Xbox 2 manufacturing plans are on schedule - TSMC
A representative of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, the company tasked with fabricating the chips being used in Microsoft's next Xbox console, has told the media that the development of the console is proceeding to plan.
A representative of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, the company tasked with fabricating the chips being used in Microsoft's next Xbox console, has told the media that the development of the console is proceeding to plan.
Speaking at a press conference, senior vice president Kenneth Kin said that the firm's manufacturing plans for Xbox 2 chips is "proceeding according to plan," scotching recent murmuring about a possible further delay to Microsoft's schedule for the system.
TSMC has been tapped to develop the core chipsets for the Xbox 2 platform, including ATI's GPU chip, which the graphics company said was nearing the end of its development stage earlier this month.
It's believed that Microsoft is planning to launch the Xbox 2 in late 2005, which would give it a significant headstart over its rivals, as neither Sony nor Nintendo is expected to have a new home console ready until 2006.
Xbox 2 - which is reportedly codenamed Xenon in the development community - will feature multiple IBM Power5 processors, an SIS motherboard chipset and the aforementioned ATI graphics unit. Early development kits for the hardware have already been sent to selected developers, based on Apple PowerMac G5 units running a custom version of the Windows NT kernel.