PS3 Cell Chip In A Laptop Is Kinda Fun
Just like the rest of us nerds, Toshiba got to wondering what would happen if you put a Playstation 3 Cell processor into a laptop. They put one in one of their Qosimo G45 notebooks, which already sports an Intel Core 2 Duo CPU. They've named the system the Spurs engine. It allows the laptop to react to user hand gestures; scan through all your video files for particular faces and sort them into thumbnail lists; allows you to take a picture of your face and digitally alter it in various ways in 3D; and maybe most interesting, lets you change standard-definition video into sweet, sweet, 1080p.
Toshiba had four demos running, the first of which transformed standard-definition video into 1080p. This takes any grubby-looking 640x480-pixel video -- of the sort you might record with a mobile phone or digital camera -- applies some hardcore image processing, and spits it out a few hours later as full 1080p. The effect was extremely impressive, and proves that you can, to some extent, polish a turd. Toshiba says it's possible to do this using an ordinary Intel Core processor, but the Spurs system speeds things up considerably -- what would take 24 hours with an ordinary laptop can be done in just three hours with the aid of Spurs.
You can watch a video of a demo of the system here; it's worth it just to see the show visitor right behind the host digging around in his nose, unaware of the camera.
Toshiba had four demos running, the first of which transformed standard-definition video into 1080p. This takes any grubby-looking 640x480-pixel video -- of the sort you might record with a mobile phone or digital camera -- applies some hardcore image processing, and spits it out a few hours later as full 1080p. The effect was extremely impressive, and proves that you can, to some extent, polish a turd. Toshiba says it's possible to do this using an ordinary Intel Core processor, but the Spurs system speeds things up considerably -- what would take 24 hours with an ordinary laptop can be done in just three hours with the aid of Spurs.
You can watch a video of a demo of the system here; it's worth it just to see the show visitor right behind the host digging around in his nose, unaware of the camera.
