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Toshiba announces new Cell-based video processor

27 September 2007 23:34 by Rich "vurbal" Fiscus | 10 comments

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

Permalink to this article

CES 2008: Toshiba shows power of cell processor in HDTVs (10 January 2008)

It looks like game over for Sony's CPU business (7 November 2007)

Sony selling Cell BE chip facility to Toshiba? (18 September 2007)

Sony gets sued for Cell processor (31 July 2007)

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Discuss this article!
chaos_zzz (Junior Member) 28 September 2007 6:53
first :) this could allow cellphones to be evenn more usefull but hi-def video will require more storage on the celphone wich will make it very expensive cuz of the higher cam and everything. anyway it's great news [ + quote]
mauro125 (Newbie) 28 September 2007 8:38
where in the article does it say it's anything about cellphones?? its talking about makin a video card w a cell chip in it. [ + quote]
sk8flawzz (Member) 28 September 2007 14:03
hes thinking OUTSIDE the box..thinking this chip could be used in cell phones for HD playback and/or recording.. [ + quote]
eLeCTR0n (Member) 28 September 2007 15:47
i am interested to see what this thing can do [ + quote]
connectr (Newbie) 28 September 2007 19:51
This could be the device to help us finally to get to the 3-D viewers we have all hoped for years. If not all of the way, at least a goodly piece. [ + quote]
xhardc0re (Senior Member) 29 September 2007 10:48
i dunno about u guys but i want a cell-based video camera & video capture card. [ + quote]
dorkydork (Newbie) 29 September 2007 12:58
imagine if they combined it with microvisions micro projector http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/08/hands...tty-projector/. i imagine if they put it on a graphics card it could be used to render 3d images quicker than a pc by itself. [ + quote]
plazma247 (Newbie) 29 September 2007 15:21
sk8flawzz your never going to see the cell in mobile devices until someone comes up with a more powerful battery, its going to draw to much juice. [ + quote]
borhan9 (AfterDawn Addict) 1 October 2007 4:58
This is going to be at least a reliable piece of technology. [ + quote]
DXR88 (Member) 8 November 2007 12:27
Ill say it again no matter what its use if people cant develop for it. it will be useless However the best thing sony did was release it to toshiba mabey it will become more popular to the masses. the more people that pick it up the easeir the development will be. [ + quote]