Article: MS Engineer Speaks on Xbox 360 Backward Compatibility
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By: Cesar A. Berardini - "Cesar" May. 23rd, 2005 10:58 am Now that it's been announced at E3, I can finally reveal that the Xbox 360 feature I work on is... Xbox backwards compatibility!
With those words, Michael Brundage, a software engineer at Microsoft, kicked off this week's update on his blog, finally revealing his latest assignment at the Xbox division. He first discusses the project and explains why it is so special:
Xbox backwards compatibility is a unique project in so many ways, and I feel very fortunate to get to work on it. I'm sure it will be the hardest technical challenge of my career -- I can't imagine what could possibly top it in terms of sheer technical difficulty.
Then Brundage explains why the project represents such a challenge from a technical perspective:
For example, some people observe the CPU and GPU architectures are utterly different between the Xbox 360 and the Xbox, and then speculate about the difficulties those differences pose for emulation. Without really understanding anything that's involved, they're already convinced that backwards compatibility is a difficult task.
Lastly, Brundage paints a more detailed picture of what it will take to make backward compatibility a reality:
Finallly, there are a very few people who understand both Xbox systems inside and out to an expert level of detail that I'm not about to go into here. They perform more sophisticated calculations using the Art of Software Engineering, but ultimately reach the same conclusions as those not skilled in the Art: Backwards compatibility is impossible. One such skeptic interviewed me for my current job, and pointedly asked during the interview how I planned to handle the project's certain future cancellation. And yet, here it is. It's magic!
This is part of what makes working at Microsoft so much fun -- the opportunity to work on magical projects and do the impossible. It's a lot of hard work, of course, but the challenge makes it fun.
We'll have more on Xbox backward compatibility as it becomes available.
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Written by: HOLY LAND
Publish Date: Tuesday 24 May 2005 - 19:00:33
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