Toshiba to put CELL proc in laptop?

[RESmonkey]

http://www.engadget.com/2008/0...as-spursengine-laptop/

What are the benefits of this?

 

[myocardia]

Originally posted by: RESmonkey
What are the benefits of this?

Just a guess, but probably not much at all for the average laptop user. Now, for someone doing scientific calculations, it's probably the answer to their prayers.

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: RESmonkey
What are the benefits of this?

Just a guess, but the link implies it will benefit these:

video transcoding, facial recognition, or the always popular gesture-control

But just like any other add-on card (physics engines, killer nics, etc) the rate-limiting step in the benefits will be the rate of software updates to take advantage of the add-on hardware...which is a catch-22 as the consumer adoption rates of the hardware will determine whether resources are allocated at software houses to release patches to take advantage of the hardware...etc etc

 

[lopri]

Very interesting. I'd assume the OS would be a Linux flavor?

 

[Schadenfroh]

Originally posted by: lopri
Very interesting. I'd assume the OS would be a Linux flavor?

Toshiba's baby went through a series of workouts, trying to be the third teammate, with your CPU & GPU, to speed heavy-duty processing.

Sounds like it is going to be paired with an x86 chip, might be possible to run it in Windows and use drivers for it (like the physics card mentioned above)?