Toshiba announced yesterday they would start sample shipping of the SpursEngine, a high-performance processor that evolved from the Sony/Toshiba Cell Broadband Engine.
The co-processor utilizes four Synergistic Processing Element (SPE) cores to accelerate video streams at a clock frequency of 1.5GHz. It allows full HD encoding and decoding of MPEG-2 and H.264 formats.
After losing at least half a billion dollars on HD DVD technology, the company will now focus on delivering HD content. Toshiba expects to sell at least 6 million units of the SpurEngine within three years.
