Xbox 360's Vejle SoC Gets Detailed: So Good They Artificially Hobbled It

Microsoft has come clean on the new SoC powering their refreshed Xbox 360 console, and the Vejle CPU/GPU combo is certainly worth a second glance.  Produced for Microsoft by IBM and GlobalFoundries, using 45nm processes and designs from the company's own engineers, Vejle is in fact so efficient that an artificially-limiting FSB was added to scale performance down to previous 360 levels.

Since speed wasn't the priority, Microsoft could concentrate on reducing the number of components required, the power draw of the SoC, and how much active cooling it needed.  In fact, they got the number of transistors down to 372m, while power draw is 60-percent less than the original Xbox 360's discrete CPU and GPU; a single fan and heatsink is all the active cooling now necessary.

What it all means is that, despite aggressive schedules by ARM, Intel and AMD, Microsoft has beaten all three to the market with a combo CPU/GPU.  It almost seems a shame for the company to keep it solely for the Xbox 360.