Specs rumoured for Xbox's successor, codenamed Xenon, have allegedly been leaked to an Xbox-fanatic website. An anonymous e-mailer supplied the supposed hardware specifications for the Xenon CPU as being powered by a 3.5 GHz IBM PowerPC processor, and a 500+Mhz ATI graphics processor. Apparently, "Xenon" runs an operating system based on Windows NT, very similar to the Xbox operating system. A superset of Microsoft's Direct3D 9.0 runs the graphics interface, apparently.
The CPU is said to include three processors – or cores –, all independent, on a single die. Each core runs at 3.5Ghz, enabling the Xenon CPU to issue two instructions per clock cycle for each core – at it's best, Xenon can handle 21 billion instructions per second.
According to the e-mail, the Xenon will have more ways to store data and memory than the Xbox had, including connected devices such as memory units and USB storage, and remote devices like networked PCs and Xbox Live. The e-mail states that so far, the decision to build in a hard drive to each console has not been made, but if it does without, hard drives will be available as add-ons.
Thanks to the inclusion of USB 2.0 ports the console can potentially run cameras, microphones, storage devices and other USB-compliant technologies.
The disc drive Xenon uses is a 12x DVD, with an outer edge throughput of 16+ MB/second. Like with the Xbox, the discs will hold roughly 6GB of usable space, if the reports are correct.
Xenon's design has not been determined yet, says the e-mail, but gamers can breathe a huge sigh of relief as it's going to be smaller than the Xbox – there's one less thing for your PSX-playing chums to poke fun at. The official controllers will be pretty similar to the original Xbox controllers, however, the black and white buttons will be removed and shoulder buttons will be added – everything else is "essentially unchanged".
The leak:
xbox-scene.com.
Story source:
theinquirer.net.
