Toshiba has begun to ship its SpursEngine SE1000 image processor - while that might not ring a bell with you, it is actually a similar processor that is found in your PS3, which also translates to having this images processor offering superior performance where MPEG-2, MPEG-4 AVC/H.265 hardware encoding/decoding is concerned. Samples have already started to ship, and Toshiba is pretty optimistic about sales, projecting around half a dozen million units moved within the first three years of the SpursEngine’s release.

Here’s an excerpt from the press release :-

SpursEngine is a co-processor that integrates a hardware codec for Full HD encoding and decoding of MPEG-2 and H.264 streams with four SPEs derived from Cell/B.E. These advanced processing elements offer high performance media streaming capabilities, with a clock frequency of 1.5GHz, while achieving low power consumption range of 10W to 20W.

Yoshio Masubuchi, Director of Toshiba’s System LSI Division mentioned, “We are very pleased to have started sample shipping of SpursEngine. The design of this powerful co-processor is dedicated to bringing the advanced capabilities of the Cell/B.E.™ to consumer electronics, particularly video processing in digital consumer products. We are sure that SpursEngine will accelerate the market for full-HD applications.”

Toshiba will be offering support for developers who are currently working hard on SpursEngine applications, assisting them with a comprehensive reference kit that consists of a reference board and essential middleware APIs. The reference board itself comes with a PCI-Express edge connector which can be hooked up to an x1 layer slot in a PC. Toshiba won’t be stopping there though, providing an integrated development environment (SPE compiler, SPE debugger, and performance monitor) and sample applications in order to show the way on using the provided middleware. I wonder when will the first notebooks and desktops feature this new processor?

Source: Akihabaranews