Microsoft 'Falcon' to bring cost reductions, 65nm CPU to the Xbox 360?

We knew it was coming, but it sounds like we finally know what it's all about: the 65nm Xbox 360 is apparently being code-named Falcon, according to Dean Takahashi. Stands to reason we can expect long-fabled cooler / less failure-prone / cheaper 360s to be Falcon's result, but hey, we'd take just two out of three at this point.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

[(Unverified) Posted Aug 13th 2007 1:37PM]

I agree with your analysis, however i am pissed at MS as I live in China. Here in China hundreds of stores sell the 360. However when I called 360 support in usa regarding the 3 red lights they said quite simply."oh! you are in shanghai china, we do not sell xbox in china so there is no support"
they then hung up the phone.
i now have a 360 that is useless and a large number of games that cannot be played. I also have the problem that officially I cannot buy an xbox here??
bloody stupid as the number of stores selling xbox here is increasing all the time. So regardless of warranty extensions etc etc etc if I buy a new one I have the same shit if it breaks down.

[(Unverified) Posted Jul 10th 2007 3:20PM]

@Cellullose,

Thanks for the reply. I wasn't sure about the 8 remaining processors on the Cell processor in the PS3, but from what you have said they are RISC ??? as opposed to CISC. The 360 has 3 CISC processors ?. (effectively ?)

My idea was that the ability to program perhaps 3 cores is easier than 1 core and 8 RISC processors. The parallel architecture requires at this time specific tools that are very new and take time to understand, or have to be developed. Porting a game to 3 cores, is easier, so the 360 will benefit, as will the PS3, but the PS3 at this point in time with the RISC cores may be harder to code with the reduced instruction set, or need the other cores to be programmed to achieve the perhaps equivalent ability of the 360 - again, at this point in time. If the tools are not developed or the architecture harder to get to grips with on the PS3, this will slow development to the advantage of the 360.

So, in the short term, the 360 programming is perhaps easier to implement, but in the long term the PS3 will provide better games due to the archtecture of the system being fully utilised. I think that the hard work in programming the PS3 is having a negative effect on the PS3 games creation, but will be overcome and Microsoft will benefit from the parallel software tools devloped for the PS3 in the next genration of their games console.

No doubt i will be proved completely wrong on this, :O(

[cellulose Posted Jul 10th 2007 10:53PM]

@Zeus,

Not quite... The Cell programmers here working on compilers and supercomputers have described the PPE (the "main" core as equivalent to a single-core PPC with 8 PPE's attached). You are absolutely right though, a single Cell is not 8 x 3.2Ghz.

http://domino.research.ibm.com/comm/research_projects.nsf/pages/cellcompiler.cell.html

@Shadmeister,

Both systems RISC processors... Modern compilers have made the difference between RISC/CISC transparent to developers programming in languages like C or C++.

The problem with SPE's is that they are only useful for very specialized types of calculations. Even for the massive physics codes we work on here, they have limited utility. When they work, they work GREAT. When they don't, they're worse than having only a single core.

Multi-threaded programming is hard no matter what platform. Cell has the added difficulty of the extra "threads" thrown on the SPE's can't perform the same way as regular threads... I think it's too early to tell, either way, which one will end up better. The lesson learned from Cell could very well be that SPE's aren't useful for video games.

[(Unverified) Posted Jul 10th 2007 4:07PM]

Stop bitching about noise. Unless you play your games or DVDs with "MUTE" on, then there should be no problem.

[(Unverified) Posted Jul 10th 2007 4:15PM]

This is what amazes me... People think this new chipset will solve all of their problems, but think about it... If its simple over heating that is claiming so many 360s, then don't you think there would be a way of combating it? Maybe not leaving it in an enclosed area, maybe wiping it off and getting rid of dust, or what have you; what I'm saying is if it happened once, would you be so ignorant to let it happen again, or would you try to prevent it, and overheating is easily preventable.

Every 360 is made the same way, so its not like one console is going to over heat while another one won't in the same situation.

[(Unverified) Posted Jul 12th 2007 5:15PM]

I would completely disagree with your notion that if one console does not overheat, then none do. If you looked at your own posts you would see that you are contradicting yourself. Seems you had 3 PS2s that had laser issues and needed to be replaced, but according to your own logic, ALL consoles are made the same so there should be no difference between any of them. Which is strange, because my PS2 lasted 6 years before I traded it in for a PS3, not a single read issue with it at all...or maybe you just didn't take very good care of yours?

Either PS3 is a far more reliable console than the 360 or a large portion of the 360 owner pool are complete idiots...either way, it feels good to be a PS3 owner.

[smcquade Posted Jul 10th 2007 4:47PM]

@Zeus, you seem to forget Microsoft wants people to use this as a media centre - there are such things as movies with quiet moments...