We’ve been hearing rumors for months now but until today, Sony had sworn up and down that it planned to keep a tight grip on its Cell CPU division, despite the fact that it’s been bleeding cash like there’s no tomorrow. Looks like that was all nonsense: as expected, Sony has announced the sale of its Cell microprocessor-manufacturing plants to rival Japanese electronics conglomerate Toshiba. Sony stands to make a cool $1 billion on the sale and plans to engage in a CPU-manufacturing joint venture with Toshiba following the sale, which is expected to be finalized in March. Sony has been losing money on the expensive Cell chip for some time now and efforts to find a market for the chip outside of the lagging Playstation 3 game console have been largely unsuccessful. 

For more on the deal:
– see this report from the AFP