Joystiq.com, XbitLabs are tipping the west off that China Economic News Service is reporting that three Taiwanese companies have been given the contracts to help manufacture, test and deliver chip and sub components to the Xbox 360 manufacturing efforts. I really need to start reading the China Economic News Service on a more regular basis since they have been the source for a lot of interesting information about what electronics manufacturing Microsoft and others are planning to do in Chinese speaking Asia (Mainland China, Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan).

The report named Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), Advanced Semiconductor Engineering, and Nanya as being on the Xbox manufacturing gravy train.

This would put the Jasper motherboard on track to be manufactured in August. That means that I am probably going to be buying a new Xbox 360 in early September. The Jasper motherboard is going to feature a 65nm CPU and 65nm GPU that is going to use less power, generate less heat, have a quieter cooling system and hopefully not melt down and die in a marathon session of Gears of War 2.

Now the report also named TSMC as a candidate to manufacture the Valhalla unified CPU/GPU super chip but I am not so sure that they are going to get it done by winter 2009 and we might not see it until early 2010. The things that I've learned puts them in the early stages of working on the Valhalla chip set and it is essentially a new CPU/GPU and is going to require a new motherboard, cooling systems and testing regimen for it. That would give them about 20 months to completely rework the Xbox 360 chipset to get Valhalla finished by Winter holiday shopping season 2009. If you see Nick Baker or Todd Holmdahl offer to buy them an espresso cause they have a lot of work to do.

I am currently reading Dean Takahashi's two book on the making of the Xbox and the Xbox 360.