Sony picks up graphics tech for PSP

Sony on Tuesday said it has licensed graphics compression technology from S3 Graphics for its PlayStation Portable, a handheld gaming unit set to come out later this year in Japan and in 2005 to North America. Specifically, Sony licensed the S3 Graphics? S3TC texture compression technology that aims to maintain texture and detail in compressed images. S3 was once one of the largest producers of graphics chips. The company has since then formed an alliance with Taiwan's Via Technologies to create chipsets.

Earlier this month, Sony provided a glimpse of some of the specs for its handheld game player. The 333MHz processor that controls the unit will contain separate cores for handling graphics and media tasks.