Rich Fiscus
27 Sep 2007 23:34
Toshiba is planning to unveil a new video processing product based on the Cell processor that powers Sony's PlayStation3. The Cell processor was developed in a joint venture from Sony, Toshiba, and IBM. The product, dubbed SpursEngine, will be the only the second product introduced that takes advantage of the technology.
SpursEngine is basically a stripped down Cell running at 1.5GHz with MPEG-2 and H.264 (AVC) decoding hardware added. It's designed to fit on a small peripheral card for a computer.
Toshiba apparently intends to use SpursEngine to create some kind of new GPU. They company's announcement earlier this week mentioned a demo planned for Japan that will involve capturing images of faces from the audience and turned into 3D models, but didn't elaborate.
No details have been released regarding the card's intended use. Since the market for making 3D models of faces is fairly small, it will be interesting to see what else it can do. At the very least it might potentially be a good hardware solution for hi-def video playback - something that many people's computer hardware isn't capable of on its own.
This announcement may explain some recent rumors. As we reported earlier this month, Sony is apparently considering selling a chip manufacturing plant to Toshiba. The factory in question makes Cell processors for the PS3, so it would be a logical place to make SpursEngine chips as well.
Source: Ars Technica