Back in 2005, before the Microsoft's Next Generation console was released, one of its Executives suggested that their new console had a locked feature that would be unlocked by a software update, raising numerous speculations in the dedicated websites and forums.
Once the Xbox 360 was released, Anandtech reviewed it and found this "mystery chip", which purpose what indeed a mystery even for them, and received no reply about it from Microsoft.
In Spring 2006, Redmond's Giant released the eagerly awaited Dashboard Update featuring an upgrade every detractor was extremely exceptical about "1080p upscaling". It was implemented and it worked yet it wasn't clear how exactly did this happen. Was it a software trick? How exactly didn't this have a performance hit? and lots of more unanswered questions... until now.
Today, the answer has been finally given, and it even has a name: "Ana" is the mystery chip that makes you play games like Gears of War in glorious 1080p. A dedicated chip that explain why the Xbox 360 can do what others just can't.
The chip named 'Ana' might not be what you think... It's not something that can be used to supe up graphics, sorta. It's the chip that handles scaling, something that the competition currently lacks and Microsoft has revealed it to tech site, Anadtech.
Here's a snippet of the article:
"We call it Ana. This is the scaling chip that's in the 360," he [Scott Henson] tells me.
It's odd to see it—a tiny little chip—but this may be one of the secret weapons the 360 has against the PS3. The PS3 has no internal hardware scaler, which means games that are 720p native can only be shown in 720p or 480p; there is no scaling up to 1080p or 1080i. This causes people with older HDTVs to have issues with the available resolutions, and keeps them from playing the games in anything but 480p. It's a vexing problem for a system that's supposed to be HD, and this issue is one of the most challenging that Sony faces. I ask the Microsoft guys how important it was for them to include a scaler in the 360.
"It was a critical design decision; we wanted the 360 to be high-definition, not just 1080p or some other standard. That's why we included component cables in the box; there is no HDTV that doesn't have a component in," said Greenberg.
They assume that Sony didn't include a hardware scaler to keep costs down, but get a little cagey when I ask how much it costs to put Ana into the 360. "This isn't a $1,000 scaler," Henson says, "but it's a good one."
It was apparently designed at the same time as the GPU, and the effortless scaling with different televisions was something that was important from the early design stages of the system. I ask if they think this is something that Sony can fix in software.
How cool
http://arstechnica.com/articles/headstart.ars/2
Once the Xbox 360 was released, Anandtech reviewed it and found this "mystery chip", which purpose what indeed a mystery even for them, and received no reply about it from Microsoft.
In Spring 2006, Redmond's Giant released the eagerly awaited Dashboard Update featuring an upgrade every detractor was extremely exceptical about "1080p upscaling". It was implemented and it worked yet it wasn't clear how exactly did this happen. Was it a software trick? How exactly didn't this have a performance hit? and lots of more unanswered questions... until now.
Today, the answer has been finally given, and it even has a name: "Ana" is the mystery chip that makes you play games like Gears of War in glorious 1080p. A dedicated chip that explain why the Xbox 360 can do what others just can't.
The chip named 'Ana' might not be what you think... It's not something that can be used to supe up graphics, sorta. It's the chip that handles scaling, something that the competition currently lacks and Microsoft has revealed it to tech site, Anadtech.
Here's a snippet of the article:
"We call it Ana. This is the scaling chip that's in the 360," he [Scott Henson] tells me.
It's odd to see it—a tiny little chip—but this may be one of the secret weapons the 360 has against the PS3. The PS3 has no internal hardware scaler, which means games that are 720p native can only be shown in 720p or 480p; there is no scaling up to 1080p or 1080i. This causes people with older HDTVs to have issues with the available resolutions, and keeps them from playing the games in anything but 480p. It's a vexing problem for a system that's supposed to be HD, and this issue is one of the most challenging that Sony faces. I ask the Microsoft guys how important it was for them to include a scaler in the 360.
"It was a critical design decision; we wanted the 360 to be high-definition, not just 1080p or some other standard. That's why we included component cables in the box; there is no HDTV that doesn't have a component in," said Greenberg.
They assume that Sony didn't include a hardware scaler to keep costs down, but get a little cagey when I ask how much it costs to put Ana into the 360. "This isn't a $1,000 scaler," Henson says, "but it's a good one."
It was apparently designed at the same time as the GPU, and the effortless scaling with different televisions was something that was important from the early design stages of the system. I ask if they think this is something that Sony can fix in software.
How cool
http://arstechnica.com/articles/headstart.ars/2