Toshiba today announced the start of sample shipping of the SpursEngineSE1000, a high-performance stream processor integrating four Synergistic Processing Element (SPE) cores derived from the “Cell Broadband Engine. Toshiba 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.
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. Toshiba feels that SpursEngine will accelerate the market for full-HD applications. Toshiba expects sales of 6 million units within the first three years of the SpursEngine’s release.
