While Peter Moore recently cited "component shortages" as the cause for the Xbox 360 shortage, the Xbox
exec declined to specify which of the 1,700 components were to blame. According to Mercury News, unspecified sources have pointed
to the production troubles of Infineon Technologies's GDDR3 memory chip. Besides having difficulty keeping up with
demand, Infineon supplied manufacturers with a number of chips that did not run at the required 700-megahertz speed.
This slowed production of the next-gen console as Microsoft was forced to sort the good chips from the bad.While the GDDR3 memory chip fiasco has certainly contributed to the Xbox 360 shortage, it's not clear to what extent. It should be noted that, besides Samsung, Infineon is the only company capable of manufacturing the GDDR3 chips.
