Toshiba working on new notebook with Cell processor

Toshiba is currently working on a new notebook that will feature a variant of the Cell processor, the same chip used in Sony’s Playstation. The new Qosmio G40 should be released this year.

The new notebook will be equipped with a Spursengine SE1000 chip, a Cell stream processor also used in the PS3, reports cnet. Cell is a microprocessor architecture developed by IBM, Sony, and Toshiba. The architecture is derived from IBM’s Power Architecture, which was once used in Apple’s notebooks and desktops. Today, IBM uses the Cell processor in a line of blade servers.

Toshiba has already started shipping samples of the SE1000 chips on April 8. The SE1000 was developed by Toshiba to speed up various graphics tasks. For example, the chip can encode and decode real-time HD video with MPEG2 and H.264 compression or handle motion detection for alternative interfaces. The chip, which is intended as a supplement to both CPUs and GPUs, has four spe-cores that do their graphics calculations with a clock speed of 1.5GHz. According to the manufacturer, the energy consumption of the chip is limited to 20W.

Toshiba expects to be able to sell at least six million SE1000 chips over the next three years, mainly to producers of graphics cards and televisions. The company has since entered into partnerships with Corel, Cyberlink and Leadtek, among others. Toshiba will also release a pci-e reference card and make a complete API suite available to interested developers. According to Cnet, Toshiba would also be the first television with the Cell processor later this year.