Toshiba Corporation today unveiled "dynabook Qosmio T851/D8CR", the world's first glasses-free 3D notebook PC able to display 3D and 2D content at the same time on one screen. The new PC will be available in the Japanese market from late July.

Dynabook Qosmio T851/D8CR employs Toshiba's distinctive 3D Window technology to realize the world's first glasses-free 3D portable PC able to simultaneously display 3D and 2D content in separate windows in a single screen. Users can watch high-quality 3D images or enjoy 3D games in one window without any need for wearing dedicated glasses or installing a dedicated panel over the display, while at the same time working, browsing the internet or sending e-mail in another window.

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).

Leadtek has been toying with the idea of bringing Toshiba's SpursEngine HD video encoder to the masses. The company earlier unveiled one of the first consumer add-on cards to sell this technology, and now has an external video encoder unit called Leadtek WinFast HPVC1100. The device connects to a host PC using PCI-Express cabling. It weighs 194x45x90 mm, and 0.7 kg (1.54 lbs).

SpursEngine is a video encoding concept originally conceived by Toshiba, which uses a modified CELL Broadband Engine chip to handle HD video on some of its premium laptops. It is said to accelerate PEG4-AVC/H.264, MPEG-2 video encoding, although performance figures are yet to surface. The SpursEngine processor makes use of 128 MB of Rambus XDR memory. The pricing and availability for HPVC1100 are yet to be known.

The term "SpursEngine" might be a little new for some of us. It is the HD video processor Toshiba used in its Qosmio G55 and F40 high-end media notebooks, where the company chose to call it "Toshiba Quad-Core HD processor". The SpursEngine tag comes in, where the processor uses Toshiba's proprietary technology to accelerate graphics and HD video across multiple heads. The chip itself is derived from the CELL Broadband Engine (CBE), the central processor that drives the Sony Playstation 3 gaming console. Toshiba made modifications to the design, by reducing the number of synergistic processing elements (dubbed cores) to 4, with the common PowerPC thread arbiter remaining. It is specialized for video processing.

Toshiba has already formed collaborations with Leadtek and Thomson, the two companies would be the first to come out with cards based on this infant video processor. As such, these are not stand-alone video-cards as of now (they lack output logic), they stand to demonstrate the GPUs design methodology in a PC environment, so the companies could gain foothold. The cards could serve as HD video processing solutions, for industrial, office or home use. Toshiba could put in its proprietary video processing technologies into this product. The Leadtek Winfast PxVC 1100 is pictured below. It uses PCI-Express x1 interface, and comes with 128 MB of XDR memory. The cards could be out by the end of this month, and could carry a steep price-tag of US $286, at least going by the listings in Japan.