IBM has been working with Microsoft for the past two years to develop a next generation processor specifically for “high definition gaming and entertainment.” In order to meet the demand, still unnamed processor, is being produced in both East Fishkill, NY and Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing in Singapore. IBM engineers have been working on the chip since 2003 at three locations including, Rochester, Minnesota; Austin, Texas; and Raleigh, North Carolina.

The chip features a customized version of IBM’s industry leading 64-bit PowerPC core. The chip includes three of these cores, each with two simultaneous threads and clock speeds greater than 3 GHz. It features 165 million transistors and is fabricated using IBM’s 90 nanometer Silicon on Insulator (SOI) technology to reduce heat and improve performance. The chip’s innovative 21.6 GB/s Front Side Bus (FSB) Architecture was customized to meet the demanding throughput and latency requirements of the Xbox 360 gaming platform software.

Other Xbox 360 chip features include:

* C 3 identical multi-threaded PowerPC-based CPU cores operating at 3.2 GHz enhanced with specialized function VMX acceleration for gaming applications and high speed 128 bit vector unit

* C 1 MByte Shared L2 Cache with custom logic for high-speed data streaming for graphics and system applications

* C 5.4 Gb/s per-pin Front Side Bus (with an aggregated bandwidth of 21.6 GBs)

* C Highly configurable and programmable utilizing e-fuse technology