Microsoft Patents GPU-Accelerated Video Encoding

An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft has just received a patent that grants the company the rights to GPU-accelerated video encoding, which may be the primary technology that takes advantage of the horsepower of the GPU in today's consumer applications. The broad patent covers tasks to perform motion estimation in videos, the use of the depth buffer of the GPU, to determine comprising, collocating video frames, mapping pixels to texels, frame processing using the GPU, and output of data to the CPU."

Comments

Extra Extra!

[WrongSizeGlass]

A Graphics Processing Unit has been used to accelerate video!

If this doesn't qualify as 'obvious' then we are all doomed.

Re:Extra Extra!

[autocracy]

It seems that the idea was apparent long before the patent came about. I think the underlying reason that we haven't seen it yet is that the tradeoff value wasn't present yet. The GPU must beat out the CPU by a sufficiently wide price and performance margin for the workload before anybody bothers with specialized code for it.

In fact, this is a math coprocessor revisited. Remember those?

Re:Extra Extra!

[onionman]

Why would it be obvious that hardware designed to accelerate 3d rendering - transformation, lighting and rasterisation - can accelerate the compression of video frames?

It seems that you are 'obviously' wrong.

It's seems incredibly obvious to me. Of course, I've worked on FFT code for Cray vector units which were around a long time before 2004. If you can't see the relationship between vector processing, FFTs, and any form of video compression/display, then perhaps you shouldn't be in charge of determining what is "obvious" regarding this particular patent.

I have long felt that our patent system is ridiculous because it allows such silly patents. If something is obvious to an expert in the field, then it shouldn't be patentable.

Re:Extra Extra!

[dgatwood]

You're being sarcastic, right? Why would a glorified vector engine be useful for doing video compression, which is basically lots and lots of vector math? It's so obvious that anybody with even basic knowledge of video compression would immediately understand how the two problem spaces map onto one another with no instruction whatsoever.

It's so obvious that ATI released software to do it within a year of when that patent was first filed, which means they were working on it at least a year before that, which means that multiple people independently came up with the idea at the same time, which means it is obvious.

Heck, other companies had already been doing this, and even held patents on it five years earlier. Okay, so texture compression and video compression aren't quite the same thing. One deals with a single image, one deals with compressing a series of images.... Yeah, that's not obvious to anyone who has never seen someone make a flipbook during class in elementary school.

Patenting the mere use of a product?

[EmagGeek]

Are they serious? This is virtually the same thing as someone inventing a car and me winning the patent on "driving cars."

Nothing to see here, move along.

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh look, another patent that shouldn't have been granted. The only thing the modern patent system is good for is buying new boats for patent lawyers. Does this still surprise anyone?

Re:Nothing to see here, move along.

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

I'm sort of afraid of the mayhem that will occur a bit before the current system will fall apart

Non-indemnified hardware running rampant! Patents running naked in the streets!

MS making their own thicket?

[ciaran_o_riordan]

This patent mightn't change much, but it's the weight of the hundreds of patents that's spoiling the AV field.

Microsoft is a member of MPEG-LA, but they pay more royalties than they make from the organisation, so they're probably eager to make their own AV thicket.

* http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Microsoft
* http://en.swpat.org/wiki/MPEG_LA
* http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Audio-video_patents

Re:Badaboom?

[DrgnDancer]

What is confusing? Microsoft does something. Microsoft applies for a patent on that thing. A patent lawyer who knows very little about the tech in question, has about 600 applications he's currently supposed to be processing, has been instructed that he can't work overtime this week by his boss, but also that he is too far behind on his portfolio and needs to catch up, and who doesn't make near as much as his buddies from law school do to begin with, looks at it. He thinks "I don't even know what half of these words *mean*", then notices that Microsoft filed the patent. Through his haze of pain and frustration he dimly remembers that Microsoft is an "Innovative and economy driving company" and says "fuck it." He hits the "Approve" button.

His boss is happy because his numbers are better this week, and there is no real penalty for approving patents that later get overturned. Even assuming that Microsoft ever attempts to defend the patent rather than just threatening small companies with it in hopes that they'll cave without a court battle.

The things currently wrong with the patent system which this story demonstrates:

1) Patent attorneys often don't understand the tech they are expected to review. This is less of a problem with "real" patents, since the device being patented is just that. A device. If it does what it says it does, in the way it says it does, understanding why isn't all that important. Software is essentially algorithms. If you don't understand them, then judging their uniqueness is difficult.

2) The reviewers in the patent office are phenomenally overworked right now. There are literally tens of thousands of applications backed up. I saw some patent official guy at the end of the Bush administration say that if all applications stopped, right then, he could maybe catch up in a year or two. I don't imagine it's gotten better. Both Bush and Obama have authorized more reviewers, but it seems to be like filling the ocean with a teaspoon.

3) Patent reviewers make a fraction of what patent attorneys in private practice make. This means that they're always looking to get out and get into private firms. Probably not all of them, but like any rational human, most want to make more money and get more respect.

4) There is no real penalty for screwing up. Most patents never get defended in court, because the companies that own them mainly used them as bargaining chips, or to threaten smaller, defenseless, companies. Even if the patent does go to court, it'll take years to invalidate, and no repercussions fall on the approver.

Eliminating software patents would, in one stroke, alleviate or eliminate two of these four problems. Probably the most serious two. It'd be awful nice if it happened. The alternative is probably the whole system collapsing under its own weight eventually.