Leadtek Research, a well-known supplier of graphics cards and visualization solutions, will shortly showcase external Toshiba SpursEngine-based accelerator for mobile computers. The device is aimed at professional developers working on software designed for SpursEngine and will hardly become popular among consumers.

Leadtek’s image and video processing box is based on Leadtek’s WinFast PxVC1100 card that sports Toshiba SpursEngine SE1000 chip and is equipped with 128MB of XDR DRAM memory, but connects to a notebook using ExpressCard interface. Since the original card for desktops is designed for PCI Express x1/x4 slots, the external SpursEngine box will hardly starve from the lack of bandwidth. The external stream processing box weighs 700 grams and is 45mm x 194mm x 90mm (width x depth x height).

Toshiba SpursEngine is a co-processor that integrates four of Cell high-performance RISC core SPEs, half the number of the full configuration, hardware dedicated to decoding and encoding of MPEG-2 and H.264 video, XDR memory interface as well as PCI Express interface.

Toshiba’s SpursEngine processor may be used for various products and in various markets. In the computer industry the SpursEngine may be used for video processing, graphics computations, physics computations and various other applications that involve processing of data streams. Potentially, video professionals may find useful to decode or encode four full-HD (1920x1080 with progressive scan, 1080p) streams at once.

Since very few consumer applications can take advantage of SpursEngine, Leadtek’s stream processing box will hardly become popular among consumers. In fact, since select Toshiba notebooks already feature built-in SpursEngine, the external WinFast PxVC1100 is almost certainly aimed at software developers.

Leadtek will showcase external WinFast PxVC1100 at 12^th Embedded Systems Technology Exhibition  trade-show in Japan on the 15^th of May.

Tags: Leadtek, Toshiba, SpursEngine