WinFast HPVC1100 is world's first external SpursEngine encoder

Toshiba's Cell-based SpursEngine HD video co-processor has made plenty of appearances within monstrous gaming machines, but this marks the very first time where it has stepped out of the laptop chassis and into a portable enclosure. Granted, the language barrier is killing us here, but it seems as if the Leadtek WinFast HPVC1100 wraps a SpursEngine encoder into an on-the-go solution that can be lugged around with a standard laptop in order to churn through video while on set, in the field or on the road. Other specs include 128MB of RAM, a PCI-Express slot and a weight of 1.54 pounds; there's no word just yet on pricing or availability. One more shot is after the break.

[Via Akihabara News]

[DrXym Posted May 12th 2009 11:26AM]

I'd love a fast way to encode AVC but it'd have to be pluggable into a toolchain such as MeGUI. It's too bad something like SPURs / Cell isn't embedded into graphics cards because a general purpose, brutally fast number cruncher would be useful for so many things - encoding, physics, animation, effects etc.

[(Unverified) Posted May 12th 2009 1:17PM]

It already is integrated into at least two video cards; one is the Leadtek Winfast PxVC 1100. I can't remember who makes the second, but it runs about $600 USD. They're supposed to be optimized for video encoding with TMPGEnc 4.0 XPress.