Microsoft has redesigned its latest Xbox 360 motherboard by reportedly combining the CPU, GPU and eDRAM onto a single chip.
According to Anand Lal Shimpi of AnandTech, previous iterations of the 360 motherboard featured two discrete packages: the CPU and GPU+eDRAM.
“Bringing it all onto (presumably) a single die makes cooling much simpler as now there’s only one heatsink and one fan for all of the major heat generating components in the unit. This level of integration is made possible only by the not-so-magic of Moore’s Law,” explained Shimpi.
“At [45nm] it shouldn’t be a problem to bring all of those components onto a single reasonably sized die, which in turn reduces Microsoft’s manufacturing costs…The new CGPU is rumored to be made at Chartered Semiconductor, now under the ownership of Global Foundries.”
Shimpi added that the new design allowed the single heatsink to be cooled by one fan which made the Xbox Slim “noticeably quieter” than its noisy predecessors.
Meanwhile, the recently launched Slim has already been disassembled and modded/tricked out by the talented SoloMods team.
The end result? A very cool looking console.
