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标题: 从失误中学习——XBOX 360研发过程解密 [打印本页]

作者: Edison 时间: 2006-5-3 15:23
标题: 从失误中学习——XBOX 360研发过程解密
Learning from failure

The inside story on how IBM out-foxed Intel with the Xbox 360

By Dean Takahashi -- Electronic Business, 5/1/2006

Learning from failure is a hallmark of the technology business. Nick Baker, a 37-year-old system architect at Microsoft, knows that well. A British transplant at the software giant's Silicon Valley campus, he went from failed project to failed project in his career. He worked on such dogs as Apple Computer's defunct video card business, 3DO's failed game consoles, a chip startup that screwed up a deal with Nintendo, the never successful WebTV and Microsoft's canceled Ultimate TV satellite TV recorder.

But Baker finally has a hot seller with the Xbox 360, Microsoft's video game console launched worldwide last holiday season. The adventure on which he embarked four years ago would ultimately prove that failure is often the best teacher. His new gig would once again provide copious evidence that flexibility and understanding of detailed customer needs will beat a rigid business model every time. And so far the score is Xbox 360 one and the delayed PlayStation 3 nothing.

The Xbox 360 console is Microsoft's living room Trojan horse, purchased as a game box but capable of so much more in the realm of digital entertainment in the living room. Since the day after Microsoft terminated the Ultimate TV box, in February 2002, Baker has been working on the Xbox 360 silicon architecture team at Microsoft's campus in Mountain View, Calif. He is one of the 3DO survivors who now gets a shot at revenge against the Japanese companies that vanquished his old firm.

"It feels good," says Baker. "I can play it at home with the kids. It's family-friendly, and I don't have to play on the Nintendo anymore."

Baker is one of the people behind the scenes who pulled together the Xbox 360 console by engineering some of the most complicated chips ever designed for a consumer entertainment device. The team labored for years and made critical decisions that enabled Microsoft to beat Sony and Nintendo to market with a new box, despite a late start with the Xbox in the previous product cycle. Their story, captured here and in a forthcoming book by the author of this article, illustrates the ups and downs in any big project.

When Baker and his pal Jeff Andrews joined games programmer Mike Abrash, in early 2002, they had clear marching orders. Their bosses-Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, at the top of Microsoft; Robbie Bach, running the Xbox division; Xbox hardware chief Todd Holmdahl; Greg Gibson, for Xbox 360 system architecture; and silicon chief Larry Yang-all dictated what Microsoft needed this time around.

They couldn't be late. They had to make hardware that could become much cheaper over time and had to pack as much performance into a game console as they could without overheating the box.

Trinity taken
The group of silicon engineers started first among the 2,000 people in the Xbox division on a project that Baker had code-named Trinity. But they couldn't use that name, because someone else at Microsoft had taken it. So they named it Xenon, for the colorless and odorless gas, because it sounded cool enough. Their first order of business was to study computing architectures, from those of the best supercomputers to those of the most power-efficient portable gadgets. Although Microsoft had chosen Intel and Nvidia to make the chips for the original Xbox the first time around, the engineers now talked to a broad spectrum of semiconductor makers.

"For us, 2002 was about understanding what the technology could do," says Greg Gibson, system designer.

Sony had teamed up with IBM and Toshiba to create a full-custom microprocessor from the ground up. They planned to spend $400 million developing the Cell architecture and even more fabricating the chips. Microsoft didn't have the time or the chip engineers to match the effort on that scale, but Todd Holmdahl and Larry Yang saw a chance to beat Sony. They could marshal a host of virtual resources and create a semicustom design that combined both off-the-shelf technology and their own ideas for game hardware. Microsoft would lead the integration of the hardware, own the intellectual property, set the cost-reduction schedules, and manage its vendors closely.

They believed that this approach would get them to market by 2005, which was when they estimated Sony would be ready with the PlayStation 3. (As it turned out, Microsoft's dreams were answered when Sony, in March, postponed the PlayStation 3 launch until November.)

More important, using an IP ownership strategy with the chips could dramatically cut Microsoft's costs on the original Xbox. Microsoft had lost an estimated $3.7 billion over four years, or roughly a whopping $168 per box. By cutting costs, Microsoft could erase a lot of red ink.

Balanced design
Baker and Andrews quickly decided they wanted to create a balanced design, trading off power efficiency and performance. So they envisioned a multicore microprocessor, one with as many as 16 cores, or miniprocessors, on one chip. They wanted a graphics chip with 60 shaders, or parallel processors for rendering distinct features in a graphic animations.

Laura Fryer, manager of the Xbox Advanced Technology Group in Redmond, Wash., solicited feedback on the new microprocessor. She said that game developers were wary of managing multiple software threads associated with multiple cores, because the switch created a juggling task they didn't have to do on the original Xbox or the PC. But they appreciated the power efficiency and added performance they could get.

Microsoft's current vendors, Intel and Nvidia, didn't like the idea that Microsoft would own the IP they created. For Intel, allowing Microsoft to take the x86 design to another manufacturer was as troubling as signing away the rights to Windows would be to Microsoft. Nvidia was willing to do the work, but if it had to deviate from its road map for PC graphics chips in order to tailor a chip for a game box, then it wanted to get paid for it. Microsoft didn't want to pay that high a price. "It wasn't a good deal," says Jen Hsun-Huang, CEO of Nvidia. Microsoft had also been through a painful arbitration on pricing for the original Xbox graphics chips.

IBM, on the other hand, had started a chip engineering services business and was perfectly willing to customize a PowerPC design for Microsoft, says Jim Comfort, an IBM vice president. At first IBM didn't believe that Microsoft wanted to work together, given a history of rancor dating back to the DOS and OS/2 operating systems in the 1980s. Moreover, IBM was working for Microsoft rivals Sony and Nintendo. But Microsoft pressed IBM for its views on multicore chips and discovered that Big Blue was ahead of Intel in thinking about these kinds of designs.

When Bill Adamec, a Microsoft program manager, traveled to IBM's chip design campus, in Rochester, N.Y., he did a double take when he arrived at the meeting room where 26 engineers were waiting for him. Although IBM had reservations about Microsoft's schedule, the company was clearly serious.

"For us, 2002 was about understanding what the technology could do." —Greg Gibson, Microsoft system designer

Meanwhile, ATI Technologies assigned a small team to conceive a proposal for a game console graphics chip. Instead of pulling out a derivative of a PC graphics chip, ATI's engineers decided to design a brand-new console graphics chip that relied on embedded memory to feed a lot data to the graphics chip while keeping the main data pathway clear of traffic- critical for avoiding bottlenecks that would slow down the system.

Stomaching IBM
By the fall of 2002, Microsoft's chip architects had decided that they favored the IBM and ATI solutions. They met with Ballmer and Gates, who wanted to be involved in the critical design decisions at an early juncture. Larry Yang recalls, "We asked them if they could stomach a relationship with IBM." Their affirmative answer pleased the team.

By early 2003, the list of potential chip suppliers had been narrowed down. At that point, Robbie Bach, the chief Xbox officer, took his team to a retreat at the Salish Lodge, on the edge of Washington's beautiful Snoqualmie Falls, made famous by the Twin Peaks TV show. The team hashed out a battle plan. They would own the IP for silicon that could take the costs of the box down quickly. They would launch the box in 2005 at the same time as Sony would launch its box, or even earlier. The last time, Sony had had a 20-month head start with the PlayStation 2. By the time Microsoft sold its first 1.4 million Xboxes, Sony had sold more than 25 million PlayStation 2s.

Those goals fit well with the choice of IBM and ATI for the two pieces of silicon that would account for more than half the cost of the box. Each chip supplier moved forward, based on a "statement of work, " but Gibson kept his options open, and it would be months before the team finalized a contract. Both IBM and ATI could pull blocks of IP from their existing products and reuse them in the Microsoft chips. Engineering teams from both companies began working on joint projects such as the data pathway that connected the chips. ATI had to make contingency plans, in case Microsoft chose Intel over IBM, and IBM also had to consider the possibility that Microsoft might choose Nvidia.

Hacking embarassment
Through the summer, Microsoft executives and marketers created detailed plans for the console launch. They decided to build security into the microprocessor to prevent hacking, which had proved to be a major embarrassment on the original Xbox. Marketers such as David Reid all but demanded that Microsoft try to develop the new machine in a way that would allow the games for the original Xbox to run on it. So-called backward compatibility wasn't necessarily exploited by customers, but it was a big factor in deciding which box to buy. And Bach insisted that Microsoft had to make gains in Japan and Europe by launching in those regions at the same time as in North America.

For a period in July 2003, Bob Feldstein, the ATI vice president in charge of the Xenon graphics chip, thought Nvidia had won the deal, but in August Microsoft signed a deal with ATI and announced it to the world. The ATI chip would have 48 shaders, or processors that would handle the nuances of color shading and surface features on graphics objects, and would come with 10 megabytes of embedded memory.

IBM followed with a contract signing a month later. The deal was more complicated than ATI's, because Microsoft had negotiated the right to take the IBM design and have it manufactured in an IBM-licensed foundry being built by contract chip maker Chartered Semiconductor. The chip would have three cores and run at 3.2 gigahertz. It was a little short of the 3.5 GHz that IBM had originally pitched, but it wasn't off by much.

By October 2003, the entire Xenon team had made its pitch to Gates and Ballmer. They faced some tough questions. Gates wanted to know if there was any chance the box would run the complete Windows operating system. The top executives ended up giving the green light to Xenon without a Windows version.

"They were on the highest wire with the shortest net." —J Allard, Corporate Vice President, Microsoft

The ranks of Microsoft's hardware team swelled to more than 200, with half of the team members working on silicon integration. Many of these people were like Baker and Andrews, stragglers who had come from failed projects such as 3DO and WebTV. About 10 engineers worked on "Ana," a Microsoft video encoder chip, while others managed the schedule and cost reduction with IBM and ATI. Others supported suppliers, such as Silicon Integrated Systems, the supplier of the "south bridge," the communications and input/output chip. The rest of the team helped handle relationships with vendors for the other 1,700 parts in the game console.

Ilan Spillinger headed the IBM chip program, which carried the code name Waternoose, after the spiderlike creature from the film He supervised IBM's chief engineer, Dave Shippy, and worked closely with Microsoft's Andrews on every aspect of the design program.

Games at center
Everything happened in parallel. For much of 2003, a team of industrial designers created the look and feel of the box. They tested the design on gamers, and the feedback suggested that the design seemed like something that either Apple or Sony had created. The marketing team decided to call the machine the Xbox 360, because it put the gamer at the center. A small software team led by Tracy Sharp developed the operating system in Redmond. Microsoft started investing heavily in games. By February 2004, Microsoft sent out the first kits to game developers for making games on Apple Macintosh G5 computers. And in early 2004, Greg Gibson's evaluation team began testing subsystems to make sure they would all work together when the final design came together.

IBM assigned 421 engineers from six or seven sites to the project, which was a proving ground for its design services business. The effort paid off, with an early test chip that came out in August 2004. With that chip, Microsoft was able to begin debugging the operating system. ATI taped out its first design in September 2004, and IBM taped out its full chip in October 2004. Both chips ran game code early on, which was good, considering that it's very hard to get chips working at all when they first come out of the factory.

IBM executed without many setbacks. As it revised the chip, it fixed bugs with two revisions of the chip's layers. The company was able to debug the design in the factory quickly, because IBM's fab engineers could work on one part while the Chartered engineers could debug a different part of the chip. They fed the information to each other, speeding the cycle of revisions. By January 30, 2005, IBM taped out the final version of the microprocessor.

ATI, meanwhile, had a more difficult time. The company had assigned 180 engineers to the project. Although games ran on the chip early, problems came up in the lab. Feldstein said that in one game, one frame of animation would freeze as every other frame went by. It took six weeks to uncover the bug and find a fix. Delays in debugging threatened to throw the beta-development-kit program off schedule. That meant that thousands of game developers might not get the systems they needed on time. If that happened, the Xbox 360 might launch without enough games, a disaster in the making.

The pressure was intense. But Neil McCarthy, a Microsoft engineer in Mountain View, designed a modification of the metal layers of the graphics chip. By doing so, he enabled Microsoft to get working chips from the interim design. ATI's foundry, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., churned out enough chips to seed the developer systems. The beta kits went out in the spring of 2005.

Meanwhile, Microsoft's brass was worried that Sony would trump the Xbox 360 by coming out with more memory in the PlayStation 3. So in the spring of 2005, Microsoft made what would become a fateful decision. It decided to double the amount of memory in the box, from 256 megabytes to 512 megabytes of graphics double-data-rate 3 (GDDR3) chips. The decision would cost Microsoft $900 million over five years, so the company had to pare back spending in other areas to stay on its profit targets.

Microsoft started tying up all the loose ends. It rehired Seagate Technology, which it had hired for the original Xbox, to make hard disk drives for the box, but this time Microsoft decided to have two SKUs, one with a hard drive, for the enthusiasts, and one without, for the budget-conscious. It brought aboard both Flextronics and Wistron, the current makers of the Xbox, as contract manufacturers. But it also laid plans to have Celestica build a third factory for building the Xbox 360.

Just as everyone started to worry about the schedule going off course, ATI spun out the final graphics chip design in mid-July 2005. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief, and they moved on to the tough work of ramping up manufacturing. There was enough time for both ATI and IBM to build a stockpile of chips for the launch, which was set for November 22 in North America, December 2 in Europe and December 10 in Japan.

Flextronics debugged the assembly process first. Nick Baker traveled to China to debug the initial boxes as they came off the line. Although assembly was scheduled to start in August, it didn't get started until September. Because the machines were being built in southern China, they had to be shipped over a period of six weeks by boat to the regions. Each factory could build only as many as 120,000 machines a week, running at full tilt. The slow start, combined with the multiregion launch, created big risks for Microsoft.

Pins and needles
The hardware team was on pins and needles. The most-complicated chips came in on time and were remarkable achievements. Typically, it took more than two years to do the initial designs of complicated chip projects, but both companies were actually manufacturing inside that time window.

Then something unexpected hit. Both Samsung and Infineon Technologies had committed to making the GDDR3 memory for Microsoft. But some of Infineon's chips fell short of the 700 megahertz specified by Microsoft. Using such chips could have slowed games down noticeably. Microsoft's engineers consulted and decided to start sorting the chips, not using the subpar ones. Because GDDR3 700-MHz chips were just ramping up, there was no way to get more chips. Each system used eight chips. The shortage constrained the supply of Xbox 360s.

Microsoft blamed the resulting shortfall of Xbox 360s on a variety of component shortages. Some users complained of overheating systems. But overall, the company said, the launch was still a great achievement. In its first holiday season, Microsoft sold 1.5 million Xbox 360s, compared to 1.4 million original Xboxes in the holiday season of 2001. But the shortage continued past the holidays.

Leslie Leland, the hardware evaluation director, says she felt "terrible" about the shortage and that Microsoft would strive to get a box into the hands of every consumer who wanted one. But Greg Gibson, the system designer, says that Microsoft could have worse problems on its hands than a shortage. The IBM and ATI teams had outdone themselves.

The project was by far the most successful that Nick Baker had ever worked on. One night, hoisting a beer and looking at a finished console, he said that it felt good.

J Allard, the head of the Xbox platform business, praised the chip engineers such as Baker: "They were on the highest wire with the shortest net."

作者: 二代战神 时间: 2006-5-3 15:28
等待达人翻译中

作者: wizo 时间: 2006-5-4 12:55
:crying:同LS....

作者: 小李v飞刀 时间: 2006-5-8 14:12
同LS两位:unsure:

作者: epu2000 时间: 2006-5-12 11:42
同LS诸位~~~~~~~~~

作者: Edison 时间: 2006-5-21 13:04
到现在还没有人看出其中的一些有趣地方吗？

这里提到了xbox 360最初的设想曾经是一个16个内核的CPU+一个60个shader的GPU。

So they envisioned a multicore microprocessor, one with as many as 16 cores, or miniprocessors, on one chip. They wanted a graphics chip with 60 shaders, or parallel processors for rendering distinct features in a graphic animations.

此外还有M$不选择INTEL和NVIDIA原因的阐述，归结于为它们对微软的知识产权持有方式不满，而非技术上的因素：

Microsoft's current vendors, Intel and Nvidia, didn't like the idea that Microsoft would own the IP they created.

For Intel, allowing Microsoft to take the x86 design to another manufacturer was as troubling as signing away the rights to Windows would be to Microsoft.

Nvidia was willing to do the work, but if it had to deviate from its road map for PC graphics chips in order to tailor a chip for a game box, then it wanted to get paid for it.

Microsoft didn't want to pay that high a price. "It wasn't a good deal," says Jen Hsun-Huang, CEO of Nvidia. Microsoft had also been through a painful arbitration on pricing for the original Xbox graphics chips.

作者: Eji 时间: 2006-5-27 09:23

原帖由 Edison 于 2006-5-21 13:04 发表
到现在还没有人看出其中的一些有趣地方吗？

这里提到了xbox 360最初的设想曾经是一个16个内核的CPU+一个60个shader的GPU。

So they envisioned a multicore microprocessor, one with as many as 16 cores, ...

我是覺得初期設想都可能蠻天馬行空的....:)

目前來說，XBOX360算是已經做到不錯的狀況了。
雖說C1不算那麼令人滿意(主要不是spec的問題，而是各家title的表現)，
但是至少從J.C的評語來看，在XBOX360的生命期內應該還會有很多可能性，
而不只是ATI方面的空口白話。

作者: complexmind 时间: 2006-6-10 14:43

原帖由 Eji 于 2006-5-27 09:23 AM 发表

我是覺得初期設想都可能蠻天馬行空的....:)

目前來說，XBOX360算是已經做到不錯的狀況了。
雖說C1不算那麼令人滿意(主要不是spec的問題，而是各家title的表現)，
但是至少從J.C的評語來看，在XBOX360的 ...

360差PC到底多少？？

作者: Donclion911 时间: 2006-6-10 16:15
:wub: 16 核、60管...................w00t)

10倍的价钱。

作者: roy2006 时间: 2006-8-11 09:17
Calif. He is one of the 3DO survivors who now gets a shot at revenge against the Japanese companies that vanquished his old firm.

老美也有民族产业情节

作者: Christopher 时间: 2006-9-26 09:35
全英文……看不大懂:crying:

作者: red5 时间: 2006-10-14 11:54
Dean Takahashi( 游戏业界分析师?)这个家伙写了许多关于X360的文章,更奇怪的是这个家伙是J国人.

[ 本帖最后由 red5 于 2006-10-14 11:55 编辑 ]

作者: feizaionly 时间: 2006-10-16 14:19
提示: 作者被禁止或删除内容自动屏蔽

作者: myh925 时间: 2009-5-14 11:45
提示: 作者被禁止或删除内容自动屏蔽

作者: chnhxy2008 时间: 2009-5-15 20:07
看看看看

作者: 渔歌唱晚 时间: 2009-5-16 20:38
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作者: gsrdell 时间: 2009-5-18 19:55
本帖最后由 gsrdell 于 2009-5-18 19:58 编辑

到现在还没有人看出其中的一些有趣地方吗？

Edison 发表于 2006-5-21 13:04

你发点子英文，谁能看懂，切

作者: airdream 时间: 2009-5-18 21:36
好歹我们也算是四年级开始学ABC啦，中学也学了几百个单词啊，
电脑也玩了这么久，该把学来的英文用一用啦，
要不GOOGLE出来的东西连鼠标都不知道哪里点啊~

作者: aasssa 时间: 2009-5-23 08:39
dddddddddddddddddddddddddd

作者: zchnel 时间: 2009-5-24 17:33
挖得很深啊

作者: complex1980 时间: 2009-5-25 09:28
谁帮忙翻译一下，看不懂～

作者: 迎风起舞 时间: 2009-5-27 00:51
他认识我.我不认识他.

作者: Lancelot365 时间: 2009-5-27 12:46
thx
学习下

作者: 28631700 时间: 2009-5-27 14:53
最好翻译了再说，不然自己翻译比较麻烦

作者: 300181bai 时间: 2009-5-27 22:51
LZ 怎么不翻译一下呢我们都不时专八

喉喉

作者: yummyroy 时间: 2009-5-28 13:25
失败成功之母

作者: Editson 时间: 2009-5-29 23:59
全都是英文，【请注意文明用词】有本事。

作者: 我是龙少 时间: 2009-5-31 19:37
提示: 作者被禁止或删除内容自动屏蔽

作者: dxa112 时间: 2009-6-3 09:36
到低说了个啥,没人翻译一下

作者: kkfhj 时间: 2009-6-3 09:39
失败是成功他妈妈

作者: 本本专家 时间: 2009-6-5 01:43
看的很晕

不能直接翻译吗

作者: btwenzi 时间: 2009-6-7 11:08
恩一般碰到太长的英文都想等翻译

作者: mjack 时间: 2009-6-12 10:29
都是E文啊，有点难度么。

作者: frankyoung 时间: 2009-6-15 22:30
提示: 作者被禁止或删除内容自动屏蔽

作者: aeondxf 时间: 2009-6-16 10:09
看不明白的即使翻译了也看不明白，看得明白的不用翻译也看得明白。

作者: 最强的青蛙 时间: 2009-6-22 12:42
看不懂了,,,

作者: superzkc 时间: 2009-6-23 22:19
有中文的吗？论坛能看懂的占得到1/3不？

作者: sharko 时间: 2009-6-25 11:47
哈哈，当学e语吧，试着读读

作者: Lancelot365 时间: 2009-6-28 16:08
不错,支持

作者: shlnfqqev 时间: 2009-6-28 21:25
都是E文啊,在线翻译失败了

作者: lanhan 时间: 2009-6-28 22:36
看不懂哦。

作者: LANAD1999 时间: 2009-7-28 16:39
高技术含量的

作者: duan325058 时间: 2009-7-31 21:06
lzJJ WH 是个英语强人

作者: sharpnicle 时间: 2009-8-26 20:00
Learning from failure is a hallmark of the technology business. Nick Baker, a 37-year-old system architect at Microsoft, knows that well. A British transplant at the software giant's Silicon Valley campus, he went from failed project to failed project in his career. He worked on such dogs as Apple Computer's defunct video card business, 3DO's failed game consoles, a chip startup that screwed up a deal with Nintendo, the never successful WebTV and Microsoft's canceled Ultimate TV satellite TV recorder.

从失误中学习是技术领域的一大特色，对于这一点，37岁的微软系统工程师尼克.贝克一定深有感触。他在职业生涯中从一个失败走向另一个失败，先是在苹果公司的一个行将就木的视频卡项目中担任测试工作，又在3DO的失败的游戏主机项目上供职，这个项目也最终搞砸了该公司与任天堂的一笔买卖，然后是微软那永远不可能成功的网络电视项目和后来被取消的超级卫星电视盒。

But Baker finally has a hot seller with the Xbox 360, Microsoft's video game console launched worldwide last holiday season. The adventure on which he embarked four years ago would ultimately prove that failure is often the best teacher. His new gig would once again provide copious evidence that flexibility and understanding of detailed customer needs will beat a rigid business model every time. And so far the score is Xbox 360 one and the delayed PlayStation 3 nothing.

不过，最终贝克成就了热销的Xbox 360，微软于上一个假期启动了此款视频游戏机的销售。贝克四年前开始投入的这场冒险最终也证明了，失败常常是最好的老师，这个新玩具也再一次证明，产品的灵活度和对最终用户需求的了如指掌总是能比死板的生意模式更好，所以现在的比分情况是Xbox360得了一分，而推迟发售的PlayStation3得了个零蛋。

The Xbox 360 console is Microsoft's living room Trojan horse, purchased as a game box but capable of so much more in the realm of digital entertainment in the living room. Since the day after Microsoft terminated the Ultimate TV box, in February 2002, Baker has been working on the Xbox 360 silicon architecture team at Microsoft's campus in Mountain View, Calif. He is one of the 3DO survivors who now gets a shot at revenge against the Japanese companies that vanquished his old firm.
Xbox 360游戏机是微软安放在客厅里的一匹特洛依木马，大家把它当成游戏机买回家，但实际上它在客厅数字化娱乐上是个全能选手。从2002年2月微软终结掉超级电视盒，贝克就可始在微软加州Mountain View的Xbox360芯片设计组开工了，他也是从3DO项目中站起来走上向他们的日本对手的复仇之路的几位之一。

"It feels good," says Baker. "I can play it at home with the kids. It's family-friendly, and I don't have to play on the Nintendo anymore."
“我觉得非常棒”，贝克说“我可以在家跟孩子们一块玩（Xbox360），它非常友好，而且，我再也不用玩任天堂了”

Baker is one of the people behind the scenes who pulled together the Xbox 360 console by engineering some of the most complicated chips ever designed for a consumer entertainment device. The team labored for years and made critical decisions that enabled Microsoft to beat Sony and Nintendo to market with a new box, despite a late start with the Xbox in the previous product cycle. Their story, captured here and in a forthcoming book by the author of this article, illustrates the ups and downs in any big project.
贝克是360项目的一位幕后工作者，他们把一系列从未在消费级娱乐设备上应用的复杂设计的芯片整合起来造就了Xbox360，整个小组辛苦工作了四年，作出了无数艰难的决定，最终打败了Sony和任天堂。虽然他们刚刚才通过Xbox进入这个市场没多久（他们却跑赢了两个业内的巨腕儿）。他们的故事，如同这篇文章以及此文的作者后来编撰的一本书所描述的，将向大家揭示那些超大的工程中的起起落落。

When Baker and his pal Jeff Andrews joined games programmer Mike Abrash, in early 2002, they had clear marching orders. Their bosses-Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, at the top of Microsoft; Robbie Bach, running the Xbox division; Xbox hardware chief Todd Holmdahl; Greg Gibson, for Xbox 360 system architecture; and silicon chief Larry Yang-all dictated what Microsoft needed this time around.
2002年初，贝克和他的搭档杰夫.安德鲁加入游戏设计师迈克.阿布拉斯的行列，他们听到了上头的铁命令。微软的老板们，包括顶头上司CEO史蒂夫.巴默尔，Xbox事业部的罗比.巴赫，Xbox硬件主管托德.霍姆戴尔，Xbox360的系统设计师葛雷格.吉布森，还有微软硅厂的大头儿拉里.杨无一例外地向他们传达微软的进度要求。
They couldn't be late. They had to make hardware that could become much cheaper over time and had to pack as much performance into a game console as they could without overheating the box
他们不能迟疑。他们要在时限内做出又够便宜，还要够性能的游戏主机，而且，还不能把这个盒子弄得太烫。
The group of silicon engineers started first among the 2,000 people in the Xbox division on a project that Baker had code-named Trinity. But they couldn't use that name, because someone else at Microsoft had taken it. So they named it Xenon, for the colorless and odorless gas, because it sounded cool enough. Their first order of business was to study computing architectures, from those of the best supercomputers to those of the most power-efficient portable gadgets. Although Microsoft had chosen Intel and Nvidia to make the chips for the original Xbox the first time around, the engineers now talked to a broad spectrum of semiconductor makers.
崔妮迪，起名未果！
最早的一批硬件工程师团队是在原来的Xbox事业部的2000员工的基础上组建的，贝克想把这个团队命名为崔妮迪，可是这个名儿被别的事业部占了，他们只好重新命名，重新起的名字叫做Xenon，这是一种无色无味的气体的名字，不过他们叫这个名儿只是它听起来够酷。他们的第一个任务是学习计算机架构，从最好的超级计算机到最节能的便携小玩意。虽然在Xbox时代，微软选择了Intel和Nvidia做它的芯片供货商，但是这一回，工程师们开始把眼光放到了更为广阔的半导体制造商中去。
"For us, 2002 was about understanding what the technology could do," says Greg Gibson, system designer.
“对于我们来说，2002年我们更多的是在了解当时的技术能够做什么”，系统设计师葛雷格.吉布森说。

Sony had teamed up with IBM and Toshiba to create a full-custom microprocessor from the ground up. They planned to spend $400 million developing the Cell architecture and even more fabricating the chips. Microsoft didn't have the time or the chip engineers to match the effort on that scale, but Todd Holmdahl and Larry Yang saw a chance to beat Sony. They could marshal a host of virtual resources and create a semicustom design that combined both off-the-shelf technology and their own ideas for game hardware. Microsoft would lead the integration of the hardware, own the intellectual property, set the cost-reduction schedules, and manage its vendors closely.

那会儿索尼已经和IBM、东芝联手，他们打算从头打造一款微型处理器，他们预算用4亿美元来研发并修正这个叫Cell的东西。微软没有时间也没有足够的人力去搞那么大规模的投入，不过托德和拉里看到了打败索尼的机会，他们可以集成现有的资源并通过一种半定制的设计将他们自己的主意和现成的技术结合起来。微软将会主导硬件的集成，会自己掌握相关的知识产权，制定降低成本的策略，并且直接管理工厂。
They believed that this approach would get them to market by 2005, which was when they estimated Sony would be ready with the PlayStation 3. (As it turned out, Microsoft's dreams were answered when Sony, in March, postponed the PlayStation 3 launch until November
他们相信这样的方法将使他们能在2005年将产品推出市场，一个他们估计索尼的PS3最可能发售的时间（虽然最后索尼在3月将PS3推迟到12月，让他们喜出望外）
More important, using an IP ownership strategy with the chips could dramatically cut Microsoft's costs on the original Xbox. Microsoft had lost an estimated $3.7 billion over four years, or roughly a whopping $168 per box. By cutting costs, Microsoft could erase a lot of red ink.
更重要的是，使用自有知识产权的策略可以显著的降低微软的成本，要知道过去4年，微软因此损失了37亿美元，折合到每台Xbox则是168美元之多，节约下来这笔钱，微软将可以削减掉大笔的赤字。
Balanced design Baker and Andrews quickly decided they wanted to create a balanced design, trading off power efficiency and performance. So they envisioned a multicore microprocessor, one with as many as 16 cores, or miniprocessors, on one chip. They wanted a graphics chip with 60 shaders, or parallel processors for rendering distinct features in a graphic animations.

平衡的设计
贝克和安德鲁很快就决定下来他们要选择一种平衡的设计，一种在功耗和性能之间求平衡的产物。他们设想了一种多核心的微处理器，一个芯片上16个核心，还设想了一种有60个渲染器的图形芯片，一种在绘图时并行处理不同特性的处理器。
Laura Fryer, manager of the Xbox Advanced Technology Group in Redmond, Wash., solicited feedback on the new microprocessor. She said that game developers were wary of managing multiple software threads associated with multiple cores, because the switch created a juggling task they didn't have to do on the original Xbox or the PC. But they appreciated the power efficiency and added performance they could get.
劳拉.弗莱尔，是华盛顿雷谩厩胱⒁庥么省縪x高级技术组的经理，她负责收集新处理器的客户意见。她说游戏开发者谨慎看待多核心处理器带来的多线程编程的问题，因为这种转变（从单线程到多线程）使他们得像玩杂技一样工作，这是他们以前在Xbox和PC上编程时所没有的麻烦，不过他们还是很认同新处理器带来的功耗和性能的发展)

作者: sharpnicle 时间: 2009-8-26 20:04
Microsoft's current vendors, Intel and Nvidia, didn't like the idea that Microsoft would own the IP they created. For Intel, allowing Microsoft to take the x86 design to another manufacturer was as troubling as signing away the rights to Windows would be to Microsoft. Nvidia was willing to do the work, but if it had to deviate from its road map for PC graphics chips in order to tailor a chip for a game box, then it wanted to get paid for it. Microsoft didn't want to pay that high a price. "It wasn't a good deal," says Jen Hsun-Huang, CEO of Nvidia. Microsoft had also been through a painful arbitration on pricing for the original Xbox graphics chips.
微软当时的供货商，Intel和Nvidia都不喜欢微软想要拥有他们所创造的知识产权的主意。对于Intel来说，允许微软将X86的设计交给其他制造商（去生产）就像要微软把视窗操作系统的权益拱手交出一样严重。Nvidia对此倒没什么意见，但是如果要它从自己的PC图形卡的研发路线图中偏离去专门为微软定制一款游戏用的芯片的话，它要求微软为这种损失付费，微软却不想花那一大笔钱，于是Nvidia的CEO 黄XX说，“那就没什么好说的了”。更别提当时微软还正在和Nvidia就Xbox图形芯片的定价官司在打一场痛苦的仲裁之仗。
IBM, on the other hand, had started a chip engineering services business and was perfectly willing to customize a PowerPC design for Microsoft, says Jim Comfort, an IBM vice president. At first IBM didn't believe that Microsoft wanted to work together, given a history of rancor dating back to the DOS and OS/2 operating systems in the 1980s. Moreover, IBM was working for Microsoft rivals Sony and Nintendo. But Microsoft pressed IBM for its views on multicore chips and discovered that Big Blue was ahead of Intel in thinking about these kinds of designs.+ q: {# f8 P" V7 n/ Q
与此同时，IBM刚刚开始其芯片设计服务的业务，一位副总吉姆.康夫说他们非常愿意为微软定制一款PowerPC的设计。因为1980年代的DOS和OS/2的怨恨，刚开始的时候IBM并不相信微软打算合作，而且IBM同时还在与微软的对手索尼、任天堂合作，不过，微软主动向IBM表达他们对多核心芯片的想法，而且发现蓝色巨人已经在英特尔之前想到过这种设计的主意了。
When Bill Adamec, a Microsoft program manager, traveled to IBM's chip design campus, in Rochester, N.Y., he did a double take when he arrived at the meeting room where 26 engineers were waiting for him. Although IBM had reservations about Microsoft's schedule, the company was clearly serious.
微软一个叫比尔.阿达梅克的项目经理拜访

作者: dream70 时间: 2009-8-26 22:58
好文章，为了活跃度！

作者: caoking988 时间: 2009-8-27 15:21

难得的好文章
LZ从哪里摘得？？

作者: nike2006 时间: 2009-8-27 15:45

挖得很深啊
zchnel 发表于 2009-5-24 17:33

呵呵是KENG 吗

作者: tomos814 时间: 2009-9-2 22:28
一口气看完了，什么都看不懂~

作者: tsfbbb 时间: 2009-9-9 16:16
学习一下呵呵

作者: xq2010 时间: 2009-9-10 16:21
这个，得等翻译了&……

作者: arksore 时间: 2009-9-25 02:12
还是翻译过来比较好,这样直接贴,没几个人看得懂

作者: boybrood 时间: 2009-10-15 12:57
楼主自己能不能看得懂都是问题吧？这种水贴都发哦

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