Xbox360 Graphics
Ever since the announcement that ATI were working with Microsoft on "Future Xbox360 technologies" the rumour mill has been working overtime as to the graphics behind it. Some of the messages since the announcement of the XBOX360, the eventual console ATI's work will appear in, have not necessarily been reflective of the actual operation and even a little contradictory from representatives directly from ATI. With strict NDA's and designs being built for two different competitive consoles, very tight controls of what could be talked about had to be implemented within ATI, and the XBOX360 group operated very much within their own silo; it wasn't until Microsoft lifted the NDA's that ATI could even speak of it on a wider internal basis, let along externally, and even then there is a lot of information to gather.Since XBOX360's announcement and ATI's unleashing from the non disclosure agreements we've had the chance to not just chat with Robert Feldstein, VP of Engineering, but also Joe Cox, Director of Engineering overseeing the XBOX360 graphics design team, and two lead architects of the graphics processor, Clay Taylor and Mark Fowler. Here we hope to accurately impart a slightly deeper understanding of the XBOX360 graphics processor, how it sits within the system, understand more about its operation as well as give some insights into the capabilities of the processor. Bear in mind that we are under NDA for some of the operational details of the graphics processor to gain an understanding of how it differs from current platforms however some of the specifics won't be revealed in full detail in this article.
