Playstation PSP2 portable rumors

Rumours that first emerged towards the end of last year regarding Imagination Technologies' involvement with a supposed PSP2 portable system have surfaced once again, this time in the form of a quad-core graphics processing unit for the alleged handheld (not to be confused with the officially announced PSP Go).

The unconfirmed reports once again surround Imagination Technologies' SGX range of chipsets, which have been used in palmtops and notebooks in the past as well as Apple's iPhone 3GS.

We've been sceptical over these rumours in the past simply because of the graphical power of the SGX chips. The single-core models are capable of running Quake 3 Arena at 30 FPS, which doesn't even come close to the capability of the current-gen PSP.

Hardware details for the next generation successor to the PSP have been leaked, according to the Spanish edition of Eurogamer.

The new handheld will allegedly feature a PowerVR SGX543MP chip, codenamed 'Hydra', said to resemble the iPhone 3GS's GPU. The Playstation PSP2 will also come with a quad core processor, making it capable of supporting superior graphics to the Xbox.

Of further note is the fact that this 'Hydra' chip can act as a general purpose graphics processing unit (GPGPU), which means that it can effectively operate as both a central processing unit (CPU) and graphical processing unit (GPU).

Chip manufacturing giants Intel, AMD, Nvidia, and ATI are all working GPGPU technology into their high-end products at the moment. The integrated units offer a number of efficiency benefits such as space and power, which would be invaluable for a prospective PSP2 handheld product.

Sony has previously denied that it is working on a follow-up to the PSP, with the system's next iteration, the PSP Go, still yet to be released.

The electronics giant is yet to comment on the hardware leak.

Read our updated PSP repair tutorial list