No. HQ2x texture scaling can be done on the video card. All it takes is a multipass shader, and a HQ2x lookup texture.Just curious; someone mentioned a while back that HQ2X is too complicated to implement as a shader, is that true? Not that I expect you to tackle a monster like that, but it'd be really damn awesome. Especially awesome if it's combined with OpenGL renderer shader support in the near future.
2xSai should be quite straightforward, same with Super2xSai.