Nvidia's GPU accelerated flash comes soon

[josiahsuarez]

http://www.fudzilla.com/content/view/15776/1/
October 5th

According to info that we managed to get from Nvidia, GPU accelerated flash will be officially introduced on October 5th.

The guys from notebookjournal.de have posted a Youtube video showing an internal flash player build running a trailer of the latest Star Trek movie in 720p. The trailer was running on an ION-based netbook which had no trouble in pulling off smooth playback.

Unfortunately, the video was pulled pretty quickly due to the fact that it was under NDA till October 5th, but those that managed to see it, including us, have nothing but praise as this means that those small ION-based netbooks and nettops that are limited to Atom CPU will finally get some flash candy.

We are quite sure that more info about this will be available once Nvidia decides to go
official with the info on October 5th.

[Atomizer]

Most GPU accelerated stuff is good, though is it only for playing video? that would end up being mostly useless, as flash video generally isnt very HQ to begin with, but if its GPU acceleration for all things done in flash, then that would be sweet, as flash can perform rather poorly with alot going on

[CaptNKILL]

Most GPU accelerated stuff is good, though is it only for playing video? that would end up being mostly useless, as flash video generally isnt very HQ to begin with, but if its GPU acceleration for all things done in flash, then that would be sweet, as flash can perform rather poorly with alot going on

Full screen flash video can be pretty resource heavy on systems with weaker CPUs.

My HTPC tends to stutter a bit when watching some shows online at places like Hulu. I'm not really sure what causes it though. It could be a refresh rate glitch since I'm using an AV converter box.

[mojoman0]

hmm flash on zune hd?

[CaptNKILL]

I'm not really all that well educated on the different kinds of CPU architectures and how they relate to software, but I remember reading about how flash cannot run on ARM CPUs because there is no ARM version.

Is there some way that flash could be made to operate entirely in CUDA on a GPU so that it would be totally platform independent?

Again, I don't know how this stuff works, the idea just popped into my head.

If this is possible this would solve a lot of problems for portable devices that can't use x86 processors.

[jolle]

Is there some way that flash could be made to operate entirely in CUDA on a GPU so that it would be totally platform independent?
It would be using OpenCL.
Not everyone support CUDA, like ATi GPUs.

EDIT: although probably not the entire plugin, just the parts the choose to accelerate.
Which might be anything, the rendering, vector graphics drawing or what have you.

[LydianKnight]

We also need a native 64bit Flash plug-in... what are those spongeheads thinking about? ¬¬

[Boe]

It would be using OpenCL.
No GPU Flash acceleration for 6600 cards?

[Redeemed]

No GPU Flash acceleration for 6600 cards?

Or my GeForce2 MX220? :(

[Runningman]

Am I the only one that wants NV to accelerate flash right out the door?

[mullet]

Every time I hear CUDA I think cheeze.

[Heinz68]

http://www.pcper.com/comments.php?nid=7843
While NVIDIA is the one sending out the press release this morning, it should be noted that this Flash acceleration uses the DXVA protocols - not CUDA or anything NVIDIA-specific. That means that AMD GPUs will also benefit from Flash acceleration so users of low-cost 785G platforms, for example, will also see great performance improvement.

Now for some bad news - this Flash Player 10.1 revision isn't out yet and the only release information we have is "before the end of the year." That version, when available, will be a beta version that users will have to manually go download and install. The full, auto-update version that will include DXVA support won't be pushed out until the second quarter of 2010. That still gives ION's competitors (basically Intel) a LOT of time to make up the difference 10.1 will offer.

[jolle]

ah, "just" DXVA..
kindof a let down in this dawning age of GPU computing..
But then again, its Flash..

[nekrosoft13]

BRING 64bit FLASH YOU LAZY SOBs

[jolle]

BRING 64bit FLASH YOU LAZY SOBs
I think the % of users running a acctual 64bit browser is somewhat limited, even if you look exclusively at systems running a 64bit OS.
But hey, cant hurt..

[Heinz68]

People don't use the 64bit browser because the IE shortcut is for the 32bit browser. I'm using Firefox and didn't even know about the hidden IE 64bit on my system.

I did find out fast one day when I was trying to access my games at Steam and the notice was "update to latest Flash Player" and the link didn't work. So I checked the updates with the Firefox and there was none.

I figured out the Steam must be using the IE. I tried to start the IE and it was crashing (it was corrupted).

I checked the Program folder and to my surprise there was also IE 64bit there and it was working just fine. The only problem was when I tried to update the Flash Player there wasn't any 64bit.

I think it is ridiculous that such huge company like Adobe didn't get the 64bit Flash Player yet. After all the 64bit OS is out for long time including the Windows XP 64bit.

[LydianKnight]

Let's just hope this upcoming version of Flash is that 'famous' major upcoming version of Flash they were stating in the Adobe Labs page for 64bit Flash, hey, if they released an experimental version for Linux (and it works really good), why not releasing the same kind of beta for Windows?

Maybe 64bit adoption is going a bit slow, but with upcoming games using more and more resources and the fact that memory is getting cheaper (ok, not always, but... almost), more and more users will be tempted to get more than 4GB, and you can't address 4GB of memory plus the GPU memory and everything in a 32bit OS, you're just wasting a lot of memory in that, so sooner or later, they have to release a 64bit, whether they like it or not.