Last month, we posted an announcement made by Sony and Toshiba (one of the two Sony"s partners for the PlayStation 3) telling the world that trial production of chips (the cell) using a 65-nanometer manufacturing process would begin this March, with commercial production of the final chips expected for summer 2005.
In that story we also suggested that the Xbox 2 CPU could also be a 65-nm part since both Sony and Microsoft are going head-to-head for the next round in "The Console Wars."
Today we can confirm that the Xbox 2 CPU will also be built using a 65-nanometer manufacturing process.
"It"ll be built on a 65-nanometer process," a source confirmed to TeamXbox. "IBM has already taped out experimental samples at its East Fishkill fab but it will take between 12 to 18 months for them to deliver commercial parts. Anyway, they"re way ahead of Intel."
There are countless stories as to why Microsoft decided to drop Intel in favor of IBM. But sometimes, it just could be as straightforward as Jodie Foster claims in the movie Contact, "The simplest hypothesis is most likely to be true."