|
Before we even start, it should be stated: this is a huge rumor; nothing has been confirmed, verified or checked out officially. Take this with a large grain or salt, or a swig of your favorite...drink. 8BitJoystiq, the blog run by Jake Metcalf which broke the news about Microsoft and Bungie splitting up nearly a week in advance of the official announcement, claims to have another exclusive. A big one, if true.
The internet is always ablaze with talk of the Xbox 360's Red Ring of Death issue, I've experienced the problem, I'm sure many of you have as well, and with so many various "confirmed" causes for the problem, how can anyone know for sure? If the following interview is legit, aside from the fact that the majority of the information explained is known in some fashion already, we may at least know for sure now.
A Microsoft employee who has worked on the Xbox "project" for the past few years seems to have outed the official causes for the hardware failures, and even claims to dish some dirt on Microsoft's testing, QA and manufacturing processes prior to the console's launch in 2005.
Hit the jump for more on the "rumored" interview...
While I won't spoil the full interview, let's cover some of the more interesting portions. The first question that Metcalf asks their source is, what is the real failure rate of the Xbox 360? Microsoft's "insider" spills the beans on the real number:
It's around 30%, and all will probably fail early. This quarter they
are expecting 1 M failures, most of those Xenons. Some of those are
repeat failures. Life expectancy is all over the map because the design
has very little margin for most of the important parameters. That means
it's not a fault tolerant design. So a good unit may last a couple of
years, while a bad unit can fail in hours. I have a launch unit and
have not had a single problem with it. And it's used a lot. But I don't
know anyone else with a 360 that hasn't broken, except you now. There's
no way to tell when yours might die. But the cooler you can keep it,
the longer it will probably last. So stand it up, keep it in free air,
etc. :Note : Xenon was the code name for the first Xbox 360 mother
board.
That same number has been reported by retailers for over a year. It's asked what, if anything, is the main problem within Microsoft internally that led to the dreaded RRoD plague, to which it's stated:
First, MS has under resourced that product unit in all engineering
areas since the very beginning. Especially in engineering support
functions like test, quality, manufacturing, and supplier management.
There just weren't enough people to do the job that needed to be done.
The leadership in many of those areas was also lopsided in essential
skills and experience.
and
MS was so focused on beating Sony this cycle that the 360 was
rushed to market when all indications were that it had serious flaws.
The design qual testing was insufficient and incomplete when the
product was released to production. The manufacturing test equipment
had major gaps in test coverage and wasn't reliable or repeatable.
Manufacturing processes at eall levels of suppliers were immature and
not in control. Initial end to end yields were in the mid 30%. Low
yields always indicate serious design and manufacturing defects.
Management chose to continue to ship anyways, and keep the lines
running while trying to solve problems and bring the yields up.
Whenever something failed and there was a question about whether the
test result was false, they would remove that test, retest and ship, or
see if the unit would boot a game and run briefly and then ship. 360 is
too complex of a machine to get away with that.
Here we come to the backbone of the interview, the part I'm sure most will care about. What exactly, is causing the Red Ring of Death? Plain and simple. Something people have tried to get Microsoft to explain for over a year.
RROD is caused by anything that fails in the "digital backbone" on the
mother board. Also known as a core digital error. CPU, GPU, memory,
etc. Bad parts, incompatible parts (timing problems) bad manufacturing
process (like solder joints), misapplied heat sinks or thermal
interface material, missing parts, broken parts, parts of the wrong
value, missed test coverage. Any one or more, on any chip, or many
other discrete components, would cause this. And many of the failures
were obviously infant mortality, where they work when they leave the
factory and fail early in use. The main design flaw was the excessive
heat on the GPU warping the mother board around it. This would stress
the solder joints on the GPU and any bad joints would then fail in
early life.
There are also other significantly high failure rates in other areas, like the DVD.
He goes into more detail on various sub-problems that contribute to the hardware failures, inlcuding defective parts, the infamous heat sink debacle, the heated "vertical or horizontal?" debate, the fact that new, Falcon chipsets are still seeing roughly 10% failure rates, and even what I've seen myself: old pre- Falcon units being taken off shelves, fitted with new parts, and then packaged in new boxes which were then sold over the Holidays.
Great interview, even if it isn't true, so be sure to head over and read the full article. Something tells me it is though, either way, way to draw that traffic, buddy! Now, if we could only get an interview from someone like this on what's going on with Xbox Live...
Trackback(0)
 |
TrackBack URI for this entry
Subscribe to this comment's feed
Achievement Junkie
UncleGamer Radio
Post Game Report
Remember When