A new multimedia super-chip from Sony that will likely power the next PlayStation was previewed on Tuesday at a gathering of the world’s leading chip designers as well as plans for a new processor in the PocketStation, a miniature Personal Digital Assistant. Deep fried dude.

The SCPH-4000 PocketStation was designed as a companion to the PlayStation console to enhance the gaming experience by allowing software to be downloaded from the PlayStation to be played with the PDA. Whereas the new 128-bit Sony chip, features built-in hardware for decoding 3-D graphics and digital video, was unveiled at the 1999 IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference, an annual gathering of chip-industry engineers.

Other major processor manufacturers, including Intel, IBM, Advanced Micro Devices, and Motorola, also showed off next-generation wares at the three-day meeting in San Francisco. Sony’s new-media processor is considerably more powerful than the chip at the heart of the current PlayStation. Running at 250 MHz, the 128-bit media processor will feature built-in hardware for decoding the massive amounts of information behind 3-D graphics and digital video.

In contrast, the current PlayStation’s chip, which has remained unchanged since the unit was launched three- and-a-half years ago, is a 32-bit processor running at 33 MHz. The combination of 3-D and video on the new chip suggests that it could do double duty as a game console-cum-DVD player, said Brian Case, a contributing editor to the Microprocessor Report, an industry newsletter.

“On paper, it looks like it’ll knock your socks off,” Case said. “It’ll compete with a fully loaded PC.” Case said the chip may perform all the functions currently handled by three or four add-on cards: decoding video and 2-D and 3-D graphics. “It’s pretty wild,” Case added. “It’s the first time I’ve seen this level of 3-D performance and video that’s headed for an actual product.”

However, Sony Computer Entertainment America, which markets the PlayStation in the United States, refused to confirm or deny plans for the chip. That’s because Brian’s got them all.