PS3 Graphics Chips Going To Toshiba?

Reuters reports that Sony is in talks with the Toshiba Corporation regarding a possible sale of Sony hardware facilities in the Oita region of Japan. These facilities are responsible for the production of graphics chips that are used in the PlayStation 3.

This follows Tuesday's news of a partnership between Sony and Infineon Technologies (a German semiconductor manufacturer), to design dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chips. Under the partnership, Sony will team up with Qimonda (who're part of Infineon) to produce the chips for products such as cameras and mobile phones.

There were rumours last month that Sony is planning to sell semiconductor assets to Toshiba, which included some of their facilities that produce the Cell microprocessor at the heart of the PS3. According to these rumours, any possible sale came with the caveat that Sony would still have a ready supply of Cell chips for the PS3, which presumably would be the case with any sale of the graphics chips facilities as well.

This recent activity reflects restructuring that is being undertaken by the electronics giant, in order to re-focus their hardware production after their chip operations became unprofitable last year.