Posted on Saturday, October 04 2008 @ 19:21 CEST by Thomas De Maesschalck
Leadtek
showed off its WinFast PxVC1100, this is one of the first dedicated video cards with the Cell-based SpursEngine chip from Toshiba. According to Leadtek, this card enables faster than real-time HD video transcoding.
The WinFast PxVC1100 is based on Toshiba’s Toshiba’s SpursEngine SE1000 processor, which is a cut-down version of the Cell chip. The SpursEngine chip features four SPEs (synergistic processing elements) based on 128-bit RISC cores, along with H.264 and MPEG-2 codecs, but it doesn’t contain its own CPU as the chip in the PS3 does. The chip is capable of encoding and decoding H.264, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 video streams in hardware.
Leadtek’s low-profile card also comes with 128MB of 1.6GHz XDR memory, and has a one-slot cooler. According to Leadtek, the card can be installed in 1x and 4x PCI-E slots, and it also requires external power from a four-pin floppy drive power connector. The company hasn’t revealed the clock speed of the SpursEngine chip on the card, although the SPEs in Toshiba’s SpursEngine-equipped laptops run at 1.5GHz. Leadtek says that the card will enable both encoding and transcoding at speeds that are ‘faster than real-time.’
