Similar, but different. Intel bought Movidius, which designed this chip (the Myriad X). Initially it was for visual processing (computer vision), but it morphed into being optimized for neural network inference (AI).
So where is x264, which encodes most of the video you watch? x264 powers YouTube, Netflix, Facebook, Amazon, Hulu, most cloud video services, and more commercial/broadcast video encoder systems than any other encoder library. Where is x265? FFMPEG? LibAV? Gstreamer? VLC? Open source dominates video and audio processing. As far as image processing... where is GIMP? GEGL? OpenCV?
Tim is not a product guy. He's an operations guy. The product guy, Phil, is a poor stand-in for Steve Jobs, and he doesn't have the all-powerful authority to overrule everyone else in the company or take big bets that Steve had.
.. isn't hardware. It's software. More specifically, Apple offers a complete platform where hardware, software (OS and built-in apps), web services (iCloud, App Store, iTunes music and video) and content are all fully and seamlessly integrated. Users get a consistent experience across devices, and app developers can count on relatively consistent capabilities on end-user devices (as opposed to the fairly disparate device software and hardware configurations and capabilities on Android and Windows platforms).
All the attention at an Apple product launch is paid to the shiny new hardware. Relatively little attention is paid to the fundamental improvements in the platform, like the adoption of HEVC and HEIF (2x better photo and video compression), or the introduction of Augmented Reality and Machine Learning (ARkit and Core ML), multitasking, drag and drop.
Why do you think Microsoft is now in the hardware business, and Google is building a hardware business? They can't compete with Apple if they can't offer a seamless experience.
Last year they funded the Center for Cognitive Computing Systems Research at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us...
UPDATE:
It worked! Phoenix OS is now on Github and kernel source is available.
We're still gathering signatures, because we must first verify that the source is legit and not just a copy of Android-x86 with no custom Phoenix OS modifications.
We'll let you know when we've verified.
The secret to Netflix's success is not video streaming. Their "disruptive innovation" was their business model - a flat monthly fee to watch movies instead of paying per use, and then also paying late fees. Business model innovation is as disruptive as technology innovation, as Blockbuster video can tell you. Sure, this idea has lots of details that need to be worked out in order for it to succeed, but don't say that it has no chance. It could work. People have gym memberships, why not movie theater memberships?
Very funny. LLVM and Clang have revolutionized compiler technology. There are very few people in the computer science world with a resume as impressive as Chris Lattner. I'm not too surprised that he didn't thrive at Tesla. They are working too far up the stack. But Google develops low-level compute devices (Tensor processor), programming languages and frameworks, and he'll be a great fit to figure out how to make it all go fast.
Most of the comments so far are variations on the same theme... Firefox's product management has not been great. If you want your product to win in the marketplace, it has to serve end-users better than the competing alternatives. Nothing should make it into the product if it doesn't improve the end-user experience. I use Firefox because plugins like NoScript and Adblock Plus work in Firefox. But there are many strange problems that we Firefox users always have to contend with. For example, if I have EVER had a secure connection with a domain (Netflix.com), Firefox will INSIST that I always have a secure connection with that domain, and I can't browse non HTTPS pages on that domain (like the Netflix Tech blog). That's not security. That's just stupid. I'm just trying to browse a static web page... I'm not posting any information, or entering a password or credit card info on that page.
Mozilla also gets religious with respect to video codecs. Again... just stupid. Tens of thousands of companies worldwide want to support newer industry standards, like HEVC, but Mozilla in their infinite religious wisdom thinks that HEVC should fail and VP9 should succeed, so even when a website wants to deliver HEVC video, and the consumer has an HEVC capable device, Mozilla believes that Firefox should block the HEVC video from passing through to the device. You can have whatever political beliefs you want, and you can try to influence the discussion, but when the market has spoken, you need to listen. Any browser vendor that thinks they can leverage their installed base and market power to force their worldview on the end-users will ultimately fail. This is why Mozilla succeeded in the first place - because Microsoft was inflexible and not listening to the needs of end users.
Do the owners of Snopes.com own and control the snopes.com domain name? If so, move the site, and redirect the DNS to point to your own servers.
Do the owners of Snopes.com have a copy of the site? It's their copyrighted code and content. A vendor can't "hold it hostage", or even hold it at all without explicit rights to do so. If the vendor doesn't have a valid contract (i.e.; if the contract expired or was legally terminated), hosting Snopes.com without permission is a copyright violation... which is a very expensive problem for that vendor.
Any number of lawyers would take this case on a contingent fee basis... no up-front money needed... if it's such a clear cut case of a vendor having no rights to host snopes.com, but refusing to give snopes.com access to their code and content, or to their domain or DNS. Some details are clearly missing here... or the owners of snopes.com are technically and legally illiterate.
Kiss game developers goodbye. The only reason game developers invest massive budgets developing a new game is because they expect to get that money back. Your PS4 will become worthless (in terms of getting access to new games) if the platform is hacked.
Another lazy ad hominem attack. The right doesn't want smaller government? The right wants a more authoritarian government? You've got your left and right mixed up. ALL dictatorships are leftist, politically and economically. Privatization of any business = socialism. Leftist ideology = more government control and authority to tell people how to live their lives.
I have a BS Eng and an MBA, which involved graduate economics coursework. You?
Nonsense. Despite the efforts of Google and Wikipedia to define fascism as being far-right, it should be obvious that fascists want and require an all-powerful central government, with one party in control. More government control of the people and selected businesses = bigger government = leftist ideology. The right wants a smaller government which only provides the essential services (police/military/courts to protect the state and insure justice, courts and legislatures, infrastructure, diplomacy, environmental protection, education). The right wants people to be empowered take care of themselves. The left wants the government to be empowered to take care of people. Keep in mind that the Nazis (the poster child for fascism) were the National Socialist party, and they were anti-capitalist. It's common for leftists to call conservatives "fascist", but it's a lazy ad hominem attack.
Note that EPYC performance is being compared with Intel Broadwell Xeons (E5 v4), a slight enhancement of the Haswell CPU architecture. In the very near future, Intel will launch their Purley Xeons (Intel Xeon Processor Scalable Family), based on the Skylake architecture (with many significant capabilities not found in the consumer grade Skylake desktop and mobile processors, like AVX-512 instructions). Purley Xeons will have up to 28 cores per socket. Until we have Purley vs EPYC numbers, we won't know who has the best performance per core, or performance at each price point, for each data center workload. It won't be long now. In fact, the Skylake-X processors (Core i9) are repurposed consumer versions of Purley Xeons, and they'll be available in 4 days. Wait for it.
This article compares Apple's A8 chip with a Qualcomm Snapdragon, saying "In terms of data management, both Qualcomm and Apple support H.265 video encoding and decoding, also referred to HEVC or high efficiency video coding."
I'm done arguing with an Anonymous Coward. Apple makes A8 chips for themselves only, and they don't feel the need to list detailed specs of their custom SOC like other SOC vendors (Qualcomm, Mediatek, etc.) do. Obviously you don't work in this field. You can speculate that Apple is implementing HEVC encoding and decoding in software, but you're wrong. Anyone who works in this domain (chips, devices, software, video services) knows this as a plain, obvious fact. HEVC encoding would never be feasible on an ARM CPU, even with "GPU acceleration". Protected playback would not be feasible at all. And either would drain the battery fast, or cause a thermal overload. For the benefit of others reading this thread, I wanted to correct erroneous speculation, but I'm done now.
"Sounds like you're fine with unilateral decisions from others, though"... huh? You lost me there. No, I'm not ok with unilateral decisions for declassifying classified material, unless we're talking about an executive with the proper authority (like the President of the United States).
My point seems to have eluded you. Any individual in our Intelligence community, armed services, or government contractors shouldn't have such an inflated sense of self-importance that they feel justified in taking this kind of action. We don't care what your politics are. We don't care if you don't like the President, or his stance on the environment. Do your damn job, and don't screw the country in your pursuit of social justice. Rant on Twitter and Facebook all you want, but telling the Russians what we know about their activities is not cool.
Snowden complains that the Espionage Act..." explicitly forbids the jury from hearing why the defendant acted, and bars them from deciding whether the outcome was to the public's benefit". You see, Ed, the problem with traitors like you is that you feel you have the right to unilaterally decide whether the classified material you were entrusted to access should be leaked to the public. Did you go to a classified jury, to get a classified decision from a panel of your peers? Did you have a full understanding of the harm to our government's capabilities and clandestine assets? No, you just decided that because of your passionate political beliefs, it would be in everyone's best interest if you just leaked everything. The damage you caused to National Security can hardly be overstated. You went far beyond any reasonable definition of "whistleblowing". You informed all of our adversaries of the precise capabilities of our abilities to intercept communications and to decrypt encrypted content. You're a traitor, and a moron. Reality Winner is a traitor and a moron.
The A8 has a fixed function HEVC decoder and encoder, just as the Qualcomm Snapdragon series of SOCs does (starting with the 801), the Samsung Exynos, and most other mobile SOCs. Apple didn't license Ittiam's decoder.
Apple is using the same A8 chip in Apple TV as they use in iPhones.
This chip has a built-in hardware HEVC decoder (and encoder). http://appleinsider.com/articl... It's not practical from a performance perspective to decode 4K HEVC in software. It's possible with an optimized HEVC decoder to handle 1080P30 on a quad-core ARM processor, but your chip will get hot, and in a mobile device your battery will be drained quickly.
Apple is EXTREMELY unlikely to ever support VP9 or AV1. HEVC makes VP9 obsolete. AV1 isn't even a final standard yet, and it's a long, long way from being practical. The IP rights have not been cleared. If you're going to talk about AV1, why not compare it to H.266?
By the way, GPU acceleration implies GPU computing (OpenCL, CUDA, Metal, etc.). HEVC hardware decoders don't use the GPU. They used a fixed-function hardware (specific section of silicon on the SOC).
https://developer.apple.com/li...
Media and Web
New in tvOS 11.0 - Support for High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC).
High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) is a new standard for video encoding that offers substantially better compression than H.264 at the same level of visual quality.
Use AV Foundation to playback movies containing HEVC encoded tracks, and to export videos.
VideoToolbox clients can encode and decode HEVC video bitstreams.
New in tvOS 11.0 - Support for High Efficiency Image Format (HEIF).
High Efficiency Image Format (HEIF) is a new standard of image compression that nearly doubles current data compression ratios for the same level of image quality.
Added functionality to the Photos and Core Image frameworks to display, encode, and export HEIF images.
How many of you posting that HEVC patent licensing is a mess are actually in need of an HEVC patent license? I'm going to go out on a limb here, and say... none of you. Apple has just added HEVC support to iOS and MacOS, retroactively upgrading hundreds of millions of devices. Obviously, Apple can handle their IP licensing adequately, and so anyone using HEVC on a supported device doesn't have to worry about taking a patent license, as the device itself is licensed, and so an app developer, service provider or end user is covered. Samsung's Galaxy S8, LG's G6, and Sony's new Xperia XZ Premium all support HEVC natively, and so do many leading PCs and tablets. Most TVs and connected set-top boxes (Roku, Apple TV, Fire TV, Chromecast) support HEVC natively. When there are billions of devices with HEVC support, app and service developers can just use it.
HEVC is clearly superior to VP9. Every unbiased, well-designed study shows this, including Netflix's own study, which showed HEVC was 20% more efficient.
AV1 may some day be more efficient, but at a cost of 5 to 10x higher complexity (compute requirements). In any case, it's not a standard yet, and the AOM hopes to have a standard by the end of 2017. HEVC was finalized in January 2013, meaning that it has roughly a 5 year head start on AV1. Look how long it takes for standards to go from a final, ratified spec to optimized implementations and actual deployments. Generally, it takes 3 or 4 years. I'm not saying AV1 won't eventually succeed. But it's got a long, long way to go.
HEVC was developed by a standards body (2 actually... the ISO and the ITU), meaning that the patents are RAND-encumbered. The RAND obligation means that patent holders can't just charge whatever they want. They can only charge a "reasonable" fee. What is reasonable? Well, if the market agrees with the price the patent holders are offering, by definition the price was reasonable. If not, a judge may decide (as in Microsoft v Motorola, where Motorola wanted 20 cents for H.264 and 802.11 patents and the judge agreed with Microsoft that 2 cents was reasonable). If anyone holds patents that VP9 reads on, they are not RAND encumbered. Such patent holders could go to court and get an injunction to stop shipment of infringing product (which RAND encumbered patent holders can't until they can prove that they have met their RAND obligation). Lastly, Apple didn't have to obtain their HEVC patent licenses through MPEG LA, HEVC Advance, and Velos. They're big enough to go directly to all of the individual patent holders, and they probably already have patent cross-license agreements with many of the other patent holders. The same is true for other large device OEMs.
Slashdot Mirror
If I wanted nothing but pro "Net Neutrality" (Title II FCC regulation) posts from every conceivable angle, I'd go to Reddit.
Uhhhh... no. You're exactly wrong. 180 degrees out of phase.
Similar, but different. Intel bought Movidius, which designed this chip (the Myriad X). Initially it was for visual processing (computer vision), but it morphed into being optimized for neural network inference (AI).
So where is x264, which encodes most of the video you watch? x264 powers YouTube, Netflix, Facebook, Amazon, Hulu, most cloud video services, and more commercial/broadcast video encoder systems than any other encoder library. Where is x265? FFMPEG? LibAV? Gstreamer? VLC? Open source dominates video and audio processing. As far as image processing... where is GIMP? GEGL? OpenCV?
Tim is not a product guy. He's an operations guy. The product guy, Phil, is a poor stand-in for Steve Jobs, and he doesn't have the all-powerful authority to overrule everyone else in the company or take big bets that Steve had.
.. isn't hardware. It's software. More specifically, Apple offers a complete platform where hardware, software (OS and built-in apps), web services (iCloud, App Store, iTunes music and video) and content are all fully and seamlessly integrated. Users get a consistent experience across devices, and app developers can count on relatively consistent capabilities on end-user devices (as opposed to the fairly disparate device software and hardware configurations and capabilities on Android and Windows platforms). All the attention at an Apple product launch is paid to the shiny new hardware. Relatively little attention is paid to the fundamental improvements in the platform, like the adoption of HEVC and HEIF (2x better photo and video compression), or the introduction of Augmented Reality and Machine Learning (ARkit and Core ML), multitasking, drag and drop. Why do you think Microsoft is now in the hardware business, and Google is building a hardware business? They can't compete with Apple if they can't offer a seamless experience.
Last year they funded the Center for Cognitive Computing Systems Research at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us...
UPDATE: It worked! Phoenix OS is now on Github and kernel source is available. We're still gathering signatures, because we must first verify that the source is legit and not just a copy of Android-x86 with no custom Phoenix OS modifications. We'll let you know when we've verified.
The secret to Netflix's success is not video streaming. Their "disruptive innovation" was their business model - a flat monthly fee to watch movies instead of paying per use, and then also paying late fees. Business model innovation is as disruptive as technology innovation, as Blockbuster video can tell you. Sure, this idea has lots of details that need to be worked out in order for it to succeed, but don't say that it has no chance. It could work. People have gym memberships, why not movie theater memberships?
Very funny. LLVM and Clang have revolutionized compiler technology. There are very few people in the computer science world with a resume as impressive as Chris Lattner. I'm not too surprised that he didn't thrive at Tesla. They are working too far up the stack. But Google develops low-level compute devices (Tensor processor), programming languages and frameworks, and he'll be a great fit to figure out how to make it all go fast.
Most of the comments so far are variations on the same theme... Firefox's product management has not been great. If you want your product to win in the marketplace, it has to serve end-users better than the competing alternatives. Nothing should make it into the product if it doesn't improve the end-user experience. I use Firefox because plugins like NoScript and Adblock Plus work in Firefox. But there are many strange problems that we Firefox users always have to contend with. For example, if I have EVER had a secure connection with a domain (Netflix.com), Firefox will INSIST that I always have a secure connection with that domain, and I can't browse non HTTPS pages on that domain (like the Netflix Tech blog). That's not security. That's just stupid. I'm just trying to browse a static web page... I'm not posting any information, or entering a password or credit card info on that page. Mozilla also gets religious with respect to video codecs. Again... just stupid. Tens of thousands of companies worldwide want to support newer industry standards, like HEVC, but Mozilla in their infinite religious wisdom thinks that HEVC should fail and VP9 should succeed, so even when a website wants to deliver HEVC video, and the consumer has an HEVC capable device, Mozilla believes that Firefox should block the HEVC video from passing through to the device. You can have whatever political beliefs you want, and you can try to influence the discussion, but when the market has spoken, you need to listen. Any browser vendor that thinks they can leverage their installed base and market power to force their worldview on the end-users will ultimately fail. This is why Mozilla succeeded in the first place - because Microsoft was inflexible and not listening to the needs of end users.
Do the owners of Snopes.com own and control the snopes.com domain name? If so, move the site, and redirect the DNS to point to your own servers. Do the owners of Snopes.com have a copy of the site? It's their copyrighted code and content. A vendor can't "hold it hostage", or even hold it at all without explicit rights to do so. If the vendor doesn't have a valid contract (i.e.; if the contract expired or was legally terminated), hosting Snopes.com without permission is a copyright violation... which is a very expensive problem for that vendor. Any number of lawyers would take this case on a contingent fee basis... no up-front money needed... if it's such a clear cut case of a vendor having no rights to host snopes.com, but refusing to give snopes.com access to their code and content, or to their domain or DNS. Some details are clearly missing here... or the owners of snopes.com are technically and legally illiterate.
Kiss game developers goodbye. The only reason game developers invest massive budgets developing a new game is because they expect to get that money back. Your PS4 will become worthless (in terms of getting access to new games) if the platform is hacked.
Another lazy ad hominem attack. The right doesn't want smaller government? The right wants a more authoritarian government? You've got your left and right mixed up. ALL dictatorships are leftist, politically and economically. Privatization of any business = socialism. Leftist ideology = more government control and authority to tell people how to live their lives. I have a BS Eng and an MBA, which involved graduate economics coursework. You?
Nonsense. Despite the efforts of Google and Wikipedia to define fascism as being far-right, it should be obvious that fascists want and require an all-powerful central government, with one party in control. More government control of the people and selected businesses = bigger government = leftist ideology. The right wants a smaller government which only provides the essential services (police/military/courts to protect the state and insure justice, courts and legislatures, infrastructure, diplomacy, environmental protection, education). The right wants people to be empowered take care of themselves. The left wants the government to be empowered to take care of people. Keep in mind that the Nazis (the poster child for fascism) were the National Socialist party, and they were anti-capitalist. It's common for leftists to call conservatives "fascist", but it's a lazy ad hominem attack.
Microsoft reorganizes some parts of the company every year at this time. July 1st is the start of their fiscal year.
Note that EPYC performance is being compared with Intel Broadwell Xeons (E5 v4), a slight enhancement of the Haswell CPU architecture. In the very near future, Intel will launch their Purley Xeons (Intel Xeon Processor Scalable Family), based on the Skylake architecture (with many significant capabilities not found in the consumer grade Skylake desktop and mobile processors, like AVX-512 instructions). Purley Xeons will have up to 28 cores per socket. Until we have Purley vs EPYC numbers, we won't know who has the best performance per core, or performance at each price point, for each data center workload. It won't be long now. In fact, the Skylake-X processors (Core i9) are repurposed consumer versions of Purley Xeons, and they'll be available in 4 days. Wait for it.
This article compares Apple's A8 chip with a Qualcomm Snapdragon, saying "In terms of data management, both Qualcomm and Apple support H.265 video encoding and decoding, also referred to HEVC or high efficiency video coding." I'm done arguing with an Anonymous Coward. Apple makes A8 chips for themselves only, and they don't feel the need to list detailed specs of their custom SOC like other SOC vendors (Qualcomm, Mediatek, etc.) do. Obviously you don't work in this field. You can speculate that Apple is implementing HEVC encoding and decoding in software, but you're wrong. Anyone who works in this domain (chips, devices, software, video services) knows this as a plain, obvious fact. HEVC encoding would never be feasible on an ARM CPU, even with "GPU acceleration". Protected playback would not be feasible at all. And either would drain the battery fast, or cause a thermal overload. For the benefit of others reading this thread, I wanted to correct erroneous speculation, but I'm done now.
"Sounds like you're fine with unilateral decisions from others, though"... huh? You lost me there. No, I'm not ok with unilateral decisions for declassifying classified material, unless we're talking about an executive with the proper authority (like the President of the United States). My point seems to have eluded you. Any individual in our Intelligence community, armed services, or government contractors shouldn't have such an inflated sense of self-importance that they feel justified in taking this kind of action. We don't care what your politics are. We don't care if you don't like the President, or his stance on the environment. Do your damn job, and don't screw the country in your pursuit of social justice. Rant on Twitter and Facebook all you want, but telling the Russians what we know about their activities is not cool.
Let me Google that for you... https://www.forbes.com/sites/e...
Snowden complains that the Espionage Act..." explicitly forbids the jury from hearing why the defendant acted, and bars them from deciding whether the outcome was to the public's benefit". You see, Ed, the problem with traitors like you is that you feel you have the right to unilaterally decide whether the classified material you were entrusted to access should be leaked to the public. Did you go to a classified jury, to get a classified decision from a panel of your peers? Did you have a full understanding of the harm to our government's capabilities and clandestine assets? No, you just decided that because of your passionate political beliefs, it would be in everyone's best interest if you just leaked everything. The damage you caused to National Security can hardly be overstated. You went far beyond any reasonable definition of "whistleblowing". You informed all of our adversaries of the precise capabilities of our abilities to intercept communications and to decrypt encrypted content. You're a traitor, and a moron. Reality Winner is a traitor and a moron.
The A8 has a fixed function HEVC decoder and encoder, just as the Qualcomm Snapdragon series of SOCs does (starting with the 801), the Samsung Exynos, and most other mobile SOCs. Apple didn't license Ittiam's decoder.
Apple is using the same A8 chip in Apple TV as they use in iPhones. This chip has a built-in hardware HEVC decoder (and encoder). http://appleinsider.com/articl... It's not practical from a performance perspective to decode 4K HEVC in software. It's possible with an optimized HEVC decoder to handle 1080P30 on a quad-core ARM processor, but your chip will get hot, and in a mobile device your battery will be drained quickly. Apple is EXTREMELY unlikely to ever support VP9 or AV1. HEVC makes VP9 obsolete. AV1 isn't even a final standard yet, and it's a long, long way from being practical. The IP rights have not been cleared. If you're going to talk about AV1, why not compare it to H.266? By the way, GPU acceleration implies GPU computing (OpenCL, CUDA, Metal, etc.). HEVC hardware decoders don't use the GPU. They used a fixed-function hardware (specific section of silicon on the SOC).
https://developer.apple.com/li... Media and Web New in tvOS 11.0 - Support for High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC). High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) is a new standard for video encoding that offers substantially better compression than H.264 at the same level of visual quality. Use AV Foundation to playback movies containing HEVC encoded tracks, and to export videos. VideoToolbox clients can encode and decode HEVC video bitstreams. New in tvOS 11.0 - Support for High Efficiency Image Format (HEIF). High Efficiency Image Format (HEIF) is a new standard of image compression that nearly doubles current data compression ratios for the same level of image quality. Added functionality to the Photos and Core Image frameworks to display, encode, and export HEIF images.
How many of you posting that HEVC patent licensing is a mess are actually in need of an HEVC patent license? I'm going to go out on a limb here, and say... none of you. Apple has just added HEVC support to iOS and MacOS, retroactively upgrading hundreds of millions of devices. Obviously, Apple can handle their IP licensing adequately, and so anyone using HEVC on a supported device doesn't have to worry about taking a patent license, as the device itself is licensed, and so an app developer, service provider or end user is covered. Samsung's Galaxy S8, LG's G6, and Sony's new Xperia XZ Premium all support HEVC natively, and so do many leading PCs and tablets. Most TVs and connected set-top boxes (Roku, Apple TV, Fire TV, Chromecast) support HEVC natively. When there are billions of devices with HEVC support, app and service developers can just use it. HEVC is clearly superior to VP9. Every unbiased, well-designed study shows this, including Netflix's own study, which showed HEVC was 20% more efficient. AV1 may some day be more efficient, but at a cost of 5 to 10x higher complexity (compute requirements). In any case, it's not a standard yet, and the AOM hopes to have a standard by the end of 2017. HEVC was finalized in January 2013, meaning that it has roughly a 5 year head start on AV1. Look how long it takes for standards to go from a final, ratified spec to optimized implementations and actual deployments. Generally, it takes 3 or 4 years. I'm not saying AV1 won't eventually succeed. But it's got a long, long way to go. HEVC was developed by a standards body (2 actually... the ISO and the ITU), meaning that the patents are RAND-encumbered. The RAND obligation means that patent holders can't just charge whatever they want. They can only charge a "reasonable" fee. What is reasonable? Well, if the market agrees with the price the patent holders are offering, by definition the price was reasonable. If not, a judge may decide (as in Microsoft v Motorola, where Motorola wanted 20 cents for H.264 and 802.11 patents and the judge agreed with Microsoft that 2 cents was reasonable). If anyone holds patents that VP9 reads on, they are not RAND encumbered. Such patent holders could go to court and get an injunction to stop shipment of infringing product (which RAND encumbered patent holders can't until they can prove that they have met their RAND obligation). Lastly, Apple didn't have to obtain their HEVC patent licenses through MPEG LA, HEVC Advance, and Velos. They're big enough to go directly to all of the individual patent holders, and they probably already have patent cross-license agreements with many of the other patent holders. The same is true for other large device OEMs.