Creating an Exciting New Gaming Experience

The assignment was simple: create the computer chip that would power the most exciting video game console on the market.

The second assignment complicated things: create another computer chip that would power a competing video game console, and make it as exciting.

That's where it got interesting for Lexington native and University of Kentucky graduate David Shippy and his team of engineers at IBM.  Shippy, the chief architect for the company's microprocessor team for games, had to strike the delicate balance of creating high-speed, graphically powerful microprocessors for competing companies.

"I was managing diverse, multicultural teams that were designing the platforms for both of these machines," says Shippy, who earned his electrical engineering degree from the UK College of Engineering in 1983.  (He received his master's from Syracuse University four years later.)

Shippy already had been leading a team on the next generation of Sony's video-game platform, PlayStation 3, when he was handed another assignment.

"Microsoft came along and said, 'we want you to design a chip for us,'" Shippy recalls.  That was for the game console that became Xbox 360.

Xbox 360 was released in late 2005, while PlayStation 3 came out a year later.

Today, Shippy is vice president of engineering of Austin, Texas-based Intrinsity, a firm that designs high-performance microprocessors for mobile phones and other products.  

He is also co-author of the book "The Race for a New Game Machine: Creating the Chips Inside the Xbox 360 & the PlayStation 3."  Mickie Phipps, who was part of his IBM team, is his co-author.

It's the story of teams that wanted to make each assigned project an example of excellence.

"Our goal for both of the game consoles was to make their performance an order of magnitude higher than previous game machines.  Our job was to make the microprocessors run as fast as possible," Shippy says.

The results are two machines that provide extraordinarily realistic graphics -- "golf" that lets you watch a ball ripple through grass on a fairway, races that make the cars skid in turns, warfare that can leave you shell-shocked.

Shippy, a 1979 graduate of Lafayette High School and son of now-retired engineering Professor David Shippy, recalls his youth as a Lexington native, when games were much slower.  He remembers Pong, the computer table-tennis game that let players bat a square dot back and forth at a leisurely pace.

Games were a bit more sophisticated when he was at UK, attending electrical engineering courses under a young professor named Lee T. Todd Jr. 

“David Shippy was a bright student when I had the opportunity to teach him. He was one of those students you knew would be a success,” says Todd, now the University of Kentucky president. 

“Engineering is in his blood, as his father was a splendid UK engineering faculty member. For many of us who saw David in his early engineering years, I can’t say we are too surprised by his success. But it is certainly a thrill to see what he has achieved in his career. I hope he is proud because his alma mater surely is,” Todd adds.

Over time, games continued to improve. But when Shippy started his projects, he noticed "a lot of the game characters were herky-jerky, not realistic."

Years later, Shippy competes with his sons, Grant, 11, and Reed, 7, on the consoles he helped create.

"My older son likes to brag that he got the first 360 on the block.  I'd been given one a few months before they were released."

"They both love to play, and they both play well," Shippy says.