Monday, June 09, 2008

Toshiba aims to deliver laptops with Cell-based graphics this year (not using Intel graphics)

Toshiba has been touting its Cell-based SpursEngine graphics chip for some time now, but it looks like its finally starting to get a bit more specific about when we can expect to see it in actual products. According to Register Hardware, Toshiba will begin offering the chip in some of its multimedia-oriented notebooks sometime this year, with TVs and DVD players set to get it by the fall of 2009. The chip itself, for those not up to speed, uses its Cell-based technology (specifically, four of the Cell's Synergistic Processing Element cores) to handle some heavy-duty graphics processing, including upscaling standard definition content to high-def levels, something Toshiba has apparently taken to calling "super-resolution." Now word on what sort of premium (if any) we can expect to pay for such wonders, but Toshiba is apparently betting pretty heavily on the technology as part of its post HD DVD strategy.