Although Xbox 360 has been the bane of many gamers’ existence thanks to that pesky RROD problem, the console’s success in the worldwide market is undeniable. Thanks in no small part to several very good games and a lower price tag than its high-fidelity console competition, the Xbox 360 has sold over 19 million units worldwide since it was launched in late 2005 (as of April 25, 2008). The original shipping model of the Xbox 360 was comprised of two main chips, a 90nm Xenon three-core CPU developed by IBM, and a 90nm Xenos GPU developed by ATI. These two chips produced quite a bit of heat, which prompted many accessory manufacturers and even a couple of enthusiast PC cooling companies to produce various means of whisking away the heat. Heat was also blamed for the malfunctioning of untold thousands of Xbox 360 units suffering from what was affectionately dubbed the Red Ring of Death (RROD).

Microsoft took its first step towards addressing the inherent heat problems with the Xbox 360 in September of 2007 with the launch of the “Falcon” revision of the console. This model, which sports a motherboard with revised cooler and several optimizations, introduced 65nm IBM Xenon processors into the equation, which produce less heat and require less power. While this reduction in heat output was certainly well-received by frustrated gamers, it only half-addressed the issue of heat in the unit. The Xenos GPU – itself a simplified incarnation of ATI’s notoriously warm R500 graphics core – was still a 90nm part producing its fair share of heat.

In a further effort to reduce heat an RROD problems in the Xbox 360, Microsoft will be launching yet another revision of the console sometime in August of this year. The new version, codenamed “Jasper” will be essentially the same thing as the current product, with the exception of a 65nm Xenos GPU. Certainly the die shrink on the GPU will be a welcomed upgrade and eliminate a fair amount of anger from the RROD’d masses.

The next step for Microsoft after Jasper hits shelves in August is something called “Valhalla”. This far more radical revision will supposedly see the integration of CPU and GPU onto the same package, eliminating a fair amount of heat overhead and increasing the overall efficiency of the console. Valhalla is rumored to drop about a year after Jasper, so I guess look out for it then.

Source: X-bit Labs, DailyTech

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