Xbox 720 chips in production, first sample soon

About the next generation's gaming console, Xbox 720, Microsoft seems to start the production of system core chip, a news surfaced at Softpedia say that the first samples of the chip which will be codenamed "Oban" will be ready by the end of next month.

Oban Xbox 720 core will be based on the 32nm SOI (silicon-on-insulator) process technology on 300mm wafers, the first wave of the chip production will be installed on the next-gen Xbox dev kits designed for developers, about 10K units, so the first dev kit will be on a developer studio in March.

Until now, little is known about the hardware specifications of the chips that will go into the Xbox Next 720, although it looks like it that Oban will be based on the PowerPC architecture, as the one on the current Xbox 360 processor.

So Oban chip should also include eDRAM memory if its PowerPC architecture based, while the graphics core could be based on an AMD Graphics Core Next (GCN) design technology, more specs to come for sure about this one.