Toshiba has announced development of the SpursEngine, a high-performance stream processor integrating Synergistic Processing Element (SPE) cores derived from the Cell Broadband Engine (Cell/BE). The SpursEngine is expressly designed to bring the powerful capabilities of Cell/BE technology to consumer electronics, and to take video processing in digital consumer products to new levels of realism and image quality, said Toshiba.
The prototype of SpursEngine will be unveiled at Ceatec Japan 2007, at Makuhari Messe, Japan, from October 2. Notebook PCs integrating SpursEngine will be used in the world's first public demonstration of the processor's capabilities in 3D image processing and manipulation: real-time transformations of hair styles and makeup that instantaneously recognize and process changes in position, angle, and facial expression, and render them as computer graphics. Toshiba also plans to demonstrate concept notebook PCs integrating the SpursEngine.
The new co-processor integrates four of Cell/BE's high-performance RISC core SPEs, half the number of the full configuration, plus hardware dedicated to decoding and encoding MPEG2 and H.264 video. By combining the high level, real-time processing software of the SPEs with the hardware video codecs, the SpursEngine realizes an optimized balance of processing flexibility and low power consumption. The prototype of SpursEngine operates at a clock frequency of 1.5GHz and consumes power at 10-20W.
SpursEngine also adopts XDRTM DRAM memory as working memory, achieving support of high data transfer rates, for large volumes of media data.
Toshiba SpursEngine CPU with SPE core
Photo: Business Wire
