The truth about last year's Xbox 360 recall

. — When Microsoft Corp. 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, in an unlikely venue at Design Automation Conference here, Bryan Lewis, research vice president and chief analyst at Gartner, disclosed that the problem started in a graphic chip. Lewis offered this offhand revelation while discussing the changing ASIC and ASSP landscape for his DAC audience.

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 Co. Ltd., he explained.

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