IBM has been showing off the Xbox processor at the Fall Processor Forum being held now in San Jose, California (Oct. 25-26). And according to various reports, some interesting things have emerged. First, there's a second source -- Chartered Semiconductor -- which has been involved with the CPU development, and is now manufacturing chips. Second, according to Business Week's story, Inside IBM's Xbox Chip: "Microsoft will own the rights to the chip, says IBM Vice-President James Comfort."
The chip was developed specifically for Microsoft, and as such IBM won't sell it to any other customers. That's in contrast to the arrangement for IBM's Cell Processor, which is going into Sony's PlayStation 3 console but is also being used in other specialty computer systems.
It would be interesting to know exactly what Microsoft's rights comprise.
According to Dean Takahashi's more detailed account at the Mercury News:
Ilan Spillinger, an IBM distinguished engineer who ran a lot of the design implementation effort, said that IBM was willing to create custom instructions for Microsoft's microprocessor. Microsoft chip veterans Larry Yang, Jeff Andrews and Nick Baker -- former 3DO hardware engineers who joined Microsoft through the WebTV acquisition -- told IBM exactly what they needed the chip to do. In fact, that's why IBM's top engineer on the project is considered the "chief engineer," while Microsoft's Jeff Andrews is considered the chief architect.
Ah yes, the 3DO. This was a interactive multimedia games console, much better than anything else around at the time (1993-94), albeit at a very high price ($700 or so). But even this was going to be surpassed by the 3DO M2, which was going to be based on the IBM PowerPC 602 processor....
The 3DO flopped and the M2 never appeared. Jeff Andrews must be hoping history doesn't repeat itself....
