Toshiba today announced development of the SpursEngine, a high-performance stream processor integrating Synergistic Processing Element (SPE) cores derived from the Cell Broadband Engine. The SpursEngine is expressly designed to bring the powerful capabilities of the Cell/B.E. technology to consumer electronics, and to take video processing in digital consumer products to new levels of realism and image quality. SpursEngine, a co-processor that works in cooperation with a host CPU, fuses Cell/B.E.’s high performance multi-core technology with Toshiba’s advanced image processing technology to perform stream processing of video sources–image recognition and processing–at the increasingly sophisticated level required by new generations of digital consumer products. The prototype of Toshiba SpursEngine operates at a clock frequency of 1.5GHz and consumes power at 10 to 20 watts.
The prototype of Toshiba SpursEngine will be unveiled at CEATEC JAPAN 2007, at Makuhari Messe, Japan, from October 2nd. 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 will bring SpursEngine to market after CEATEC, for application in various digital consumer products, and for use by customers and Toshiba itself, as soon as it completes specifications for commercial production.
