Rumor: Next Xbox to have 16-core CPU?
There are a lot of rumors about the next generation Xbox console. Some say it will ship with an ARM processor, others say it won’t play used games. Some of these will end up being true while others will go down in gaming infamy as being silly speculation.
One of the latest rumors is that the next generation Xbox will boast an impressive 16-core CPU. Some say this will be needed because the next generation version of Kinect will eat up those cores to perform tasks like finger tracking. It seems plausible that a processor with a lot of cores would help Kinect but this rumor is very far fetched.
16-core CPU’s are a rarity even in the PC community. AMD released the first 16-core CPU for businesses late last year. While I expect Microsoft to make the next generation Xbox more powerful than the Xbox 360 currently is, I think this is overkill.
If you can’t help but roll your eyes when you read about this rumor than you’ve been through a few console generations before. It is best to be skeptical of everything and let Microsoft impress us if these crazy rumors come true so that we are surprised.
Do you think this rumor will end up becoming a reality?
Lol. No.
Maybe not 1 CPU with 16 cores, but what about 3 Xenon with 6 cores each?? That would be so sweeeet!!! đ
I believe this is highly probable. I’ve read Microsoft mentioned massively-multicore and more energy efficient together and a 16-core ARM sounds like that. Combining that with the possibility of SD-based media, no drives like a DVD or HD, and using a large amount of ram like 8GB for caches and textures it should be great and relatively cheap to make.
MS will stick with IBM… at least I hope they do!
Another thing I wanted to add about an Arm cpu is that there are servers that use banks of 4-cores. They evidently work well together and there are many different 4-core Arm15 suppliers. It would be an ideal position for Microsoft to get the cheapest and have the ability to go to another supplier if the 1st demands too much. The speed of an 2 ghz Arm12 cpu isÂ
distinguishable from a PowerPC of the same speed, they are both Risc processors. So a 4 4-core Arm system wouldn’t surprise me but it obviously wouldn’t be backwards compatible but neither was Windows Phone 7 and Windows Mobile .5.