Toshiba to make SpursEngine an open platform - SDK to be released for free and multiple SpursEngine cards to run in parallel

Toshiba to make SpursEngine an open platform
SDK to be released for free and multiple SpursEngine cards to run in parallel

Figure 1: SpursEngine start-up, an event held by Toshiba

　Toshiba Semiconductor Company hosted their private event, SpursEngine start-up! at Caffe Solare Linuxcafe in Akihabara, Tokyo, on Saturday, December 6th (Figure 1).

　Released by Toshiba and SpursEngine partners at the event include: (1) SpursEngine SDK (Software Development Kit) will be available publicly for free; (2) multi-SpursEngine processing will be supported; and (3) roadmaps of application software supporting SpursEngine that will be released in the future.

　SpursEngine is a stream processor Toshiba developed based on Cell/B.E. So far, Toshiba (PC& Network Company) developed a couple of SpursEngine-powered models of Qosmio, entertainment notebook PC. Two other companies, Taiwan's Leadtek Research and Thomson Canopus, developed and started shipping PCI-Express cards powered by a SpursEngine SE1000 chip. As for the application software, software venders such as Corel, CyberLink, Thomson Canopus, and CRI Middleware had announced they would develop video editing software, encoder and so forth, supporting SpursEngine.

Shift to open platform with free SDK publicly available

　First, the most significant announcement was the SDK to be publicly available for free. So far, Toshiba had been conservative as to their SDK distribution and had loaned the SDK to developers who had some deals or contracts with Toshiba. Toshiba's such policy has drastically changed with this announcement.

　The SDK will be available in December through Leadtek's website. It includes four features: high-speed encoding; high-speed transcoding; face detection; and SPE programming. The middleware for Super Resolution (sort of upconversion) technology and hand gesture interface is excluded this time. This SDK will allow the users to develop applications such as FACEMATION or Face Navigation, already released so far.

　Mr. Kenichi Mori, Toshiba Advanced SoC Development Center, gave no comment as to Super Resolution and stated the hand gesture interface middleware was tough and inadequate for general developers to use, as the reason not to release this time.
　However, as for the super resolution, a plug-in for Windows Media Player for super resolution playback will be included in the SDK. Also, he mentioned that they would consider to release the middleware for hand gesture interface if requested, which would suggest that they had done their best possible for the SpursEngine users after all.

Figure 2: Mr. Kenichi Mori, Advanced SoC Development Center, Toshiba

Figure 3: Mr. Furuyama, Manager at Advanced SoC Technical Marketing, Toshiba, explains parallel processing with multiple SpursEngine processors

Mr. Furuyama, Manager at Advanced SoC Technical Marketing, Toshiba, explains parallel processing with multiple SpursEngine processors

Figure 4: Mr. Ishikura, Thomson Canopus, explains parallel processing with multiple FIRECODER Blu boards

　Also, although insisting it was his personal hope, Mr. Mori hinted on SpursEngine's support for OpenCL at the end of his lecture. OpenCL is a C-language based, generic computation library and technology, proposed by Apple and currently standardized by CPU or GPU manufacturers, application venders, and so forth. Mr. Mori stated that it would be possible to develop application code functional on any of CPU, GPU, or SpursEngine if SpursEngine officially supported OpenCL (Figure 2).

Multiple SpursEngine boards to enable parallel video processing

　Secondly, technologically significant announcement was that multiple SpursEngine boards would run in parallel to increase the entire system performance for video processing in a scalable manner (Figure 3). During this event, Thomson Canopus officially announced they would support this parallel processing technology with FIRECODER Blu, their PCI-Express board product powered by SpursEngine (Figure 4).

　SpursEngine has four SPEs (Synergistic Processing Elements), half of Cell/B.E., and the operating frequency is 1.5 GHz, also about the half. Therefore, the processing performance and power consumption of SpursEngine is approximately one-forth of Cell/B.E. This is because SpursEngine was developed as an accelerator for media processing in PCs and/or information appliances.

　When utilizing the parallel processing technique with multiple SpursEngine disclosed in this event, for example, the video processing performance can be doubled with two SpursEngine boards equipped within a PC.

　In the graphic processing for the PC, NVIDIA has technology called "Scalable Link Interface," and AMD/ATI "Crossfire," respectively, both of which speed graphics by parallel processing of multiple GPUs. With SpursEngine's scalable parallel processing revealed this time, it is likely to attract further attention in the future as the technology can increase the video processing performance for codec or upconversion as need arises.

Applications supporting SpursEngine on the rise

　Thirdly, the number of software products, whether free of charge or not, supporting SpursEngine, turned out to be significantly increasing (Figure 5).

Figure 5: Major application software packages supporting SpursEngine
Product Name	Vendor	Category	Price	Released by
Canopus AVCHD converter	Thomson Canopus	Encode/Transcode	free*¹	"Soon"
CRI SpursCoder	CRI Middleware	Encode/Transcode	free*²	2008/11
DVD MovieWriter	Corel	DVD Authoring	*3	2008/11
EDIUS Pro	Thomson Canopus	Video editing	¥79,800	2009H1*
FIRECODER WRITER	Thomson Canopus	BD/DVD Writing / Transcode	*4	2008/11
LoiloScope	Loilo	Video editing	N/A	Spring,2009*
PowerDirector	CyberLink	Video editing	N/A	N/A
TMPGEnc 4.0 Xpress	Pegasys	Encode/Video editing	¥14,096	2009Q1*
SpursCoder Adobe plug-in	CRI Middleware	N/A	N/A	2009/1*

*:Schedule
*1:Thomson Canops' video editing software required
*2:Free for personal use only; Businesses need talks with CRI Middleware
*3:Bundled within Leadtek's WinFast PxVC1100
*4:Bundled within Thomson Canopus' FIRECODER Blu
N/A:Details not available or to be determined

　Thomson Canopus had previously released their intention to make their AVCHD Converter, offered for free of charge, support SpursEngine. During this event, they further referred to more specific schedule and mentioned that the Version 3 and beyond would support FIRECODER Blu.

Figure 6: Mr. Yabuno, CRI Middleware, announced a premium version of SpursCoder and a plug-in for Adobe Premiere CS3

Figure 7: Mr. Saito, Global Sales Division, Pegasys, explains multi-front-end strategy

　In addition to CRI SpursCoder freely available for personal use, CRI Middleware showed their roadmap with a premium (not-free) version of SpursCoder a plug-in for Adobe Premiere CS3, both of which will be released in January 2009. Also, they clarified their policy that CRI Middleware would keep on tuning up the video image quality with both hardware and software means (Figure 6).

　Pegasys, renown for their encoder software, TMPGEnc series, also released their roadmap, including TMPGEnc 4.0 Xpress scheduled to support SpursEngine as of the first quarter of 2009. While the company is actively engaged in GPGPU also, they officially announced to support SpursEngine, mentioning: "we will explore evolution as multi-front-end application" (Mr. Kaname "Zakk" Saito, Global Sales Division, Pegasys). As an implementation example of multi-front-end application, he demonstrated video filtering with GPU by CUDA** and encoding with SpursEngine running simultaneously on TMPGEnc 4.0 Xpress.
　Also, he emphasized their unique efforts: they will speed encoding with SpursEngine while they will still use their own code for decoding for the time being (Figure 7).

Video processing engine to go for further popularization and application

　It is deemed software development for SpursEngine is likely to accelerate, given the SDK publicly available and parallel processing with multiple SpursEngine boards. In the future, the more PCs have SpursEngine, the more application software is supplied.

　More software products will gradually support SpursEngine for high-definition video encoding, transcoding, or upconversion in the future. Moreover, it is deemed that we now have the development environment for applications such as PC-based videoconferencing or security systems with highly intelligent features, which are difficult to realize with only processing performance of currently available PCs.