IBM's Xbox 360 processor enters mass production

San Jose (CA) - Rather a formality than a surprise, IBM today announced at the Fall Processor Forum that the heart of Microsoft's upcoming game console Xbox 360, a 3.2 GHz PowerPC-based processor with three cores, is in production. The chip was developed in less than 24 months, IBM said.

IBM saved the official announcement of the volume production of the processor for the morning of the first day of the Fall Processor Forum, where the company is expected to reveal further details about the processor's architecture. According to IBM, the chip is currently manufactured at the firm's East Fishkill, New York fab as well as Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing in Singapore to meet the estimated demand for Xbox 360 consoles.

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