Microsoft News, part one
Oct 10, 2008 3:59:29 GMT
Post by CharlieChomper on Oct 10, 2008 3:59:29 GMT
Since I had so many Microsoft articles that I still needed to post, I thought I'd divide these up a bit into different posts.
For the first post, I thought to post a mix of articles delving into matters ranging from some insight into the Xbox 360 recall last year and a leaked memo written by Bill Gates. The Xbox 360 issue is a long enough read that I felt to leave off at that versus adding more articles to this thread.
To start off with, the first article actually was written during the week Bill Gates officially stepped down and involves a leaked memo written by Bill Gates (which appears in its entirety within the article) back in 2003 and sent to members of both design and programming staff. I really can't do justice in beginning to explain this email as it really speaks for itself and is definitely very much worth the read to anyone who has ever had problems with or been frustrated by their sites, software, installs, updates, registry issues, or anything in between, etc. Incidentally, this email has been confirmed by Bill Gates as his having actually written it (he also apparently had further commented to a local Seattle newspaper that it was hardly the only such email he has actually written in complaint regarding such matters).
The next article comes from the trade journal/publication for electrical (as in component/hardware/embedded systems, etc.) engineers and actually involves the Xbox 360 and what was going on with it last year. For those unaware of the actual manufacture and design of consoles, what often happens is that a given company (Sony and Microsoft in particular) often contract out the design of the graphical "cores" (GPUs) to either nVidia or what had been ATI and both companies, in turn, often reuse those cores in the design of new graphics/video cards.
For both companies, dealings with Microsoft in this realm has proven to be a dual-edged sword in many respects (and mostly for the worse). With ATI, it came close to nearly killing them completely (combined with the internal issues taking place within AMD since the merger) during the development cycle for the Xbox 360 whereas with nVidia, it definitely contributed to a definite blow and setback for the company that could have put them under as well during the development of the original Xbox. However, due to how lucrative the end results appear, both companies had done whatever they could to vie for those contracts.
From an "official" standpoint, the general public is not supposed to know who actually designed or manufactured the chipsets in use anymore than the companies involved would officially acknowledge as being the ones to have received the contract (it's a standard practice anytime a company contracts out to another for development in this area).
In this situation, Microsoft had awarded the contract to ATI for the design and manufacture of the graphical chipset and core for the Xbox360 (something which hurt nVidia enough to where they underwent layoffs following the news--if there's any interest, I will post about the situation in full as it is would also shed some light into what has and is going on with both companies behind the scenes and their current state of things). However, in attempt to bypass ATI in gaining their "cut" and make more money for themselves, Microsoft actually attempted to design the cores/chipsets themselves in-house and contract out the manufacturing to a company in Taiwan instead (which they also felt would be the cheaper route to go as well).
This is also where they ran into trouble and what really caused the recall of the Xbox360s last year. As Microsoft has no actual experience in this area nor the trained or experienced enough staff to take on something of this nature, they ran into problems. The problems namely being the graphics device requiring and drawing more power than was really necessary as well as not properly addressing the issues with cooling or allowing for it to even just cool sufficiently.
In order to avert problems in terms of sales and a possible PR disaster/nightmare, they went back to ATI and had them redesign the chipset/cores and released the new XBox 360s with the graphics chipsets and cores designed by ATI, hoping no one would be the wiser as to what really happened, just as the company appears not to have acknowledged it.
For the first post, I thought to post a mix of articles delving into matters ranging from some insight into the Xbox 360 recall last year and a leaked memo written by Bill Gates. The Xbox 360 issue is a long enough read that I felt to leave off at that versus adding more articles to this thread.
To start off with, the first article actually was written during the week Bill Gates officially stepped down and involves a leaked memo written by Bill Gates (which appears in its entirety within the article) back in 2003 and sent to members of both design and programming staff. I really can't do justice in beginning to explain this email as it really speaks for itself and is definitely very much worth the read to anyone who has ever had problems with or been frustrated by their sites, software, installs, updates, registry issues, or anything in between, etc. Incidentally, this email has been confirmed by Bill Gates as his having actually written it (he also apparently had further commented to a local Seattle newspaper that it was hardly the only such email he has actually written in complaint regarding such matters).
The next article comes from the trade journal/publication for electrical (as in component/hardware/embedded systems, etc.) engineers and actually involves the Xbox 360 and what was going on with it last year. For those unaware of the actual manufacture and design of consoles, what often happens is that a given company (Sony and Microsoft in particular) often contract out the design of the graphical "cores" (GPUs) to either nVidia or what had been ATI and both companies, in turn, often reuse those cores in the design of new graphics/video cards.
For both companies, dealings with Microsoft in this realm has proven to be a dual-edged sword in many respects (and mostly for the worse). With ATI, it came close to nearly killing them completely (combined with the internal issues taking place within AMD since the merger) during the development cycle for the Xbox 360 whereas with nVidia, it definitely contributed to a definite blow and setback for the company that could have put them under as well during the development of the original Xbox. However, due to how lucrative the end results appear, both companies had done whatever they could to vie for those contracts.
From an "official" standpoint, the general public is not supposed to know who actually designed or manufactured the chipsets in use anymore than the companies involved would officially acknowledge as being the ones to have received the contract (it's a standard practice anytime a company contracts out to another for development in this area).
In this situation, Microsoft had awarded the contract to ATI for the design and manufacture of the graphical chipset and core for the Xbox360 (something which hurt nVidia enough to where they underwent layoffs following the news--if there's any interest, I will post about the situation in full as it is would also shed some light into what has and is going on with both companies behind the scenes and their current state of things). However, in attempt to bypass ATI in gaining their "cut" and make more money for themselves, Microsoft actually attempted to design the cores/chipsets themselves in-house and contract out the manufacturing to a company in Taiwan instead (which they also felt would be the cheaper route to go as well).
This is also where they ran into trouble and what really caused the recall of the Xbox360s last year. As Microsoft has no actual experience in this area nor the trained or experienced enough staff to take on something of this nature, they ran into problems. The problems namely being the graphics device requiring and drawing more power than was really necessary as well as not properly addressing the issues with cooling or allowing for it to even just cool sufficiently.
In order to avert problems in terms of sales and a possible PR disaster/nightmare, they went back to ATI and had them redesign the chipset/cores and released the new XBox 360s with the graphics chipsets and cores designed by ATI, hoping no one would be the wiser as to what really happened, just as the company appears not to have acknowledged it.
