Jasper 65nm chips could hit 360s by August [update]

by Richard Mitchell { May 8th 2008 at 3:00PM }

Note: those afraid of tech-speak should skip the first paragraph.

According to Cens.com, the first 65nm GPU chip equipped Xbox 360s -- codenamed Jasper, the successor to current Falcon 360s, which incorporate a 65nm CPU but use a larger GPU -- will start showing up in by August of this year. IBM will reportedly manufacture and test the CPU chips, while Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) has reportedly been contracted to manufacture and the graphics chips, which will in turn be tested and packaged by Advanced Semiconductor Engineering Inc. (ASE). Nanya will be responsible for supplying flip-chip packaging substrates (don't ask us). Furthermore, CENS reports that industry watchers are betting on TSMC to win contracts to manufacture chips for Japser's successor, Valhalla, which will combine both the CPU and graphics chips into one super chip.

The upshot of all this is that new chips should be arriving this August, making for cooler, quieter 360s everywhere. that's something we can all enjoy, right? Oh, and no, there was no mention of Microsoft cramming Blu-Ray drives into either the Jasper or Valhalla.

[Via Joystiq]

Update: Clarified differences between Falcon and Jasper units

Tags: 65nm, 65nm-processor, falcon, falcon-360, jasper, valhalla, xbox-360

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

NBShermanator @ May 8th 2008 3:06PM

Great and all.. but whens the spring update!?!?!

Jon @ May 8th 2008 3:14PM

even the chip names are based on halo 3 maps, ha ha ha

Sean @ May 8th 2008 3:18PM

The Falcon includes the 65nm CPU, as well as an 80nm GPU (slightly smaller than the original) - which is why they run significantly cooler.

August sounds about right, as AMD/ATi are only just switching their chips to 65nm at the minute - way behind nVidia.

The majority of the 360 noise comes from the DVD drive anyway, so don't get your hopes up.

mattclarkie @ May 8th 2008 3:24PM

Falcon cooler. Ha

Next your being saying it is quieter.

You are right about the sizes, and the article is wrong. Shame on you X3F, you don't even know what powers you favourite console

Richard Mitchell @ May 8th 2008 4:02PM

Clarified some of the differences between the units. And yes, most of the noise does come from the DVD drive. Still, cooler processors mean less fan use, so hopefully it will be a teensy bit quieter.

Sean @ May 8th 2008 5:42PM

Yes - the Falcon runs significantly cooler. I have a 2008 Elite now, and it runs A LOT cooler than my launch Elite did (my launch Elite cracked two game disks, and was 90nm - I could tell by the heatsink design). It's fairly common knowledge that one of the main advantages of smaller manufacturing processes is to decrease heat.

What i'm not saying is that the Falcon is more reliable ;-) General opinion seems to point at the GPU being the main cause of the 3 red lights - which is probably true, considering its a first generation unified-shader GPU (which ATi aren't too great at designing, as it turns out). The Falcon doesn't have said 65nm GPU, so probably isn't going to be much more reliable.

PerfectStrategy @ May 8th 2008 6:57PM

@Sean

My lord are you ever wrong. ATI is ahead of Nvidia. NVIDIA video cards are on 65nm process right now. I'm sitting here looking at my ATI HD 3870 X2 55nm that I bought two months ago, and wondering what the heck you are smoking. I also bought a 65nm ATI video card some 7 months ago.

Secondly,
"considering its a first generation unified-shader GPU (which ATi aren't too great at designing, as it turns out)"
Wow are you ever stupid. The ATI Xenos GPU in the 360 is a marvel of design and was way ahead of its time considering it launched in 2005. It has 48-way parallel floating-point dynamically-scheduled shader pipelines with a theoretical 10 FLOPS per pipeline per cycle. The unified shader architecture and the rest of the Xenos architecture is brilliant and that is why despite launching one year before the PS3 it can still outpower the PS3's NVIDIA video card running at a higher frequency.

Hopefully you have learned something here today.

The Sound @ May 8th 2008 8:15PM

@PerfectStrategy

You couldn't be more wrong. Yes it's slightly smaller in an ATI card, but Nvidia is leaps and bounds ahead of ATI/AMD.

Just go look at some news with Nvidia, they are basically competing with Intel with integrated graphics and small, cheap processing.

PerfectStrategy @ May 8th 2008 11:50PM

Wow, I could reply to your comments... But screw it, not worth the effort when you are that dumb.

Teabag @ May 8th 2008 3:20PM

Small chips will not make the 360 quieter. Better DVD drives will as large portion of the noise comes from it. The fans barely make any noise. Unless it's overheating.

I look forward to Jasper. I guess this one will be 3RLoD free.

The Sound @ May 8th 2008 6:39PM

Yeah they will actually.

Smaller chips release less heat, less heat released is less work on heatsink/fan, less work on those means it's quieter.

mike @ May 8th 2008 3:54PM

quiter dvd drives would cost to much. 360 games (especially the big ones nowadays) all spin at extremely high rates. To cut the noise they would need to implament some sort of sound dampining in the console. The current drives are quality drives, and no other drive is gonna magically spin a disc just as fast while not making as much noise. And I dont think the consumer would be happy with a $20 price increase per console at retail.

Then again microsoft could just keep the price the same and just be less profitable per console but I doubt a rich coropration would ever make that decision lol.

The Sound @ May 8th 2008 6:45PM

The unfortunate thing is, if they were able to have reduced the size of the chips sooner, then a lot of the RRoD issues might not have come up.

They are behind in reducing size. Sony has been 65nm/65nm for Cell/graphics (or 65nm/90nm until recently) and are working on 45nm cell chips for next year. While Sony is a hardware manufacturer, MS might need to try harder next gen (or end of this one) to get down in size, because the overall benefit is less heat/power/noise and cheaper to manufacture because you can manufacture more with fewer losses to bad chips.

PerfectStrategy @ May 8th 2008 7:06PM

What is everyone smoking today? The PS3 (all models) currently have 90nm GPUs, not 80nm, and certainly not 65nm.

So how is Microsoft behind, The Sound? They went to 65nm CPU and 80nm GPU last year in October. The PS3 only went to 65nm CPU this year I believe and is still on 90nm GPU.

And in case you want to make a dumb remark, this has nothing to do with when the consoles launched. The chip foundries of the world do not adjust their timetables of when they can manufacture at certain processes based on when a console releases or how long it's been out.

The Sound @ May 8th 2008 8:11PM

Dumb remark? Hah.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080207-ibm-shrinks-cell-to-45nm-cheaper-ps3s-will-follow.html

Cell at 45nm now, not yet in use in PS3, will be this summer.

40gb PS3 units, the only units available at this time are running 65nm/90nm which was in my original post.

http://www.joystiq.com/2007/11/09/40gb-ps3s-have-65nm-cell-chips-90nm-gpus/

And the fact that it's taken MS 3 years to reduce chip sizes all around shows that being a hardware company/manufacturer (Sony) helps out a lot. The PS3 is a year old (a little over) and it's already down to the same size and will be smaller in CPU size this summer.

c4v3man @ May 8th 2008 8:02PM

I can hear the fan in my elite when using Media Center... since that does not involve the disc, I would enjoy a newer/quieter 360. And they could possibly reduce the noise by using something like Kenwood's TrueX design, although that's unlikely.

Terry @ May 8th 2008 9:04PM

My xbox360 is so loud, im thinking about selling it...please talk me out of it.

PerfectStrategy @ May 8th 2008 11:53PM

Ninja Gaiden II

Cash @ May 9th 2008 4:03AM

Wonder what sort of goodness my recently sent in thanks to the burning rings of fire Xbox will return to me with. Will it just have some new big ass heatsinks, or do I get one o' them fancy new system boards?

Probably not, as I'd imagine they'll just cram a refurbed board in there and call it a day.

Boff @ May 9th 2008 6:17AM

FFS! I've only just got the Falcon after my 1st gen 360 red ringed.

It's tough keeping up with the Jones's!!

craig haagensen @ May 26th 2008 5:59PM

anyone know if "Jasper" is due to manufactured beginning in august or will they be in shops by august? as there is often around two months from manufacturer to retailer,and ill snap one up when there out, dont want no rrod console and this should be solved with "jasper".

sultan.khanfar @ Jul 6th 2008 1:01AM

Knowing that Falcon shows a remarkable drop in failure rates (aka rrod), Jasper will most definitely have the problem fixed for good this time. My only Xbox 360 died on me a couple of months ago, after all the efforts put into repairing it. I'll most probably get Jasper as my second 360. And yes, Jasper will be available by this August, hopefully...