Toshiba to ship laptops with Cell-based GPUs this year

So, who, other than people doing tech demos

would ever want 14 images on one screen? Who would want many more than 4 for that matter? This seems to me to be one of the more blatant "here is our solution to a problem we haven't invented", pitches of the past few years.

"For only a few hundred pounds extra, you too can have a multitude of utterly fecking useless features we will ensure you believe you need."

Re. "massively underperform and look enviously"

That's the one running on the ArsEngine, right? Ahem.

Trickle

I remember reading how they had plans to eventually even use it in regulating refrigerators. Wonder how long it will take to get to that stage.

Come on you Spurs

Sorry, thought this was the extreme porn thread.

(Won't bother with coat, just go)

@ Daniel

"Seems to me that if these upscaling algorithms get any better it'll completely obviate the need for Blu Ray - why bother encoding in HD when you can encode in SD and upscale it for the same result?"

BUT upscaling is only stretching and sharpening up the image. you dont get any added clarity from upscaling. the ps3 does upscale bloody well but it cannot compare to a 1080p original

"Actually to take that to it's logical conclusion - an upscaling algorithm of infinite power should be able to take a 1 x 1 pixel encoded image and upscale it to perfect hidef or beyond, meaning that we can store millions of hours of HD film on a 1MB memorystick." - wtf? simply not even feasibly possible. you are asking a chip to 'best guess' what the hell is happening.its not gonna happen.

re: "ArsEngine"

It's great until anything goes wrong, at which point reading the logs becomes a nightmare:

"Didn't see it"

"I did not see it"

"Twas not visible to me"

/reaches for lilywhite jacket

Photos of Toshiba's laptop

Sneak peek at the Toshiba Qosmio that contains the Cell chip:

http://tinyurl.com/6kgxo6

Flippin eck, why didnt they...

Make it so the laptop could play ps3 games, mobile PS3 with a dual boot from either a game disk, or hdd to windoze/linux (switch flick or button press, whatever the luddite needs)

that would be THE seller, its not like consoles havent been integrated into pc's before. wasnt it Amstrad who had a megadrive port in some desktops?

Are they walking away from 3D? I hope Toshiba comes back soon.

All the notbooks I buy have to support 3D & OpenGL2.0. To many programs use it and if you have any graphics to do at all the the lack of it will stop you cold. So no 3D with OpenGL = No support from where I'm standing.

One small step...

Who here does not lament the demise of the PowerPC architecture from the desktop?

Why oh why did IBM abandon ppc64?

It would seem (at least for the moment) we're stuck with IA-32/AMD64/EM64T for the forseable future, at least on desktops.

If there's anyway to end this domination now let's do it. I still live in somewhat despondent hope that one day there will be multicore ppc64's (or even cell derivatives) cheaply available for desktops. BSD/Linux whatever.

And no, the ps3 at the moment just ain't good enough.

@Joe Cooper

Are you sure Daniel was joking? Surely upscaling from one pixel to a whole movie is the basis of Jean-Claude van Damme's cinematic acting career? Taking that to it's logical conclusion you could probably upscale a sub-pixel to encompass the multi-layered and complex thespian talents displayed in Ms Hilton's screen appearances.

You know what? I think I'd rather just sit here watching the sub-pixel for an hour and a half. Or maybe something less painful still like stapling my feet to the floor with a nail gun.