Slashdot Mirror
Intel Considers Hardware Acceleration For Google's WebM Format
CWmike writes "Intel is considering hardware-based acceleration for Google's new WebM video file format in its Atom-based TV chips if the format gains popularity, an Intel executive said on Thursday. Announced last Wednesday at Google I/O, WebM files will include video streams compressed with the open-source VP8 video codec, which was acquired by Google when it bought On2 Technologies in February. 'Just like we did with other codecs like MPEG2, H.264 and VC1, if VP8 establishes itself in the Smart TV space, we will add it to our [hardware] decoders,' said Wilfred Martis, a general manager at Intel's Digital Home Group."
It would be nice to have hardware support.. and the support of Intel.. and guess they don't want to be accused of favoring some parties and not others.. and certainly there is a cost to adding to the hardware but still is it not also a chicken and egg problem?
http://www.hawknest.com/
Thank you for playing, H.264. Microsoft, Apple, it was nice having you.
But open, patent free standards have prevailed. I am not stupidly praising google or buying the do no evil crap. I am just saying, in this case they did the right thing.
Google is the ONLY major player around HTML5 that is playing fair, and that is something we have to recognize. Maybe there's some hope for the future ...
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
Its not the first time that someone has had to build and incredibly similar version yet slightly worse, just to fill a civic need. On2 is doing what Tesla did when Edison prevented him from using his lightbulb design.
How long will it take to get popular? 1 year?
How long will it take to design the hardware implementation? 6 months?
How long will it take to get into production? 1 year?
How long will it take to get into a product that is on store shelves? 6 months?
This is too long. Intel may as well have said they aren't interested. 3 years from now there are going to be how many tens of millions of devices with hardware H.264 support and no way of upgrading to VP8 support? People aren't going to toss these things in the trash just so the can buy brand new devices that give them the exact same experience.
According to their page AMD, ARM, nVidia, MIPS, Marvell, TI, and Freescale are all onboard. That leaves pretty much just Intel and Analog Devices as the only two major chip makers for various devices that haven't cast in. If they can get widespread hardware support, it means that devices will likely have WebM acceleration by default, simply due to the chips they use. That being the case, enabling software support for it makes good sense.
I think it has a real shot at becoming the streaming media standard. H.264 is likely to remain the high quality standard for video because it is used on Blu-ray and a good deal of recording devices, but WebM could well take over streaming. While it isn't as high quality per bit, it is good enough (after all, VP6, its predecessor is used in a good deal of Flash video) and free is hard to say no to. If devices support it in hardware, then there you go.
Have to see how things shake out, but I'm optimistic. There's a large base of support for it in all the right areas. Only real thing that could sink it is a successful patent lawsuit. However I believe Google when they claim they've evaluated it before and after purchasing On2 and they are confident. I think it is likely that if VP8 infringes on any patents, it infringes only on ones that they can find prior art for, and that they may also have some patents of their own they can hit back with.
Here's hoping. Not only would a completely free format be good various uses, but its existence should force MPEG-LA to keep H.264's licensing terms reasonable.
hmm, sounds like a personal problem to me. a smelly one at that....
(okay, okay, I had to)
Political correctness might be misdirected, but posting "niggers" several times in the row is still vulgar, rude and a sign of a fucking moron.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
With how close they are to each other as a format, it shouldn't be too hard to make it decode in hardware as most of the stuff is already there. Hell, with how close they are you could probably rig up a decoder that already ran partially in hardware as is.
It is a win for VP8 but not exactly like it would be a hard thing to do or even expensive on Intels part.
To be honest, this actually looks like the logical thing to do on their part.
1) Format becomes popular that is already mostly able to run on your current designs and is also free to use and implement.
2) Modify your process to finish the hardware decoding on your system as it was cheap and mostly already done.
3) Profit, you now have another selling point for your hardware with little (relatively speaking) financial investment on your end.
Given that VP8 is really just a minor modification of h.264, and Intel already supports h.264 decoding in hardware, what exactly has to be done to support VP8? Modify the driver to reload the proper DCT constants and other minor things. The only hardware stuff I can see is if the hardware is hardwired for h.264 in which case they need to rewire it to be a little more flexible. But given they support many codecs already with the same pieces, it should be already in place (a lot of other pieces get reused decoding VC-1, for example).
Surely all the h.264 blocks could be re-used as VP8? In which case Theora's practically dead because everything supports h.264 decoding already and can probably be trivially converted to support VP8 as well.
Heck, you probably can do the same with an h.264 encoder to have it spit out a VP8 bitstream...
I don't think there is actually a _single_ h.264 hardware component that could be directly reused for a vp8 decoder. Maybe if you designed your motion compensation engine with a lot of filter flexibility it could be reworked for vp8 without too much work... but really, in engineering "similar" is not the same as "the same". For the reuse of pre-existing parts "the same" is what counts.
so yeah, the first poster was rude. what of it?
Nothing. And that's why he is sitting at -1. If he wants to make a political statement, there are better ways to do than post as AC on Slashdot.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
What a ridiculous statement.
H.264 is massively entrenched. Which content do you think you're going to get in VP8? DirecTV already adopted H.264. Cable is stuck on MPEG-2 at the moment, but will definitely take whichever format allows them to use their limited bandwidth most efficiently (H.264). What about cable in Europe, DVB? Nope, that already went to H.264. Will pirates give up a little bandwidth to use a free CODEC? They're already pirating content, you think they care about licensing fees for CODECs? Blu-ray? H.264 (and VC-1). CD-DVD? AVS.
The bizarre part to me is that you got modded up for your comment. Who thought this comment added to the conversation?
I think VP8 will get some use, but victory over H.264 is extremely unlikely. It's just too little, too late to take the lead.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
fyi, the crowning achievement of any internet troll is to type "niggers" and have some dork post a 5000 word essay (that nobody reads) in response.
congrats, you are more meaningful to some basement-dweller than the $100 hooker he lost his virginity with.
Oh, look, a spammer. Looks like someone needs to have their account modded into oblivion.
Please flag...
Massively entrenched??? It's in hardware of about 1% of systems that are used to view digically compressed systems. It's in less than 10% of computer systems by default.
It's only massively entrenched in your heart either because Apple did it or because you hate the idea that some corporation somewhere is not getting a shitload of cash for nothing.
"People aren't going to toss these things in the trash just so the can buy brand new devices that give them the exact same experience."
This is consumer electronics you're talking about. Regularly trashing the "old junk" to replace it with the "new shiny" is not only normal, the industry depends on it. Doesn't matter whether it's actually an improvement for the end user.
Buy our new iAwesum PLUS 2011 Turbo Rainbow Limited Edition!!!!1 now featuring VP8 technology!
For the same reason MPEG/LA don't.
They have like 1 patent out of 200 or something.
Developing CODECs isn't "nothing".
I have no idea where you get your idea that it's only on 10% of computer systems. It's on every Mac and Windows 7 machine for starters. And that's over 10% of the market. And anyone who has VLC or Windows Media Player on other platforms.
And support for it is near ubiquitous in HD video players. Portable ones, etc. That's a big market. As I mentioned, it's in cable (and free to air) systems in Europe, it's on all DirecTV boxes that do HDTV (and many that don't). It's in virtually all HD camcorders.
You're detached from reality.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
The egg came first; the first egg from which the first chicken emerged was laid by a bird that we would not fully classify as a chicken. The actual resulting chicken was the result of a genetic mutation relative to the mother.
Just like ogg vorbis is "done" -- oh wait, except for my massive personal collection that works just fucking great at home, and will continue to work just fucking great until the day I die.
Give us a break already. Just because a technology doesn't enjoy mainstream support doesn't mean it's "dead". Theora will continue to be improved, and someday will meet or exceed the mainstream formats, just like ogg vorbis did. Eventually video formats will become a commodity, just like music formats did. It would be nice if the mainstream adopts it, but if not, that certainly doesn't mean it's going away. We're talking about tools for jobs, not religion.
In conclusion, STFU already.
This is what it will take for INTEL to support hardware accelerated VP8.
Mainly because they'll have to create a full blown VP8-core (or more likely, try to see if they can modify the existing video core and cram in the few missing parts).
That's because their embed 3D chips aren't that brilliant and Larrabree project is heading nowhere.
Now, for other companies, it might simply be a purely software problem, leveraging the various SIMG, DSP & GPU components.
Theora has hardware implementation runing on the SIMD and DSP featured in *current* OMAPs
Although VP8 is more complex, it might still be solved, for example using some GPGPU computing (OpenCL for the win !). So on hardware featuring better GPUs (ATI & Nvidia), VP8 support might be a software update away.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Not always... :)
My other account has a 3-digit UID.
Only when you're a niggerfaggot.
However, nobody needs to put new content in GIF format because PNG is available everywhere.
MNG and APNG, the animated extensions to PNG, are not available elsewhere. The alternatives to animated GIF are SWF and HTML+PNG+JavaScript.
The very fact the MPEG-LA says there are patents but won't specify which shows that there actually aren't any.
There is aleady a PDF listing patents in the H.264 pool. As for the proposed WebM pool, give it time. MPEG-LA members are still reviewing their portfolios to see which patents are essential enough to go on such a list.
The analysis on the x264 blog concluded that VP8 most closely resembles H.264 baseline, and the comparison shows that H.264 baseline encoded with x264 lies somewhere between Theora and H.264 Main.
So what you're saying is... fuck the fucking fuckers?
Please immediately put measures in place that stop all Apple iP[ao]ds and iPhones supporting WebM as you did with Flash.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading all of the tenuous fanboi postings about how lack of Flash is a good thing & am always more than happy to sit down with bag of popcorn and nice cup of tea to watch a great comedy sequel...
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
But since most Blu-ray players are flash-upgradeable, they could potentially add accelerated VP8 support in the future.
Most != all. I'm not convinced that even all Bonus View (BD 1.1) players support codec upgrades, which means each disc would have to have a system requirements panel so that someone doesn't unwittingly buy a VP8 disc and try to play it on a player model that cannot be upgraded to decode VP8. It's possible that a player can accept upgrades to BD-J, BD+, etc., without accepting upgrades to video codecs, partly because so much of a video codec might be implemented directly in silicon, or the DSP might be executing out of actual ROM. Should H.264 royalty rates increase that quickly, VC-1 would become the preferred choice for new discs and remasters, even if only to eliminate the consumer confusion about players that cannot be upgraded