The codename of the Xbox 360’s main processor was Xenon.
Xenon was a custom IBM PowerPC-based triple-core CPU developed for Microsoft’s second console. It contained three cores running at 3.2 GHz, with each core supporting two hardware threads. This design gave the Xbox 360 substantial parallel-processing capability for its generation.
The processor should not be confused with Xenos, the codename for the Xbox 360’s custom ATI graphics processor. Both names appeared in technical discussions, and their similar spelling makes them an easy pair to mix up.
The Xbox 360 used a unified system architecture in which the CPU and GPU worked with shared system memory. Developers therefore designed games around a different balance of processing resources than on the original Xbox or later Xbox One hardware.