Why is there a PS3 in my laptop?

Darius Chang | May 12, 2008

After its failed attempt at dominating the next-generation optical standard, Toshiba still refuses to toe the same technological line as its competitors. According to reports, the Japanese company is taking a gamble on the same technology which powers the PlayStation 3 (PS3) and hopes this will find a new home in Qosmio entertainment laptops.

The SpursEngine SE1000 chip is a quad-core processor (the PS3's chip has eight cores) whose main purpose--beside general computing tasks--is encoding and decoding high-def content. Sounds perfect for entertainment portables, right? Well, hold your horses because software and gaming companies will need to optimize their codes to take full advantage of this new chip.

How likely will the SpursEngine SE1000 succeed in the competitive mobile processor and graphics market? With Intel's upcoming Larrabee processor taking on both processing and video duties while Nvidia and AMD/ATI continue being heavyweights in the graphics arena, this may turn out to be an even bigger battle than the HD-DVD/Blu-ray war.

Via Register Hardware

Filed under: Notebooks
Leave a comment | Bookmark | Share