Released a year before its main competitor, the Xbox 360 was already claiming technological superiority over the yet-to-be-seen PlayStation 3. But while the Xbox 360 might be the flagship of the 7th generation, it will need to fight strongly once Nintendo and Sony take up retail space.
This new entry in the console architecture series will give you an additional perspective on how technology was envisioned during the early naughties, with emphasis on the emerging 'multi-core' processor and unorthodox symbiosis between components, all of which enabled engineers to tackle unsolvable challenges with cost-effective solutions.
Highly recommended pre-reading
The first section of this writing (titled 'CPU') makes recurring references to IBM and Sony's joint venture, Cell. If you don't know about that component, I highly suggest that you read my previous article about the PS3 beforehand, the latter is written as if the Xbox 360 never existed. This was intentional to avoid confusing the reader with circular references. Hence, the new article completes the timeline by adding Xbox 360 into the mix.
For those who are already familiar with the PS3's architecture, I've structured this study similar to the PS3 article, so you'll be able to compare both side-by-side objectively if you choose to do so.
Personal video introduction
Because this article is way longer than my previous ones, I also made a quick video where I (attempt to) present this article and give you an idea of the content you will find. You can watch it here. It's my first 'personal introduction', so you'll have to forgive my occasional fillers!