Toshiba showcases the next generation PC at CEATEC JAPAN 2007
Toshiba showcases the next generation PC at CEATEC JAPAN 2007
Toshiba (PC & Network Company, hereafter "Toshiba") displayed "Qosmio" PCs that are equipped with stream processor "SpursEngine" and exemplify the next generation PC at CEATEC JAPAN 2007, held at Makuhari Messe in Chiba Prefecture, from October 2nd to 6th (Figure 1). Toshiba has reduced the main CPU load by 50% or more and allowed to run advanced editing of images and/or image recognition at high speed, by executing these tasks, which have been conventionally performed by the main CPU, with SpursEngine. Evolution of general-purpose processors has greatly helped develop the PC through the 1980s to 1990s. Through the 1990s to early 2000s, such applications as games required the 3D graphics processing performance, and graphics processors were equipped in addition to the general-purpose processors. In the future, high-definition (HD) video editing and image recognition capability will be required for the PC. To that, a high operation performance, which surpasses the throughput of the main CPU, is indispensable. Consequently, a dedicated processing engine is needed to run video stream processing and recognition processing.
SpursEngine that Toshiba employed this time has four SPEs, which are integrated on the Cell Broadband Engine (Cell/B.E.), for data processing. (For more details on SpursEngine, refer to "Toshiba Unveils 'SpursEngine': the Processor that inherits the Cell's architecture.") By suppressing the number of on-chip SPEs and operating frequency to the half of the Cell/B.E., Toshiba reduced the chip's power consumption such that laptop PCs can be equipped with it. Mr. Masubuchi, Director of Advanced SoC Development Center, System LSI Division, Toshiba Semiconductor Company, engaged in the development of SpursEngine, says "it was most difficult to balance the performance and power consumption when developing SpursEngine."
Four Demonstrations, Showcasing the Next Generation PC
Toshiba showed four demonstrations using video editing and image recognition features at the CEATEC venue. The first demonstration is of "Super Resolution Technology" that transforms the standard quality (or SD: 720*480 pixels) video image into the high-definition (full HD: 1920*1080 pixels) image quality. In this demonstration, SD images that were compressed in MPEG-4AVC/H.264 were decoded and up-converted to the full HD image for display on the PC screen. In the booth, they compared the both images up-converted by the conventional technology and by the Super Resolution technology (Figure 2).
SpursEngine is used for this series of such data processing. When a PC without a SpursEngine is used, it takes more than 10 times of the decoding time to encode full HD video. PCs powered by SpursEngine can encode full HD video images in real-time and thus are expected to accelerate full HD video editing works such as that in AVCHD.
The second is a demo that is called "Face Navigation" (Figure 3). When recording a TV program with Qosmio, it creates thumbnails of the performers' faces simultaneously. Clicking on the face of the performer who is displayed as the thumbnail, it can play back from the scene in which the performer appeared. This way, it is possible for a viewer to find out a desired scene instantly out of a lengthy video and play it back from the scene. SpursEngine recognizes the faces of performers and is used for the data processing to create the thumbnails.
The third demonstration is of the "Gesture Interface Remote-Controller" (Figure 4). It recognizes motions of a human hand and finger in real-time using the PC camera, and the motions (i.e., hand gestures) are used to operate the PC. For example, when you grasp a hand to form a fist (the form of "rock" of rock-paper-scissors) towards the camera, a menu window appears on the screen and allows you to operate the cursor. In this condition, as you move your hand up and down or left and right, the cursor moves according to the movement of your hand. A thumb up executes a click. SpursEngine is used for the recognition processing for the hand gesture.
Finally, the forth is a demonstration, called "FACEMATION," in which the system recognizes a human face and displays the face of the person on the PC after changing their makeup and hairstyle, all in real-time (Figure 5). This demo, the same as was demonstrated using the Cell/B.E. at CEATEC last year, is run on the laptop PC powered by SpursEngine this year. In this demo, SpursEngine is used to recognize the facial directions and motions to the face of the person who took the photograph with the camera.
When this processing is performed with the main CPU only, the CPU utilization becomes 80 percent or more of processing. Moreover, the frame rate drops to the half. By using SpursEngine, the CPU utilization can be reduced to 30 to 40 percent even with the frame rate of 30 fps (frame per second).
By their exhibition this time, Toshiba showed that a PC with a stream-processing engine is very effective for full HD video editing and/or image recognition. In the near future, commercialization of PCs powered by SpursEngine seems like the focal point of the HD video processing in the industry and among the PC users.
(Nobuyuki Miyazaki, TechnoAssociates, Inc.)