65nm 360 chips in production 'last two quarters' - 45nm on the way

by Christopher Grant on Aug 1st 2007 11:56AM

Though we're pretty confident the Xbox 360 price drop is coming sooner than "this Fall" – more like August 12th, if you want to be specific – we've had the entire Fall season marked on our Microsoft Executive Swimsuit calendar with "65nm chips" reminders. Those weary of the dreaded RROD have been looking forward to the smaller, cooler (and cheaper!) chips being included in the new systems, codenamed Falcon, but the extremely paranoid may want to hold off for the 45nm version.

"As 65nm just started production in the last two quarters, you would expect 45nm to [begin production] about 18 months from that timeframe," said the President of Microsoft manufacturing partner, Charted Semiconductor. That means production on those new even smaller and even cooler chips won't begin until late 2008, early 2009. If that's too long to hold off, take comfort in knowing that those 65nm chips have been produced for some time, and should be making their way to retail Xbox 360s soon (astronotip: Fall starts on Sept. 23 this year, so mark your various themed calendars).

Source

Tags: 45nm, 65nm, CPU, Falcon, GPU, Xbox-360, Xenon

Reader Comments (56)

It isn't paranoia to wait for the 45nm chip, it is stupidity. If the 65 doesn't fix anything, then why would a 45? I guess the system will probably be $200-250 bucks by then, though. There is always that.

The 65nm chips aren't even being sold yet, so what makes you think they don't improve anything?

That 65um chips work well on PC in graphics card and as they said they are producing them for 2 quarters already ( for AMD Radeon or Nvidia cards ).
So now they have solid technology and they can start producing X360 CPUs / GPUs in 65um.

That should resolve overheating problems.

I'm not waiting for 45nm.

I'll wait till I see some pictures on Joystiq, of the actual falcon chipset board. With notes on the difference between it and it's 90nm brother.

And if there are any reports of RROD on the 65nm, I'll put mine on eBay immediately.

If you wait until the 45nm you'll miss out on a years great gaming!

My advice is to wait until the 65nm is out though assuming its next month.

The question is...how do I know I'm getting a 65nm?

yes how do you know lol, my 360 is still holding up strong for almost a year and a half but if it dies i will accept nothing less than a 65nm model.

yeah, good point. My second 360 is ready to die and if Halo 3 turns out to be any good I'll want to replace it.

Best bet, barring some kind of announcement/repackage, is to wait until next spring just to be sure....

heck of a long wait though :(

Wow, didn't even know 45nm was possible. My launch 360 is still alive and kicking. But for new comers the Elite will be a great buy with the 65nm chipset.

Wait, wait--let me blow your mind really quick: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/16_nanometer .

What cool name will the 45nms have? Exodor! Darkwing! Pants!

The Pant-a-loons chip is my bet

There are no guarantees that moving to the 65nm chip will actually do anything to reduce RRoD issues.

Sure, it can only help in terms of heat management... but, the 360 is inherently flawed.. and MS' doesnt exactly have a stellar track record with reliable hardware.

Who knows what other issues 360 2.0 will bring.

They don't even need the 65 nm chips to fix the problem (though they would help), just replacing the X-clamps is all have needed to do all along.

FUD.

where does MS's "record of hardware failure" come from? certainly not the xbox1.

the root cause of RROD is heat, and thats one of the major issues a smaller chip addresses. nice try with the conspiracy theory though. why the attempt?

.

Not to mention that the whole 360 mobo had to get redesigned to accomodate the new chips. I wouldn't be suprized if they put HDMI on the 65 nm 360's, across the board.

If Microsoft screws up the 65nm models as well, then XBox 720 will be a money siphon as well. They can't afford to screw it up.

The new chips will use less power, so once the heat issue is resolved, let's hope MS doesn't screw up the new power supply and voltage regulation, which is where most of the motherboard complexity comes from.

I'll wait to see if the Falcon is better, both in longevity and noise, if not I'll wait until the 45 nm. Or as long as i can resist Bioware imploring me to buy Mass Effect. Whichever comes first.

Wait, Bioware games are always better on the inevitable PC version. Nevermind, I can wait.

Don't expect to see it at retail in a non-HDMI SKU soon. MS sold less than 1M 360s to retail in the first half of this year. This means they certainly have MANY 360s sitting around in warehouses, and the current Premium is on "clearance (to take a phrase from the people who commented on PS3).

Surely you'll see it in the Elite and the Halo 3 edition first. And not in the Premium until they run out of existing Premiums to sell. Which given how few 360s they have delivered in the last 6 months, will probably be quite a while.

Why do people think the 65nm will fix things? The problem with the 360 so far hasn't been that 90nm is faulty (it works in Pentiums, PS3s and such), but that MS mis-designed the unit. There's no particular reason to think that a company that screwed up a 90nm design can't screw up a 65nm one. We'll know the 65nm design works when it's been out a while and has shown itself to be reliable.

No one is saying the 90nm chip is faulty, but its a given that it will produce more heat than a 65nm chip of the same design. And if heat is the root cause then how can a 65nm chip do anything other than help?

wow, you guys are showing up in FORCE.

the solder that keeps the boards in place shift because of HEAT. with the Elite, MS used a lot more solder, heat is the main issue, and thats what smaller chips directly address.

by all means keep at it tho guys.

.

Digi. You need to stop believeing everything you read on the internet. The heat level in a 360 will not unsolder a chip.

Chips break off boards due to board flexing, which is why cell phones (which don't get particularly hot) use underfill (the proper industry name for glue under the chip, which is what MS used, not more solder).

Some say the heat in there caused the board to flex. But then again, when people received units in the mail from MS that were already exhibiting red-rings, it was because the board flexed in shipping, when the unit isn't even on!

All this adds up to one thing: MS mis-designed the unit. The PS3 produces even more heat than the 360 and it doesn't pop chips off the board.

Again, the key is whether the design is a good one, not how much heat it produces. There is no guarantee that reducing the heat will make the unit more reliable. We'll truly know once MS makes a bunch of them and people try them out.

It'd really be great if people like Digi, who don't know what they are talking about (like saying MS used more solder) would not put their incorrect facts out and confuse the issue.

I'm getting pretty tired of this 65nm chip nonsense.

The RROD failures have been attributed to faulty solder and warped X-clamps on the 360 mainboard. If these reasons are true, then a 65nm chip will do NOTHING to solve the issue.

Also! Because a 65nm chip has thinner, smaller components that a larger size chip, it does run cooler... But it also takes less heat to irreversibly damage them! That's why your Core 2 Duo processor is a hell of a lot cooler than your Pentium 4 was... But also why the C2D can't take nearly the same level of heat as the P4.

If overheating is causing a problem, it'll still happen with the 65nm chip - just at a lower temperature.

You're right about the X-clamps, but the rest of your comments don't make any sense... especially your final one:

"If overheating is causing a problem, it'll still happen with the 65nm chip - just at a lower temperature."

That doesn't make much sense. A 65nm chip will produce less heat and therefore be less prone to overheating. And if there's less overheating there will be less warping. If there's less warping you have fewer failures. The 65nm chips will should improve the situation, but I'm not sure will be entirely fixed until they replace the X-clamps.

"If overheating is causing a problem, it'll still happen with the 65nm chip - just at a lower temperature."

The problem is NOT the chip itself overheating, its the heat from the chip melting the solder and the chip loses connection with the board. So it is almost a certainty that the 65nm will once and for all solve the problem.

How can I be so sure? Because I have a launch premium that has never had any problems at all. Even if the error rate is 33% (the high estimates of store managers) than 2/3rd of the original design are fine meaning that even a small decrease in temperature is almost beyond a shadow of a doubt going to fix the problem. Please go over analyze cloverfield or something, atleast you have till January to actually be wrong.

* "That's why your Core 2 Duo processor is a hell of a lot cooler than your Pentium 4 was... But also why the C2D can't take nearly the same level of heat as the P4."

How many stories do you hear about Core2 chips overclocking like hell? Yeah, because it can't tolerate heat like a Prescott, of course! Cooler temps are not effective because the chips can't handle the same level of heat? So, a 65mn chip will blow up at 60c while a 90nm chip will blow up at 90c?

You're full of BS.

Besides, if you're talking about less cooling potential because the die surface area is smaller, keep in mind that the Core 2 Duo die size is pretty similar to the old P4. Core2 has better thermal properties because Intel was heavily criticized for thermal output with Prescott, and so the new chip was designed to run cooler from the start. Pretty simple, yes?

So... chips are basically super-advanced shrinky-dinks, but take much longer to shrink. Right? Right?

good news. if the 65nm Falcon solves all the hardware problems, im Jumping in. if not, i guesss ill have to wait and see if the 45nm version fixes all the issues or not.

There are some really dumb people here trying to spread FUD. First off, the 360 has gotten much better in reliability, not to mention a 3 year warranty just in case. Secondly, the RRoD problems are primarily failures caused by a design not quite capable of handling the heat of a 95nm chip. They have already been tweaking the design, and reducing the amount of heat is just going to throw the problems out the window.

BPM, yeah, pretty much.

The 45nm most likely will be the merged Xenon/Xenos chip that was envisioned when the 360 was in planning. That's going to be the equivalent of your PS2 slim or PSOne. So you should expect prices between 150 and 200 when the 45nm chips are installed in systems. You might see a form factor change as well, I guess.

I will wait and see if these new chips actually helps with the 360 failure rates. If they don't, than it just means I will have to settle for a poorly built machine.

I thought one of the points was the new chip would require a bit of a redesign, which would be an ideal oppertunity to fix a few of the other mistakes (and save money on repairs later).

My reason for waiting for the 65nm chip is a belief that the machine will be quieter.

45mm? 18 months from 6 months ago? By the time 45mm arrives it will be too late for the 360. MS won't allow their 'precious' to survive that long anyway. They'll kill it off by 2009 and try to force another buggy console down on unaware gamers with more 'x'tras to buy.

Yes, I still have nightmares of the time MS came into my house and forced me at gunpoint to buy their buggy hardware. My launch console still runs and I will have a game a week sometimes two to buy here soon, please make it stop MS, let my wife go, stop holding her hostage and forcing me to purchase your stuff.

the only old thing about you oldest gamer are your arguments.

PS3 cheerleaders really aren't liking this news, any guess why?

.

That's quite an ignorant statement.

2009? That's only a little over 3 years of life for the 360. Why in the world would MS launch a new console then? The reasons the Xbox ceased production after 4 years were:

1. It came late to the last gen party and MS saw the advantage of being the first on the market.

2. It wasn't a profitable system. Every Xbox was subsidized largely due to the fact that the components weren't owened by MS.

3. Sony was planning to launch the PS3 in Spring of 07, so for MS to get the edge over their competition, they needed to launch Winter of 06.

NONE of these circumstances are applicable to the 360. The 360 looks to turn a profit soon for MS and then it's just money in the bank, much like the PS2 is for Sony. Also, since MS launched before their cometition rather than late in the cycle, the lifecycle of their current gen console won't be short. And if Sony really buys their own BS about the "10 year lifecycle" of the PS3, then MS will have no pressure to launch the next gen system until they have milked the 360 for all it's worth. Since the 360 is still at it's launch price and won't appeal to the mass market until it hits $200 or less, there is a LOT of milk left in it.

I don't think "10-year life cycle" means the PS3 will be Sony's lead console for 10 years, just that they'll give it a decade of support. The PS4 will come in 4 or 5 years, but support for the PS2 (as there is now for the PS2) will go on.

It's amusing (and sad) that people with 10 dollars in screws, washers, and nuts, can fix xbox 360s with a higher success rate than Microsoft.
http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?showtopic=595746

I'm holding out hope that the 65nm 360s include a heatsink mounting redesign.

Ben Heck recently opened up an Elite and found it came with the new heat sinks and superglue that MS has supposedly been installing on RRODed 360s. He's still not too convinced the upgraded heat management will work, since the only fans in the box draw air out of the box and none blow directly on the warmest components. Also, the air flow is restricted by the front of the case having no holes whatsoever (which would, of course, look really dumb).

http://benheck.com/07-12-2007/inside-the-xbox-360-elite

EGM's rumor mill recently reported that "all the good components" are being funneled to the Elite. One would have to assume the same will be true of the Halo edition.

My question is this: if Chartered's CEO is right and the 65nm chips have been in production for two quarters, then wouldn't they be reaching store shelves very, very soon--if they're not there already? Does it really take more than six months to get a new chipset into stores?

A second point about the 65nm chips: their benefit isn't only in their cooler running temps. They also draw less power.

"All the good components going to Elite"?

Elite is the only one in production at all right now.

Look, MS planned to sell 10M 360s a year. That's a production rate of 0.8M a month. MS has only sold (from the factory to retail) 0.9M 360s the last six months. So that means likely they have not produced a Premium (or core) since February.

So the Premiums will NEVER get the good components. The Premiums are being sold out of warehouses, where they've been sitting. When they run out, they'll put Premium back into production, likely with HDMI and most certainly with 65nm CPUs.

It's funny how people will plaster how Sony is discounting and selling PS3s out of stock all over the web, but many own't even believe the point that MS is clearly doing the same thing with Core and Premium.

Premium as we know it is already dead. As dead as the PS3 with hardware BC. Both are no longer in production and they are just selling out current stock.

The price drop is coming August 8th according to this email that I got at work yesterday. It's an interior email from gamestop. I know that it's credibility is obviously questionable, but I assure you this is a real print-out of the email.

http://www.imageviper.com/displayimage/93214/0/360DROP.jpg

It mentions that we will be receiving marketing materials for an announcement that MS will be making on August 8th, and NOT to display them until then.

Not to question the credibility of this document, but it also goes on to say that "Chibi-Robo Park Patrol" has been cancelled. Not true. http://kotaku.com/gaming/it.s-gonna-be-okay/chibi-robo-not-cancelled-just-gently-pushed-284699.php

I'm sure when the Elite launches in Europe it will be with 65nm chips then

I wouldn't be sure about that. Since when does Europe not get screwed?

I can't wait for my 360 to melt to get one of these smaller, cooler chips. my only fear is that it will never melt with the AC going right next to it.

I hope Slaziman is right. Not that I'm getting one *rolls eyes*

Why would they be delaying the Elite like this in Europe if not to launch them with 65nm chips? But it's true, it wouldn't be the first time we got screwed.

Finally!!!
I'm so waiting for that 65nm 360 version ARGH!!
Hurry, hurry!!

Protocole7

65nm CPU (which Chartered makes) means nothing to the RROD when that is caused by the GPU (which TSMC makes) is still 90nm.

anyone else notice that Q3 starts 2 days before halo 3 comes out?

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65nm 360 chips in production 'last two quarters' - 45nm on the way

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