New Xbox 360 design may combine CPU and GPU

Microsoft is already working on the successor to the Jasper design of its Xbox 360. The Valhalla consoles would be equipped with a combined cpu-gpu and manufactured by Tsmc.

The Jasper models should be released in August: Microsoft has contracts outstanding with Tsmc and IBM, who are responsible for the gmch and the cpu respectively. Both the ATI Xenos GPU and the Xenon CPU are baked in Jasper at 65nm, so that the components should give off relatively little heat. The more economical components also consume less energy and can do with less cooling, so that the console must be quieter. The current Falcon consoles have a 65nm CPU, but the gmch is still manufactured at 90nm. In the original Xbox 360, the CPU was also baked at 90nm.

The successor to the Jasper design should already be at the drawing board stage passed and Tsmc would also have won the contract for this design. The design, which would bear the code name Valhalla, provides a chip that combines the cpu and the gpu. However, such a hybrid chip design creates problems for Tsmc, as the fabs then have to be adapted to those of CSM, the chip maker that produces the Xenon CPU. If that is not possible, the manufacturing process of the Xenon processor would have to be adapted to the fabs of Tsmc.