Leadtek Loads four SpursEngine Video Processors on One Board

Monday, September 6th 2010

Leadtek has decided to make its SpursEngine video processor more palatable to production houses and studios, by multiplying its performance by four. SpursEngine accelerates video encoding/decoding performance of full HD MPEG-2 or MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 videos many times over compared to the CPU, it uses the CELL Broadband Engine architecture, the same which is used in supercomputers, PlayStation 3, and HDTVs in various forms. The WinFast HPCC1111 from Leadtek uses four SpursEngine chips on a single board, that connects to the system over a PCIe bridge chip, through PCI-Express x4. With the new HPCC1111, one can encode full HD MPEG-2, or MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 in real time, or even faster than real time, if the rest of the hardware permits. SpursEngine has already made its way to single-chip cards and mobile workstations. Scheduled to release in Japan this September, the HPCC1111 is expected to cost JP ¥99,000 (US $1,175).

Source: Akihabara News

posted by btarunr - 4:08 AM | Related News |

User comments

by PVTCaboose1337 (4:14 AM) - Reply

That card looks REALLY tall. Not to mention expensive! I fail to understand why PCI-E 4x was chosen over 16x, especially for this price. I know it won't make THAT much of a difference, but when you have that much power on 1 board, I just think it might. In addition, for that price, why do you need 4 small fans and heatsinks when you could do a large HS (and cover the memory!) and a 120mm fan?

by Sir Alex Ice (4:46 AM) - Reply

In translation: Leadtek has a huge load of these crappy castraded PS3 cell engine chips, and are trying to sell them. Don't worry, the single chip version of this did not sell at all either. Why? Because both Nvidia and ATI have hardware encoding solutions, much cheaper and much more powerful.

by Steevo (5:54 AM) - Reply

My issue isn 't with h.264 it is with AVCHD that uses h.264. Adobe makes crap all support for it, and Canon uses (Pixela) with codecs that rely on the CPU. My ATI 5870 despite being newer than my camcorder still won't convert and or downscale the video in hardware. Go ATI..... or not. This is just a crap idea that is already being done half assed by other companies. We need standardization to codecs and video data, then we need it supported. Amazing to think in the year 2010, almost 2011 and we are still fighting this crap with multiple manufacturers.

by Mussels (6:23 AM) - Reply

by: Sir Alex Ice
In translation: Leadtek has a huge load of these crappy castraded PS3 cell engine chips, and are trying to sell them. Don't worry, the single chip version of this did not sell at all either. Why? Because both Nvidia and ATI have hardware encoding solutions, much cheaper and much more powerful.

nvidia and ATI's solutions are very limited in what they support for hardware accelerated playback, and encoding settings. while i have no proof, this MAY be more compatible - and could be faster. this is the kind of thing you shove in a workstation that crunches encodings all day, like say, a server that records from security cameras.

by W1zzard (7:58 AM) - Reply

by: PVTCaboose1337
I fail to understand why PCI-E 4x was chosen over 16x, especially for this price. I know it won't make THAT much of a difference, but when you have that much power on 1 board, I just think it might.

do the math and you will understand

by inferKNOX (11:02 AM) - Reply

by: W1zzard
do the math and you will understand

LOL, just had to do that!:nutkick:

by Baum (11:30 AM) - Reply

this thing is more a coprocessor with limited support... i know someone with a leadtek card that looked like a gpu but features a single cell processor, and that card helps decoding/encodig any h.264 as log it's codec is loaded and he semed to be statisfied with it..... the pricetag is just massive?? I could have SLI Nvidia array for that ..

by pantherx12 (12:09 PM) - Reply

by: Steevo
My issue isn 't with h.264 it is with AVCHD that uses h.264. Adobe makes crap all support for it, and Canon uses (Pixela) with codecs that rely on the CPU. My ATI 5870 despite being newer than my camcorder still won't convert and or downscale the video in hardware. Go ATI..... or not. This is just a crap idea that is already being done half assed by other companies. We need standardization to codecs and video data, then we need it supported. Amazing to think in the year 2010, almost 2011 and we are still fighting this crap with multiple manufacturers.

have you tried installing ATI stream?

by lism (4:32 PM) - Reply

by: Baum
this thing is more a coprocessor with limited support... i know someone with a leadtek card that looked like a gpu but features a single cell processor, and that card helps decoding/encodig any h.264 as log it's codec is loaded and he semed to be statisfied with it..... the pricetag is just massive?? I could have SLI Nvidia array for that ..

Consider this card to be for the top tier of hardware with excellent driver support. Same as buying a Quaddro or FireGL from AMD. Both basicly are the same chips but operate at another level with much better support for drivers.

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