A more powerful and less power hungry CPU for the Xbox 360? Quite interesting news, as it seems that Microsoft is already making adjustments to the architecture of their newly released console. The big question is that whether this is just a part of natural cost reduction strategy in order to make Xbox 360 profitable, or is Microsoft already feeling the heat from Sony PS3?

Technical specifications of the new chip have not been announced; however, Chartered said that the 65 nm shrink will also be based on silicon-on-insulator (SOI) technology. The current 90 nm version uses an IBM-designed PowerPC foundation with three cores and a total of 165 million transistors. Clocked at 3.2 GHz, the CPU is capable of cranking out a floating point performance of 115.2 GFlops. The chip is currently mass produced by IBM in East Fishkill, New York, and by Chartered in Singapore.

"We look forward to working with Chartered on the production of such an important component of our Xbox 360 system," said Larry Yang, General Manager of Xbox console development at Microsoft in a prepared statement. "We plan to continue with our strategy of dual sourcing from Chartered and IBM's fabs, which are operationally aligned and compatible, to give us the consistent product quality and flexibility we will need."

Source: Tom's Hardware UK