only explanation is that they're planning an in-house phone, like the Nexus.

And a portable Xbox? I think ballmer learned a valuable lesson about NOT releasing superfluous hardware with the Kin.

 

I personally think a portable xbox will never happen. Ms will just put the money into trying to make their WinMo7 their all in one handheld.

Arm is just too much of a mobile device processor to ever really be used in a home console (as the main cpu). If MS want's to save money on their next system, they will probably just keep to the same cpu class but just up the hz and maybe give it a few more cores (so they could offload kinect onto them).

-edit-
Also the problem of the PS3 is not fully in the cell (with exception to the SPU having a really small local mem), it's in the GPU. Raw CPU power alone, the Cell is far stronger then what is in the 360.

 

My guess is they're either using it for WinMo 7 phones and/or tablets.

 

Yes, this is true, the GPU of the 360 is more advanced in a good few ways.

Regarding the CPU, the Xenon's processor design is derived FROM the CELL processor. Although it doesn't go for the ringed SPEs approach it has 3 general purpose cores(2 threads per core)( similar to the PS3's sole Cell core), whereas the PS3 has only one, albeit with 7 useable SPEs.

As a whole the CELL found in the PS3 is not of the newer 8i variation which is indeed really powerful, but rather a mediocre all purpose 2 threaded processor with 7 SPES for accelerating specific functions.

Practically from what I've seen so far the whole "general purpose" thing has worked more on the XBOX than the PS3, even judging the response speeds of the in-game OS during gameplay (1 SPE's worth of work) for example.

As a whole, the CELL architecture theoretically emphasizes performance over ease of programming, a model which has been avoided since the n64 days, yet retained as a design philosophy throughout the years even on the PS2.

comes to show that Sony's engineers want to have potential as a marketing promise but they're always short of achieving a balanced maximized output and this is reflected in their consoles.

 

For the new zunes possibly?

 

I think they'll probably be interested because of Win Mobile 7.

 

if Snoci wrote this it will be a link to a website saying that Sega will buy the Xbox division off Microsoft for $1 and will use 4 ARM OMAP cpus with a octa PowerVR set up with 512gbs of RAM, a blu-ray drive and a 1 tb hard drive.

I am sure an ARM cpu will feature somewhere in the new Xbox as Sony use said CPU in the Move...

 

TBH now that most of the original Xbox team is gone I could see Ballmer trying to make a Wii-like console and making the next Xbox a mildly upgraded X360specs+kinect for as little money as they could.

And I cant think of a cheaper option than dualcore Cortex-9 SoCs

Yeah, it was also considered by Apple before making the move to X86.

 

Cell has low-end specs? Nope.

I cannot see the next XBox using ARM chips. Most likely some kind of PPC multi-core monster.

 

The PS3 as a WHOLE is lowend compared to current gaming PC standards, the X360 too.

And well for me it was weird that MS went with PPCs in the X360 right when Apple was leaving the platform with a lot of complains about it.

So yeah I wouldn't deny the possibility.

 

Apple went with Intel because IBM couldn't get up to 3Ghz fast enough and it was felt that the PPC platform was lagging behind the x86 one.

Also you said CPUs, not WHOLE systems.

 

There's a bunch of reasons why Apple left PPC, also that they couldn't make a portable G5 that doesnt burns the battery away.

And I never said specifically "the PS3's CPU" but the entire console, crappy RSX/7800 and everything.

 

I beg to differ.

Perhaps you could misread it though.

 

Where does it say "CELL" or "PS3's CPU"?

Perhaps YOU misread it...

 

Is your native tongue Spanish Shadowlayer?