Intel Talking to Console Vendors? Friday, December 14 2007

Thought this story from Next Gen was interesting since I used to work at Intel as their PC Games evangelist. Back in the day, Intel always struggled with what to do with the burgeoning console market. There was a general belief that the PC was where gaming was at, especially online gaming, and that consoles wouldn't be able to expand much beyond where they were at. Obviously that changed, and Intel became a partner with Microsoft on the original Xbox. Unfortunately (for Intel), Motorola really swept the parts-provider role in this current generation... sounds like Intel doesn't intend to allow that to happen again.

Really can't say anything more since I know a bunch of folks who have left various companies to join Intel on their new effort. I will say that it's great to see a reinvigorated Intel getting back into the game!

8 comment(s)

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Jason Cross wrote on December 14, 2007 10:04 AM

Motorola? I thought I was pretty up to date on the whole "what's inside" for the boxes and it's mostly IBM (CPUs for 360 and Wii and partnership for Cell in PS3) and TSMC (makes both the ATI graphics chips for 360 and Wii, and Nvidia grahpics chip for PS3).

What does Motorola make in the current consoles?

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imaginedbug wrote on December 14, 2007 2:19 PM

With Intel supposedly moving their tech forward faster than AMD, it would seem only logical for them to have a better chance of getting parts into the next generation of consoles. But then again, who knows what AMD can do (in both price and performance) in the time between today and when hardware specs are set in stone...

Personally, I really don't care who made what parts that're in my console, just as I don't care who made the spark plugs and transmission that're in my car. I just want it all to work.

What I would like to know is what Microsoft intends to do to prevent a second coming of the whole RROD debacle when the 3rd gen Xbox sees the light of day. But that's probably too far off topic :)

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kingnick wrote on December 14, 2007 4:57 PM

While I'm an Intel man (every PC I've owned has had an Intel CPU) I don't want to see them monopolise any market.

I like where AMD's Fusion is heading and fusion or an offshoot of it could make a great console by removing some of the bottlenecks between the CPU and GPU.

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cc99999 wrote on December 15, 2007 12:13 AM

Yes but 360 is unplayable lolz

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John-Paul wrote on December 15, 2007 6:52 AM

The 360 does have Motorla chips inside, if I'm not mistaken the same, albiet stronger, PowerPC processors that ran in the last few Macs *my G5 included* before they switched to intel.

Which was probably why the development kits were also G5 towers.

Now if, cc99999 will excuse me I'm going to go play my Xbox...

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Corrosive wrote on December 16, 2007 11:23 AM

John-Paul : The 360 uses a custom IBM 3-core PowerPC, not a G5.  The G5 (PowerPC 970 in reality) was an IBM part too - the G4 was a Motorola part, however the G3 could be either Motorola or IBM :)

The part of Motorola that produced CPUs is now known as Freescale, and, AFAIK, hasn't got anything in the latest generation of consoles (they do still make PowerPC parts though, along with PA Semi and IBM).

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John-Paul wrote on December 16, 2007 1:52 PM

My bad then, sorry. Thanks for clearing that up.

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AriesDog wrote on December 19, 2007 3:03 PM

After reading Dean Takahashi's book about the Xbox 360's development, the only thing I care about is if it supports legacy software in hardware.