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Inside Source Reveal the Truth About Xbox 360 RRoD Failures
>> From blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com:
[QUOTE]
This past week I met and interviewed an individual who has worked on the Xbox 360 project for many years and they had some things that they wanted to get out into the public. I have the fullest confined in the integrity of my confidential source.
* Q: So what do you think the real failure rate of the Xbox 360 is? Some have estimated it as high as 30%. I got my Xbox in early 2007 and so far so good but what do you think the chance is that it's going to die on me one day.
* A: 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.
* Q: In your opinion what do you think the main cause of the Red Ring of Death failures have been?
* A: 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.
* Q: How much more reliable are the current generation of Xbox 360 than the previous designs? Original Xenon, Zypher and Falcon.
* A: I've heard that the failure rates for the current design is sub 10%. Much much better, but still too high imoh. And those designs haven't seen much life yet, so no one knows if that failure rate will hold.
* Q: Do you think that the "Falcon" Xbox 360 design is the final Xbox 360 hardware iteration or will they come out with a redesigned Xbox 360?
* A: They will come out with new hardware at least once a year until they retire this design. That's the console financial model. Keep the features and functionality the same, reduce cost and price, and improve quality if needed. The 360 roadmap always called for SI die shrink and integration, since that's where most of the cost is. Right now they are working to get the GPU and CPU on the same BGA package for the next mobo. Could lower cost, heat, number of heat sinks, mother board size (maybe squeeze the PS inside too), etc. Too bad that they screwed up and forgot to retain the JTAG IEEE 488 test functionality, at least what little they had. Now it will be almost impossible for them to tell if that chip is bad if the unit won't boot in the factory. So they will have to trouble shoot by replacing the most expensive part in the system blindly. They keep repeating bad decisions, and everyone is afraid to push issues considered to be bad news.
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Full Story: blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com
Discuss this news item on our forums: forums.xbox-scene.com
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