EETimes: When Microsoft announced a mammoth global recall of its Xbox 360 a year ago, the software giant never disclosed the exact source of the game console’s heat problem that led to the fiasco.
Now, Bryan Lewis, research vice president and chief analyst at Gartner, disclosed that the problem started in a graphic chip.
The Xbox 360 recall a year ago happened because “Microsoft wanted to avoid an ASIC vendor,” said Lewis. Microsoft designed the graphic chip on its own, cut a traditional ASIC vendor out of the process and went straight to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, he explained.
But in the end, by going cheap–hoping to save tens of millions of dollars in ASIC design costs, Microsoft ended up paying more than $1 billion for its Xbox 360 recall.
To fix the problem, Microsoft went back to an unnamed ASIC vendor based in the United States and redesigned the chip, Lewis added.
Microsoft did not respond to requests to comment on this story.
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