Toshiba’s SpursEngine is a relative to the Cell processor that became famous as the heart of Sony’s PlayStation 3 video game console. The processor has a parallel architecture that is perfect for coding and decoding video signals. This has been used by both notebooks and discrete video cards. Leadtek has announced a new discrete video encoding card called WinFast PxVC1100 that has an extension in the form of an external SpursEngine.
Leadtek HPVC1100 is connected to a PC through the PCI-Express interface and can supply extra power for those handling or editing various video formats.
Beside the SpursEngine HD chip it also sports 128MB Rambus XDR memory for handling formats like H.264/MPEG4-AVC and MPEG2. Exactly what kind of performance Leadtek’s external video coder offers is uncertain, but we have seen some impressive benchmarks with SpursEngine in the past.
The unit measures 194x45x90mm and weighs 0.7kg. The price is yet to be revealed.
