Arnold Beckenbauer
12-Feb-2008, 13:57
http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=11725
Understanding that the research community may well take advantage of the floating-point power on offer and writing code is now made easier as access it 'closer to the metal', how does it help you, the average consumer?
As it happens, many media-rich applications' code is wonderfully parallelisable, meaning that, if coded for, additional plug-ins could take the load off the CPU, place it on the broad, broad shoulders of the GPU, and execute in a more-timely fashion. As an example, during the CTO conference in Amsterdam, Holland, a high-definition clip was transcoded to MPEG2 HD. Running on a Radeon HD 3870 X2, with the Adobe Premier plug-in activated, the GPU ran at 4x a quad-core CPU's speed.
Now, it's clear that extensive developer-relations' support needs to be fostered and promoted before large software houses bother to take advantage of the GPU's massive horsepower, but we see GPGPU as more than just a fad. Rather, the burgeoning industry needs to be helped along via close collaboration with NVIDIA and AMD.
Transcoding HD material or delving into areas such as voice-recognition is still a time-consuming affair and any attempts to leverage the GPU for such tasks is nothing but sensible practice. It opens up the door for AMD to sell FireStream-branded cards at a wonderful premium, too
Versus:
ATI's Avivo Platform - H.264 Decode and Transcode Acceleration on R5xx (http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=2536&p=1): September 20th, 2005
GPU Accelerated H.264 Transcode (http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=2536&p=3)
Isn't it time for GPU assisted transcoding? Where and what are the problems? I don't think that firms like Adobe or Nero aren't interested in such solutions, that improve/accelerate video transcoding in the "HDTV" era.
Understanding that the research community may well take advantage of the floating-point power on offer and writing code is now made easier as access it 'closer to the metal', how does it help you, the average consumer?
As it happens, many media-rich applications' code is wonderfully parallelisable, meaning that, if coded for, additional plug-ins could take the load off the CPU, place it on the broad, broad shoulders of the GPU, and execute in a more-timely fashion. As an example, during the CTO conference in Amsterdam, Holland, a high-definition clip was transcoded to MPEG2 HD. Running on a Radeon HD 3870 X2, with the Adobe Premier plug-in activated, the GPU ran at 4x a quad-core CPU's speed.
Now, it's clear that extensive developer-relations' support needs to be fostered and promoted before large software houses bother to take advantage of the GPU's massive horsepower, but we see GPGPU as more than just a fad. Rather, the burgeoning industry needs to be helped along via close collaboration with NVIDIA and AMD.
Transcoding HD material or delving into areas such as voice-recognition is still a time-consuming affair and any attempts to leverage the GPU for such tasks is nothing but sensible practice. It opens up the door for AMD to sell FireStream-branded cards at a wonderful premium, too
Versus:
ATI's Avivo Platform - H.264 Decode and Transcode Acceleration on R5xx (http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=2536&p=1): September 20th, 2005
GPU Accelerated H.264 Transcode (http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=2536&p=3)
Isn't it time for GPU assisted transcoding? Where and what are the problems? I don't think that firms like Adobe or Nero aren't interested in such solutions, that improve/accelerate video transcoding in the "HDTV" era.