The Mecury News believes the Xbox 360 is due for another internal component revamp come next August. Microsoft has already planned for the Xbox 360 CPU to undergo a shift to 65 nanometer production, and these new "Falcon" processors are now beginning to make their way into actual hardware starting with the Elite edition consoles.

Next on the plate will be the Xbox 360's motherboard itself. Codenamed "Jasper", the redesigned motherboard will accomodate a new 65nm GPU from ATI, and "smaller memory chips". The shrink in component sizes is beneficial to Microsoft because of reduced production costs, but perhaps of greater importance to gamers is improved thermal efficiency from the smaller parts. Even Microsoft has acknowledged that the previous incarnations of the Xbox 360 have more than a few thermal issues leading to the "red ring of death" so dreaded by consumers, and the move towards Falcon and Jasper could be the company's first steps in finally tackling these in earnest.

Jasper is the code name for the next motherboard for the Xbox 360. It will becoming next August, in time for next year’s holiday season. Jasper is going to have a 65-nanometer graphics chip from ATI Technologies, as well as smaller memory chips. That isn’t much information, but it’s enough to tell us about their cost-reduction plan. If you ask me, it’s a bit of a slow pace.

I don’t know why it will take Microsoft essentially three years to cost reduce the size of the graphics chip through a manufacturing shrink. It doesn’t seem like they’re in a hurry to launch a redesigned Xbox 360 graphics chip, considering that Intel introduced its first 65-nm chips a long time ago. ATI uses TSMC to make its chips out of Taiwan, and TSMC hasn’t been the fastest at moving to 65-nm manufacturing. I understand these tasks are difficult and they take a lot of engineering resources. Microsoft has had to divert a lot of engineers to debugging problems with Xbox 360 reliability. Even so, you would think that they would have moved faster, since the move to 65-nm graphics chip will likely be one of the best things they can do to improve the reliability.