Apple to Add Dedicated Video Hardware to Macs?

[MacRumors]

http://www.macrumors.com/images/macrumorsthreadlogo.gif (http://www.macrumors.com)

AlleyInsider publishes (http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/8/apple-s-macs-to-get-a-video-upgrade-aapl-) an unconfirmed rumor that Apple will be incorporating QuickTime encoding/decoding chips into their products in the coming months. AlleyInsider's Dan Frommer describes it as "pure speculation" but felt it plausible enough to publish for discussion. Our understanding is that a QuickTime encoding/decoding chip would handle the grunt work of processing video, presumably in the H.264 format, so that Mac computers' processors wouldn't have to do as much heavy lifting. That could be used in any number of cirumstances, such as a live, hi-def iChat AV video chat, watching HD video off the Web, or faster encoding HD video for distribution. (Perhaps the iSight cameras built into MacBooks and iMacs might get a HD upgrade, too.)The rumor actually mirrors an old claim (http://www.macrumors.com/2007/03/09/apple-adding-h-264-hardware-decoder-chip-to-macs/) by Robert Cringely from 2007 that describes the same details:Now comes the rumor I have heard, that I believe to be a fact, that has simply yet to be confirmed. I have heard that Apple plans to add hardware video decoding to ALL of its new computers beginning fairly soon, certainly this year.The significance of this rumor is somewhat unclear as many modern day graphics cards already contain dedicated H.264 decoding hardware. The addition of encoding hardware, however, may be of beneift for lower end and mobile configurations.

Incidentally, H.264 is one of the codecs used in Blu-Ray high definition video discs which Apple has yet to adopt.

Article Link (http://www.macrumors.com/2008/08/11/apple-to-add-dedicated-video-hardware-to-macs/)

[P-Worm]

I'm not really sure that I buy this.

P-Worm

[Apple Ink]

Obviously this would be great for low end MacBooks with IGPs but this coming at a time when Apple is promoting Parallel computing........:confused:

[Bubba Satori]

Blu-ray Macbook Pro and Macbook Tuesday. :D

[bwshockley]

I would like to see this, especially if it can reduce iChat overhead and save some juice. I run iChat for hours on end, producing a fairly hot MacBook Pro in the process. I'd love to see a dedicated encoder that uses less power, or at least creates less heat. :)

[evilgEEk]

I don't see this happening.

Definitely worth speculating about, but I would be surprised if it came to fruition.

[kornyboy]

Wirelessly posted (iPhone: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_0_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5B108 Safari/525.20)

So this means that we may see a Blu-Ray drive in an Apple computer soon. Glad to hear this but I think that we will have to wait and see what happens. It would be very nice to see Blu-Ray in all computers that have an optical drive.

[solipsism]

I'm not really sure that I buy this.
It's true, because the Intel Montevina chipset comes with High Profile H.264 and VC-1 decoding.

[christiemp]

I would LOVE if they did this on the new macbooks AND released them before September 15th :)!

I would LOVE for the new macbooks to be released with this the first tuesday in September...I'm crossing my fingers...but it probably won't happen :(

[motulist]

It sounds like it would've been useful 3 years ago, but not today.

AFAIK, I assume that even the lowest end current macbook can encode and decode h.264 at a reasonable rate without a dedicated chip. Heck, my 5 year old 1 ghz G4 powerbook can encode h.264 off a DVD in very high quality at something like 8 times longer than real time. So I would presume (and hope) that even without a dedicated chip a brand new upcoming late 2008 / early 2009 macbook should be able to do stuff more than 8 times faster!

[andiwm2003]

a german magazine (spiegel) had an article about blue ray in PC's and how they can't cope with the data amount. maybe one of the reasons that there is no blue ray in macbooks is simply because the processors aren't powerful enough or get too hot/use too much battery. and apple wants to make things go smooth. i wouldn't mind having a chip in a MB that solves that problem (although i don't need/want blue ray). a year ago they said it's about $50. maybe prices are down by now.

[plumbingandtech]

Unless they can parlay this into a grandcentral coprocessor, i really don't think this is the big sept. news.

[milo]

*Adding* video hardware?

Don't many macs already have video hardware that at least does hardware encoding, but it sits there unused because apple doesn't provide the software drivers for it?

Wouldn't adding the software support for stuff they're shipping already be the first step?

[Small White Car]

Gee, I was excited by this rumor back in 2007.

And 2006.

And, hmmm...I think there was something similar in 2004. (Different hardware, I'm sure, but the same idea.)

Let's just file this one away next to the 'mini tower' idea and get on with our lives.

[Small White Car]

*Adding* video hardware?

Don't many macs already have video hardware that at least does hardware encoding, but it sits there unused because apple doesn't provide the software drivers for it?

Wouldn't adding the software support for stuff they're shipping already be the first step?

Video cards are not made to encode and de-code H.264. The processor still does that before passing it on to the video card.

[iMacmatician]

AlleyInsider publishes (http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/8/apple-s-macs-to-get-a-video-upgrade-aapl-) an unconfirmed rumor that Apple will be incorporating QuickTime encoding/decoding chips into their products in the coming months. AlleyInsider's Dan Frommer describes it as "pure speculation" but felt it plausible enough to publish for discussion.Our understanding is that a QuickTime encoding/decoding chip would handle the grunt work of processing video, presumably in the H.264 format, so that Mac computers' processors wouldn't have to do as much heavy lifting. That could be used in any number of cirumstances, such as a live, hi-def iChat AV video chat, watching HD video off the Web, or faster encoding HD video for distribution. (Perhaps the iSight cameras built into MacBooks and iMacs might get a HD upgrade, too.)The rumor actually mirrors an old claim (http://www.macrumors.com/2007/03/09/apple-adding-h-264-hardware-decoder-chip-to-macs/) by Robert Cringely from 2007 that describes the same details:
...
The significance of this rumor is somewhat unclear as many modern day graphics cards already contain dedicated H.264 decoding hardware. The addition of encoding hardware, however, may be of beneift for lower end and mobile configurations. Interesting. Another feature the next MacBooks and MacBook Pros could have. So I suppose upcoming Macs, Snow Leopard, iTunes X / Media Me, and iLife '09 could focus on these aspects: iChat, HD iTunes videos, HD in general, QuickTime X, etc.

An explosion of media? I'm liking that. :cool:

a german magazine (spiegel) had an article about blue ray in PC's and how they can't cope with the data amount. maybe one of the reasons that there is no blue ray in macbooks is simply because the processors aren't powerful enough or get too hot/use too much battery. and apple wants to make things go smooth. i wouldn't mind having a chip in a MB that solves that problem (although i don't need/want blue ray). a year ago they said it's about $50. maybe prices are down by now.That's totally valid, but then why isn't there Blu-ray in the Mac Pros and/or iMacs? 4/8 cores should be enough.

So I'm thinking the absence of Blu-ray in Macs is mainly from another reason.

[commander.data]

This is a waste of time. OpenCL will allow GPU to accelerate h.264 encoding. And even without OpenCL, ATI has already partnered with Cyberlink PowerProducer to allow GPU accelerated encoding and similarly nVidia is doing the same with the BadaBOOM software. Even if Intel IGPs lack GPU accelerated h.264 encoding, Grand Central should make better utilization of existing dual cores.

And of course, all discrete GPUs in the current Apple lineup already accelerate h.264 decode with Blu-ray support, although better drivers are probably needed. Intel's GMA X4500 also provides h.264 decoding acceleration so decoding h.264 is hardly a feature that needs a separate chip.

[motulist]

Video cards are not made to encode and de-code H.264. The processor still does that before passing it on to the video card.

Video cards do indeed participate in decoding h.264.

ATI was first to offer H.264 decode acceleration on its GPUs at the end of 2005

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2977

http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/video/video.dec.2007-page1.html

http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&client=safari&rls=en-us&sa=X&oi=spell&resnum=0&ct=result&cd=1&q=video+card+h.264+ati+nvidia&spell=1

[commander.data]

Video cards are not made to encode and de-code H.264. The processor still does that before passing it on to the video card.
Yes the CPU is still involved in some parts of decoding and it does depend on the GPU implementation, but generally when they say they support GPU h.264 decoding, there is still a massive difference.

http://www.hkepc.com/?id=1510&page=5&fs=idn#view

Near the bottom is a comparison of h.264 and Blu-ray decode between the GMA X3500 in the G35 chipset which does not support h.264 decoding and the GMA X4500HD in the G45 chipset which does. CPU utilization dropped from 86% to 10% for h.264 file decode and 95% to 23% for Blu-ray decode. And this is on a 1.6GHz Celeron. Even the GMA X4500 IGP has no problems with h.264 decode. It's just not a worthwhile feature to buy a separate chip for now that even Intel IGPs support it just fine.

Incidentally, on these early drivers, the GMA X4500HD is actually within 10-30% of the performance of AMD's HD 3200 IGP which is on mature drivers. Which is fairly decent for an Intel IGP.

[darkelipse04]

This could be VERY handy for those with Macbooks/Macbook Airs/Mac Minis. The IGP they all have cannot use Open CL (at least right now).
The Capella platform is the only chipset with true optimized encoding/decoding of H.264 and HD playback.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrino#Calpella_platform_.282009.29

Most if not all the work is being done by the CPU right now. The less heat the better. I say bring on this decoding/encoding chip. It will probably be something like Elgato Turbo264 dongle.
http://www.elgato.com/elgato/na/mainmenu/products/Accessories/Turbo264/product1.en.html

[Small White Car]

Video cards do indeed decode h.264.


I stand corrected on that fact. But that doesn't really change the issue I was responding to: The majority of Macs out there don't have hidden hardware that can just be 'turned on.'

I was incorrect in the way I responded to that, but the central point remains the same.

[slu]

Gee, I was excited by this rumor back in 2007.

And 2006.

And, hmmm...I think there was something similar in 2004. (Different hardware, I'm sure, but the same idea.)

Let's just file this one away next to the 'mini tower' idea and get on with our lives.

And tablet....

[rumf]

This is a waste of time. OpenCL will allow GPU to accelerate h.264 encoding. And even without OpenCL, ATI has already partnered with Cyberlink PowerProducer to allow GPU accelerated encoding and similarly nVidia is doing the same with the BadaBOOM software. Even if Intel IGPs lack GPU accelerated h.264 encoding, Grand Central should make better utilization of existing dual cores.

And of course, all discrete GPUs in the current Apple lineup already accelerate h.264 decode with Blu-ray support, although better drivers are probably needed. Intel's GMA X4500 also provides h.264 decoding acceleration so decoding h.264 is hardly a feature that needs a separate chip.

The intersection of Grand Central and dedicated Quicktime encode/decode on the board as well as the "Platform Transition" talk leads me to believe we might see something akin to a "Mac Terminal" in the near future. Take a minimal CPU, add some dedicated codec hardware and interface it to a massively parallel "home server" running over Airport Extreme and you have a whole new home computing paradigm... A mac in every display in your home via an apple tv like device, your iPod touch representing the computing power of a mac pro, your macbook tripling its processing capacity when within network range.

Lots of threads that can be woven into an interesting story.

[Hattig]

*Adding* video hardware?

Don't many macs already have video hardware that at least does hardware encoding, but it sits there unused because apple doesn't provide the software drivers for it?

Wouldn't adding the software support for stuff they're shipping already be the first step?

I'm certain that if it is true (and I hope it is) then it is merely about including drivers for the video acceleration that is present in any recent ATI/AMD and NVIDIA graphics card or integrated graphics, and also present in Intel's latest integrated graphics.

And it will be about time too!

[fastbite]

This is a big deal. To have the ability of standardizing video performance across the board will allow apple to open up to all HD video.

[8CoreWhore]

This could be one of those misinterpreted rumors. it seems like they are finding a way for the GPU to do it as that is the coming trend. :cool:

[Hattig]

Video cards are not made to encode and de-code H.264. The processor still does that before passing it on to the video card.

Yes they are. ATI/AMD have UVD, NVIDIA have PureVideo. Intel now have a unit in their latest chipset. This isn't new stuff either, UVD and PureVideo have been around a couple of years, and they have a real noticeable benefit and reduce power consumption in mobile platforms too.

[neutrino23]

A couple of years ago at MWSF I asked an Apple laptop engineer about this as a recent article had mentioned that the GPU could do H.264 encoding. He said they weren't doing that as they got better quality output by doing it in software. That raises the question: Are all H.264 encoders the same or is there room in the implementation to trade off final quality for speed or simplicity of the algorithm? So if Apple decides to add a chip for H.264 encoding it may have to do with any number of other features besides simply saying it does H.264 encoding in hardware.

Long ago the first PowerBook to include a DVD drive had an external device that plugged into the PC card slot that accelerated DVD decoding. (Historical similarity.)

[CWallace]

Perhaps we should not take the comments as literal - as in Apple will add a chip to solely handle "Quicktime" acceleration in addition to the integrated or separate GPU already found on their machines.

What this could mean is that all Macs will have a separate GPU and not rely on integrated graphics - or at least Intel integrated graphics. Many of us (myself included) assumed Apple would adopt Montevina and the X4500 IGP, but now we have had rumors that Apple might be moving the Mac line (sans Mac Pro) to the nVidia mobile chipset.

Now, I imagine the nVidia chipset will have an IGP option, but I expect it will be superior to the X4500 so even if Apple goes that way for the MacBook and Mac Mini, it could very well improve h.264 performance beyond what we'd get with the X4500. And should Apple just use a separate GPU with the nVidia chipset, performance should be even better.

[DsurioN]

Yes they are. ATI/AMD have UVD, NVIDIA have PureVideo. Intel now have a unit in their latest chipset. This isn't new stuff either, UVD and PureVideo have been around a couple of years, and they have a real noticeable benefit and reduce power consumption in mobile platforms too.

Those are both DEcoders, whereas this new chip would be mainly used to speed up encoding.

Blu-ray Macbooks & Macbook Pro's with iSight HD in September FTW!

Fast HD video encoding & blu-ray burning with your iSight or HD cam - it's all coming together! This is how apple will "differentiate from competitors" in 2008/2009 and incur slight losses on each computer sold due to the expensive blu-ray drive which Apple will nicely not hike the price up for.

[Dmac77]

Wonderful! Blu-Ray tomorrow!!!:p

Don

[motulist]

Those are both DEcoders, whereas this new chip would be mainly used to speed up encoding.


Accelerating h.264 ENcoding is already being done by modern video cards.

http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/video/avivo_1.html

http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&client=safari&rls=en-us&q=video+card+h.264+encode+OR+encoding+ati+nvidia&btnG=Search

[DsurioN]

Wonderful! Blu-Ray tomorrow!!!:p

Don

Lol, I highly doubt that they are coming tomorrow. I'm guessing Mid- or late september, during the iPod event.

[DsurioN]

h.264 ENcoding is already being speed up by modern video cards.

Nothing wrong with going even faster :D

[djchristie]

Hi all, I'm asking this from a position of total ignorance as to how these things work, but would using a dedicated chip improve battery life over how things are currently done, in which case could this be a significant thing for notebooks?

[milo]

I stand corrected on that fact. But that doesn't really change the issue I was responding to: The majority of Macs out there don't have hidden hardware that can just be 'turned on.'

I was incorrect in the way I responded to that, but the central point remains the same.

Let's see.

Mac Pro, Macbook pro and iMac - all cards include h.264 decoding, at least one says it does encoding. Looks like only the Macbook, Air, and Mini don't have that "hidden" hardware. So no, you were wrong on this one. As I said in my first post, most mac models already have hardware that does this, so I don't get what this rumor is supposed to be about.

Can anyone clarify for sure that OSX doesn't take advantage of this hardware acceleration?

Hi all, I'm asking this from a position of total ignorance as to how these things work, but would using a dedicated chip improve battery life over how things are currently done, in which case could this be a significant thing for notebooks?

Yes. And many (non-apple) notebooks are doing this already.

[Peace]

[snip]



And of course, all discrete GPUs in the current Apple lineup already accelerate h.264 decode with Blu-ray support, although better drivers are probably needed. Intel's GMA X4500 also provides h.264 decoding acceleration so decoding h.264 is hardly a feature that needs a separate chip.

Apple isn't going to use any more Intel onboard graphics in upcoming Macbooks/Mac Mini/Apple TV. That's one of the reasons they purchased their own chip company.

HDMI ports for every Mac.;)

[mdriftmeyer]

Video cards do indeed participate in decoding h.264.



http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2977

http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/video/video.dec.2007-page1.html

http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&client=safari&rls=en-us&sa=X&oi=spell&resnum=0&ct=result&cd=1&q=video+card+h.264+ati+nvidia&spell=1

We're talking real-time, uncompressed HD not "good enough, compressed HD content that isn't real-time." We're also hinting at real-time raytracing that needs an chipset that OpenCL can leverage without taxing the GPU or any free cores.

[Bobjob186]

this could be in the theme of snow leopard. Just makes everything more efficient and stable, seems plausible.

[milo]

We're talking real-time, uncompressed HD not "good enough, compressed HD content that isn't real-time." We're also hinting at real-time raytracing that needs an chipset that OpenCL can leverage without taxing the GPU or any free cores.

Actually, I assume you mean HD compressed at a higher data rate.

Uncompressed HD is only used in things like film and HDTV production. It would make no sense to include dedicated hardware for that standard on a consumer box, or even on the Mac Pro. Hardware that can do real time uncompressed HD needs to be beefy and it's still expensive, at least too expensive to make a standard inclusion.

Most graphics cards can decode HD content at rates comparable to things like Bluray and broadcast HDTV. And for most users, that's plenty good enough...or at least it would be if apple supported the hardware instead of letting it sit there unused.

[motulist]

We're talking real-time, uncompressed HD not "good enough, compressed HD content that isn't real-time."

And real-time, uncompressed HD is exactly what the video cards deliver.

the GeForce 8600, it is currently the best option for anyone looking to watch Blu-ray or HD-DVD on their PCs. The full H.264 offload onto the GPU makes HD movie playback not only painless but also possible on lower speed systems.


We're also hinting at real-time raytracing that needs an chipset that OpenCL can leverage without taxing the GPU or any free cores.

Uh, no, that wasn't at all what was hinted at in any way.

[The Tall One]

I was going to say, as I was reading this rumor: "What about Blu-Ray"? Then the rumor at the end mentioned it. BUT I THOUGHT OF IT FIRST! YAR!

Seriously, where is Apple with Blu-Ray super drives. It is borderline unacceptable that Apple does not sell this yet, especially since Apple is on the Blu-Ray board!

[babyj]

What's the point in adding another chip when you could put a better graphics card in there instead? Plus isn't QuickTime being re-written to improve performance with Snow Leopard?

Sounds like a rumour or two gone through a game a Chinese whispers.

[shamino]

Depending on what this chip really does, it may allow Apple to support Blu-Ray movie playback without ruining the rest of Mac OS X.

One of the big problems with Windows Vista is that it supports software playback of HD content. Thanks to the requirements imposed by the movie studios, Microsoft has had to specify and develop (whether it works or not) massive amounts of DRM infrastructure, including CODECs that keep the video encrypted during the decoding process, the ability to selectively detect and disable video cards that don't observe the rules, tilt-bits to detect bus-snoopers, etc.

I suspect Apple doesn't want to play this game. If I were them, I'd refuse to compromise a good multimedia architecture simply because some movie studios demand it.

One possible way around all this might be a dedicated HD-decode chip, as a part of the video card. Mac OS can then feed the raw, encrypted, content from the disc straight to the chip, where the video goes straight to the video output, without ever passing through main memory. Sort of like the overlay model used by video-playback cards, back before CPUs were powerful enough to play real-time video.

This way, the studios get their insane encryption requirements met and Mac OS doesn't get crippled by the attempt to enforce it.

And, of course, when you're not playing a BD movie, you've got a nice powerful auxiliary GPU that can be used for whatever else the system needs.

[Jpoon]

That'd be hot if the Mac Pros and high end iMac started including Blu-Ray drives.

[shamino]

Seriously, where is Apple with Blu-Ray super drives. It is borderline unacceptable that Apple does not sell this yet, especially since Apple is on the Blu-Ray board!
The big problem (see my previous post) is that BD movie playback can't be done without complying with a huge set of insane DRM requirements.

Apple won't ship a BD drive until they can provide a way to play BD movies, otherwise customers will complain a lot more than they are now (about not having the drive.)

This sucks, because people (like me) want a BD-RE drive for use as a data drive, for use as a backup device, and don't care about playing movies (of any kind) on the computer. But I'm certain that I'm in a clear minority with that opinion.

[xix]

Dedicated video hardware? Yeah, it's called a GPU. :rolleyes:

This is not going to happen.

edit:

[other stuff]

This sucks, because people (like me) want a BD-RE drive for use as a data drive, for use as a backup device, and don't care about playing movies (of any kind) on the computer. But I'm certain that I'm in a clear minority with that opinion.

dude, you can totally buy a blu-ray drive off of newegg and stick it in your mac pro and use it for data burning of blu-ray discs. not even joking.

[slackpacker]

Its great that we are catching up. Don't Nvidia and ATI cards already support fast rendering or playback of these files already??

I would hope that Apple would also release some more Snow Leopard info as well. We really need MultiCPU support as well.

[Firefly2002]

It sounds like it would've been useful 3 years ago, but not today.

AFAIK, I assume that even the lowest end current macbook can encode and decode h.264 at a reasonable rate without a dedicated chip. Heck, my 5 year old 1 ghz G4 powerbook can encode h.264 off a DVD in very high quality at something like 8 times longer than real time. So I would presume (and hope) that even without a dedicated chip a brand new upcoming late 2008 / early 2009 macbook should be able to do stuff more than 8 times faster!

That's my thinking as well. Might have been worthwhile a ... well, a while ago, but it's really needed in older machines, not newer ones. Increasingly powerful processors have pretty much rendered it obsolete. It's kind of like running a Radeon 9600 Pro in a Intel 2 Core 3 GHz + system.... it can probably run games just as fast with software rendering.

[doctoree]

unlikely imho, Open GL will let the GPU do that "automatically". But maybe theyll put it into low end macs with no GPU
Doc

[milo]

And real-time, uncompressed HD is exactly what the video cards deliver.

As I said in an earlier post, you're talking about high quality, high bitrate HD.

Uncompressed is 1-3 gigs per second. We're talking terrabytes for an hour of footage. No consumer cards will ever support that, only high end pros use uncompressed HD.

[motulist]

Depending on what this chip really does, it may allow Apple to support Blu-Ray movie playback without ruining the rest of Mac OS X.

One of the big problems with Windows Vista is that it supports software playback of HD content. Thanks to the requirements imposed by the movie studios, Microsoft has had to specify and develop (whether it works or not) massive amounts of DRM infrastructure, including CODECs that keep the video encrypted during the decoding process, the ability to selectively detect and disable video cards that don't observe the rules, tilt-bits to detect bus-snoopers, etc.

I suspect Apple doesn't want to play this game. If I were them, I'd refuse to compromise a good multimedia architecture simply because some movie studios demand it.

One possible way around all this might be a dedicated HD-decode chip, as a part of the video card. Mac OS can then feed the raw, encrypted, content from the disc straight to the chip, where the video goes straight to the video output, without ever passing through main memory. Sort of like the overlay model used by video-playback cards, back before CPUs were powerful enough to play real-time video.

This way, the studios get their insane encryption requirements met and Mac OS doesn't get crippled by the attempt to enforce it.

And, of course, when you're not playing a BD movie, you've got a nice powerful auxiliary GPU that can be used for whatever else the system needs.


Ah! Now here's an angle that makes sense! With today's powerful hardware in even low end systems, a dedicated chip for encoding and decoding h.264 makes almost no sense. Even the low end should be capable of encoding and decoding h.264 in realtime at high quality and without too crazy of a tax on CPU or battery power. But the idea is very very sensible if you're putting in a chip specific to blu-ray itself so that apple can have blu-ray playback while completely avoiding having to infect OS X with any ridiculous deep OS-level DRM that blu-ray requires by law.

Great analysis shamino!

[milo]

That's my thinking as well. Might have been worthwhile a ... well, a while ago, but it's really needed in older machines, not newer ones. Increasingly powerful processors have pretty much rendered it obsolete. It's kind of like running a Radeon 9600 Pro in a Intel 2 Core 3 GHz + system.... it can probably run games just as fast with software rendering.

It's not completely obsolete - while most machines can play back HD pretty easily, a dedicated graphics chip can do it using much less power. That's a huge benefit on a laptop where hardware acceleration can boost battery life for watching movies.

And encoding is always a slow process, it can never be too fast, and it would be great to be able to do it on a dedicated chip in the background so encodes can run full speed and not bog down your machine for other uses.

With today's powerful hardware in even low end systems, a dedicated chip for encoding and decoding h.264 makes almost no sense.

Except for battery life on portables.

CPU's are really powerful, but they are also much higher power hogs than dedicated chips.

[motulist]

As I said in an earlier post, you're talking about high quality, high bitrate HD.

Uncompressed is 1-3 gigs per second. We're talking terrabytes for an hour of footage. No consumer cards will ever support that, only high end pros use uncompressed HD.

And that's exactly why that's not what Apple would be doing. For the vast, vast, vast majority of users, blu-ray level hi-def is already way way way higher quality than they're ever gonna even care about for the next 10 years at least.

[gnasher729]

A couple of years ago at MWSF I asked an Apple laptop engineer about this as a recent article had mentioned that the GPU could do H.264 encoding. He said they weren't doing that as they got better quality output by doing it in software. That raises the question: Are all H.264 encoders the same or is there room in the implementation to trade off final quality for speed or simplicity of the algorithm? So if Apple decides to add a chip for H.264 encoding it may have to do with any number of other features besides simply saying it does H.264 encoding in hardware.

h.264 encoding is absolutely a compromise between processing power used and quality. There are two main reasons for this.

The first reason is, a lot of the improvements in h.264 compared to MPEG-2 for example come from the fact that h.264 allows use of a variety of different algorithms. Some algorithms work better for some scenes (or parts of some scenes), some work better in others. To make use of this, an encoder needs to try say 16 different methods of encoding the video data, and then pick the one that gave the best/smallest results. Of course trying 16 different methods takes longer than trying only four or only one method.

The second reason is motion prediction. In basically all encoding methods, the most important thing is finding a block of pixels in a previous frame (or in multiple previous frames) that looks similar to the block you are encoding. The more similarity you find, the better the compression. But finding similar frames basically means comparing each piece of one frame with as many pieces as possible from previous frames. If you compare against more pieces from other frames, you take more time, but you find more similarity and get better compression. So that is again a trade-off between time and quality.

Another trade-off happens with two-pass encoding. What happens there: There are always some parts of a movie that can be compressed better than others. To get the overall best quality for a given movie size, you'd first find which parts look good with more compression and which ones are harder to compress / need more bytes to look good. Then you compress some parts a bit more, and other parts a bit less. This gives overall the best quality at any given total size, but it means you first make a pass analysing the movie (which does basically all the work apart from writing the compressed movie to disk), and then another pass doing the real compression. That's twice the work for some quality improvement. (Without two-pass compression, you will have some parts of the movie looking really good, and some parts looking rubbish).

[kabunaru]

Apple isn't going to use any more Intel onboard graphics in upcoming Macbooks/Mac Mini/Apple TV.

Are they moving to Nvidia graphics or ATI graphics would you say?

[dicklacara]

I read the recent Cringley post:

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2008/pulpit_20080801_005339.html

and it seemed pretty logical...

What if the chips would be applied "across the entire line" quote means the entire line of Apple products that display or process video, including: iPhone, AppleTV, some iPods, as well as Mac computers.

YouTube changed its codec to h264 to support the iPhone (resulting in better quality, smaller files, less bandwidth). Could other social sites find advantage in doing the same.

For instance, consider the site

http://live.yahoo.com/

This site offers AV Lifecasting in real time. It features a live 400x300 video of the primary broadcaster and live videos of, up to 4, 160x120 concurrent secondary broadcasters.

Anyone can sign up, setup a free lifecast channel and go live in minutes. The channel content includes: gossips, goof-offs, entertainers, news, security monitoring...

Currently, this is all delivered with Flash (unavailable on the iPhone) and probably not practical on most mobile devices. What if, Yahoo saw an advantage in offer h264 streaming to enable practical use of the site for mobile devices?

As a real-world example, there is a site I visit every week:

http://live.yahoo.com/sheenatv

It features Sheena Melwani an up and coming singer/composer/musician doing a live broadcast & AV chat at 5:30 - 6:30 PM PDT every Monday. The audience includes a group of 20-30 regulars and 40 or more drop-ins.

But, soccer season has begun for the 3 grandkids & the 2 boys have practice 4:30 - 7:00 (with driving). I can't use my iPhone to access the site (Flash) and there is no WiFi in the middle of the park. I am investigating using the iPhone to tether my MacBook, or using the iPhone via a VPN to a iMac at home... the latter works better but has no audio.

What I would really like is to view SheenaTV directly on the iPhone over EDGE so I could tune in, watch, listen and chat whenever the opportunity was available.

Maybe a future iPhone rev would even allow me to AV chat.

Is this a niche market? Maybe so, maybe no! The social experiments of sharing live video are in their infancy, but seem to be well-received. Who can say what effect h.264's improved quality, performance and lower bandwidth will have?

It would be something if we could access the AV of choice, on the device(s) of choice at the time and place of our choosing.

Is it "King Content" or [B]King Content-delivery?

[slackpacker]

We're talking real-time, uncompressed HD not "good enough, compressed HD content that isn't real-time." We're also hinting at real-time raytracing that needs an chipset that OpenCL can leverage without taxing the GPU or any free cores.

Wow everybody....

BluRay is compressed so thats where a GPU would come in handy.

Realtime Uncompressed playback of HD needs FAST HD Array's and DATA throughput rather than a GPU which would do nothing to move the massive amounts of RAW data that HD video is.

3D/RayTrace is basically realtime now.... Its called NVIDIA cards GPU.

[Manic Mouse]

Just add GPUs to the Mini and MB, bingo .h264 decoding on all Macs. Can also be used with Open CL. Everyone wins.

[kabunaru]

Just add GPUs to the Mini and MB, bingo .h264 decoding on all Macs. Can also be used with Open CL. Everyone wins.

I think that if the MacBook gets a dedicated graphics card, it will fly off the shelves literally. The more people buy it, the more it is going to make up for the lost MacBook Pro sales. ;)

[Manic Mouse]

I think that if the MacBook gets a dedicated graphics card, it will fly off the shelves literally. The more people buy it, the more it is going to make up for the lost MacBook Pro sales. ;)

The BlackBook should always have had a dedicated GPU, it was meant to be the 12" PB replacement was it not?

[CyberBob859]

How is this announcement any different than using something like Elgato's Turbo 264? Instead of a dongle on a USB bus, it's built into the motherboard.

http://www.elgato.com/elgato/na/mainmenu/products/Accessories/Turbo264/product1.en.html

[kabunaru]

The BlackBook should always have had a dedicated GPU, it was meant to be the 12" PB replacement was it not?

How about a standard 13" aluminium MacBook as a 12" iBook G4/13"MacBook replacement and 13" black aluminium MacBook as a 12" PowerBook G4 true replacement? Both will have dedicated graphics cards but the black aluminium MacBook will have a slightly better graphics card than the standard aluminium MacBook.
Also, price the standard aluminium MacBook at $999 and black aluminium MacBook at $1299 and both should get LED screens.
Also, remove the combo drive from the base model.

Other than that, I don't know what else to say about the new MacBooks.

[commander.data]

3D/RayTrace is basically realtime now.... Its called NVIDIA cards GPU.
If I'm not mistaken all current GPUs operate using rasterization not raytracing so I don't know what nVidia GPU you are talking about.

[gkarris]

Are they moving to Nvidia graphics or ATI graphics would you say?

The Mini will get those left-over defective Nvidia chips.... :eek:

[MacGeek7]

Blu-ray Macbook Pro and Macbook Tuesday. :D

I wish....or should I say iWish?

Either way, I've put off purchasing DVDs until Apple incorporates Blu-Ray because I don't want to watch DVDs in a Blu-Ray player and I don't want to have to upgrade my DVD collection either

[twoodcc]

interesting. i would love to see HD isights, and blu-ray on macs also

[tkiss]

I don't know very much about video cards, but doesn't dedicated video card mean better graphics, and the fat that I will actually be able to play Spore on a Macbook when it comes out?

[mdriftmeyer]

If I'm not mistaken all current GPUs operate using rasterization not raytracing so I don't know what nVidia GPU you are talking about.

You're not mistaken and they don't trace vectors on-the-fly, at differing graphics depths, w/ or w/o anti-aliasing in independent views, etc.

People are also forgetting about Resolution Independence needing this dedicated Chipset [Vector Pipelines on steroids with a DSP on a separate chipset to handle other aspects of encoding/decoding] to deal with the heavy lifting of the heavy matrix transforms without taxing the CPU and lagging the WindowServer.

This isn't a software encoding solution, but it's an OpenCL implementation to leverage dedicated hardware to do this without taxing CPU cores or a GPU until the GPU is needed for threads to aide in rasterizing lighting, textures, etc.

Dedicated units to do specific tasks in huge pipes rapidly, on-the-fly, at at least 60fps will be a requirement to be smooth in views already outputing HD while it's parentView is being resized, moved and not chopping the video output.

Being able to add depth at varying color depths, layer levels for basic UI manipulation behavior also requires more off-loading.

This isn't just for people who want to use Final Cut Pro or Photoshop with > 4G of Ram on images at > 4K pixels using hundreds of layers.

[mdriftmeyer]

http://www.khronos.org/news/events/detail/siggraph_2008_los_angeles_california/


Beyond Programmable Shading: Fundamentals

SIGGRAPH Core | Thursday, 14 August | 8:30 am - 12:15 pm | 403 AB
Shader Guest Speakers:

11:30 OpenCL Aaftab Munshi, OpenCL WG

Who is he?

Aaftab Munshi is the spec editor for the OpenGL ES 1.1 and 2.0 specifications. Now at Apple, he was formerly senior architect in ATI’s handheld group.

OpenCL Working Group
OpenCL Working Group and how it impacts OpenGL Neil Trevett, OpenCL WG

Neil Trevett: Nvidia

The link gives an overview of the topics from AMD, Nvidia and Intel.

[kjs862]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_0_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5B108 Safari/525.20)

Sounds interesting. Seems to a lot of news these days about optimizing code for multi-core and increasing the GPU role in processing.

[InkMaster]

Sigh... I too want a 720p iSight but theres a problem...

...the problem is called ISP asshats. With what for example Comcast gives you (45KB up) you can't even stream 640x480 in full quality - ever see what you get on the other end? Blurry blurry crap.

Problem isn't with the quality of the webcams as it is w/ the service to transfer that video...

I mean it doesn't matter if Apple throws in a 1080p 3CCD camera in place of an iSight, the quality on the other end won't change... :(

[bigwig]

I want to be able to rip Blu-Ray to hard disk and distribute it to any player in my house. My poor Mini isn't quite up to the task, but with dedicated hardware it would be a sweet setup (assuming Apple or the Blu-Ray dweebs themselves don't actively get in the way of doing this).

[ryanw]

I would think the only move apple would make is to incorporate a minimum level graphics card that has hardware h.264 encode/decode support. My macpro has a graphics card that does the H.264 encode/decode. I believe macbook pro's do too..

[Joe The Dragon]

Yes the CPU is still involved in some parts of decoding and it does depend on the GPU implementation, but generally when they say they support GPU h.264 decoding, there is still a massive difference.

http://www.hkepc.com/?id=1510&page=5&fs=idn#view

Near the bottom is a comparison of h.264 and Blu-ray decode between the GMA X3500 in the G35 chipset which does not support h.264 decoding and the GMA X4500HD in the G45 chipset which does. CPU utilization dropped from 86% to 10% for h.264 file decode and 95% to 23% for Blu-ray decode. And this is on a 1.6GHz Celeron. Even the GMA X4500 IGP has no problems with h.264 decode. It's just not a worthwhile feature to buy a separate chip for now that even Intel IGPs support it just fine.

Incidentally, on these early drivers, the GMA X4500HD is actually within 10-30% of the performance of AMD's HD 3200 IGP which is on mature drivers. Which is fairly decent for an Intel IGP.
and now ati has the new 3300 IGP and boards that have side port ram giving it even bigger boost.

[Akzel]

I'd rather have a discrete graphics card in the Macbook (maybe the 8600?) and a better card on the MBP (8800?).

Well, if they manage to do that without making the laptop work as George Foreman Grill while decoding video. :-P

[yadmonkey]

Gee, I was excited by this rumor back in 2007.

And 2006.

And, hmmm...I think there was something similar in 2004. (Different hardware, I'm sure, but the same idea.)

Let's just file this one away next to the 'mini tower' idea and get on with our lives.

Yeah, I remember this rumor coming up probably two years ago.

[milo]

Yeah, I remember this rumor coming up probably two years ago.

And it actually made sense two years ago, when far fewer graphics chipsets included h.264 decoding, much less encoding.

Now that the majority of macs already have hardware that does that, even if it isn't being used by the OS or apps, the rumor doesn't even make sense.

Hopefully with 10.6, OSX will finally start using it.

[Trip.Tucker]

"Incidentally, H.264 is one of the codecs used in Blu-Ray high definition video discs which Apple has yet to adopt. "

Since when has Apple not included H.264?

[Sam Yikin]

"Incidentally, H.264 is one of the codecs used in Blu-Ray high definition video discs which Apple has yet to adopt. "

Since when has Apple not included H.264?

He's saying that a dedicated processor would IMPROVE playback of H.264, not add it.

[Andronicus]

"Incidentally, H.264 is one of the codecs used in Blu-Ray high definition video discs which Apple has yet to adopt. "

Since when has Apple not included H.264?

I think it was refering to the "Blu-Ray high definition video discs" when it said "which apple has yet to adopt".

[Trip.Tucker]

I think it was refering to the "Blu-Ray high definition video discs" when it said "which apple has yet to adopt".


Ohhhh, gotcha. I wish these writers would use correct grammar. :mad:
The world is becoming increasingly illiterate.

[theBB]

Ohhhh, gotcha. I wish these writers would use correct grammar. :mad:
The world is becoming increasingly illiterate.
What is wrong with the sentence? It seems correct, "which" immediately followed the object being further described.

[asphyxiafeeling]

OMG!

i know it's not likely but this would just make my day if it were true!


CMON! even a stupid 9200M in a macbook! PLZ!!!!!!!!!!!

[iMacmatician]

This is a waste of time. OpenCL will allow GPU to accelerate h.264 encoding.So does this mean Apple thinks that current GPUs aren't powerful enough for the tasks Apple wants, and so wants another accelerator chip?

Or is this just an excuse to put integrated GPUs into as many Macs as possible? :rolleyes:

This could be VERY handy for those with Macbooks/Macbook Airs/Mac Minis. The IGP they all have cannot use Open CL (at least right now).Will the X4500 be able to?

[winterspan]

This is a waste of time. OpenCL will allow GPU to accelerate h.264 encoding. And even without OpenCL, ATI has already partnered with Cyberlink PowerProducer to allow GPU accelerated encoding and similarly nVidia is doing the same with the BadaBOOM software.
*snip* And of course, all discrete GPUs in the current Apple lineup already accelerate h.264 decode with Blu-ray support, although *snip*

Yep, you are totally correct. I agree with you and the others here that this rumor doesn't make any sense. At this point, full H.264/VC-1 decoding is done by all relatively new discrete GPUs, and now finally on the Intel "Montevina" X4500 integrated graphics chipset.

Encoding on GPUs is still in it's infancy, but nVidia and AMD both support H.264 encoding on their newer cards. As you mentioned, software support is very limited at the moment, although I know there are a few different companies creating updates for their software or plugins for commercial products like Adobe Premiere, After effects, etc that enable H.264 encoding on different GPUs.

So although a small, dedicated H.264 encoding chip would probably outperform all but the most powerful GPUs at the task, there is really no reason to include one. The Macbook and Mini just need a low-end discrete GPU from nVidia or ATI, and they would be capable of both H.264 decoding and encoding acceleration.


*Adding* video hardware? Don't many macs already have video hardware that at least does hardware encoding, but it sits there unused because apple doesn't provide the software drivers for it? Wouldn't adding the software support for stuff they're shipping already be the first step?

Video cards are not made to encode and de-code H.264. The processor still does that before passing it on to the video card.

Yes they are. ATI/AMD have UVD, NVIDIA have PureVideo. Intel now have a unit in their latest chipset. This isn't new stuff either, UVD and PureVideo have been around a couple of years, and they have a real noticeable benefit and reduce power consumption in mobile platforms too.

Hattig is correct. Here is a chart I made to show video DEcoding acceleration support among ATI, Nvidia, and Intel graphics chipsets:

* All systems below offer MPEG2 decoding support (DVD)

Intel

GMA 950 (pre-Santa Rosa) - NO support for H.264/VC1 decoding.
GMA X3100 (Santa Rosa) - NO support for H.264. Limited support for VC1 decoding.
GMA X4500 (Monevina/future) - Full H.264, Full VC1 decoding.

Nvidia

PureVideo HD 1 - Very limited H.264, Very limited VC1 decoding.
Available on Geforce 7900 and older "G80" based versions of 8800

PureVideo HD 2 - Full H.264 / Partial VC1 decoding.
Available on Geforce 8300, 8400, 8600, 8700, and newer "G92" based 8800 (this includes 8800GT for Mac Pro, and all 8800 laptop cards)

PureVideo HD 3 - Full H.264, Full VC1 decoding.
Available on Introduced with GTX 260/280 (and some newer 9-series models like Geforce 9600GT


ATI/AMD

UVD/UVD+ - Full H.264, Full VC1 decoding. Greater offloading for both codecs than Nvidia's PureVideo 2.
Available on all Geforce 2xxx, 3xxx series

UVD2 - Full H.264/VC1/MPEG2. Adds support for Blu-ray Profile 2.0 / BD-Live, and Picture-in-Picture.
Available on Geforce 4800 series


h.264 encoding is absolutely a compromise between processing power used and quality. There are two main reasons for this.

The first reason is, a lot of the improvements in h.264 compared to MPEG-2 for example come from the fact that h.264 allows use of a variety of different algorithms. Some algorithms work better for some scenes (or parts of some scenes), some work better in others. To make use of this, an encoder needs to try say 16 different methods of encoding the video data, and then pick the one that gave the best/smallest results. Of course trying 16 different methods takes longer than trying only four or only one method. ...*snip*

Thanks for the information!


You're not mistaken and they don't trace vectors on-the-fly, at differing graphics depths, w/ or w/o anti-aliasing in independent views, etc.

People are also forgetting about Resolution Independence needing this dedicated Chipset [Vector Pipelines on steroids with a DSP on a separate chipset to handle other aspects of encoding/decoding] to deal with the heavy lifting of the heavy matrix transforms without taxing the CPU and lagging the WindowServer.
*snip*


What? All modern GPUs offer 2D hardware acceleration, which should provide plenty of power for a resolution independent vector GUI. There is no conceivable reason why you would need a dedicated "vector art" accelerating DSP... Am I misinterpreting your point here?

[jasonjuicer]

I would like to see this, especially if it can reduce iChat overhead and save some juice. I run iChat for hours on end, producing a fairly hot MacBook Pro in the process. I'd love to see a dedicated encoder that uses less power, or at least creates less heat. :)

Well said. I would like to use less power too!

[milo]

What is wrong with the sentence? It seems correct, "which" immediately followed the object being further described.

It seems fine and made perfect sense to me. I guess people don't want to look like they've been wrong on the internet, it must be the other guy's fault you didn't read it properly...:rolleyes:

So does this mean Apple thinks that current GPUs aren't powerful enough for the tasks Apple wants, and so wants another accelerator chip?

Or is this just an excuse to put integrated GPUs into as many Macs as possible? :rolleyes:

Probably neither. They can get away with integrated graphics on the cheapest machines, but that's about it.

Will the X4500 be able to?

It's supposed to. Maybe once Apple is using it, they'll finally start taking advantage of h.264 hardware since the whole line will include it.

[Wild-Bill]

I'd rather have a discreet graphics card as well.

This sounds like an attempt by Apple to once again avoid discreet graphics in the low end prodcts and possibly discontinue their use on the higher end models. Anything to save a buck.... :rolleyes:

Hey, if they are talking about putting a chip in to handle QT and H.264 duties while freeing up graphics cards for other things, I'm all for it. But if this is another cost-cutting attempt than I am not impressed.

Apple's got over 20 BILLION in cash, not what one would consider "balanced" books. They need to be putting discreet graphics in laptops. Period. And they need to stop buying the previous generation graphics. Apple has always lagged behind in the graphics department. Look at the "announcement" a couple of months ago that the ATI 3870 would be available for the Mac Pro. Big friggin' deal. The 4870 is out, and has been out. Next... :rolleyes:

[milo]

They need to be putting discreet graphics in laptops. Period. And they need to stop buying the previous generation graphics.

While I agree that Apple should offer the latest graphics chips, I don't see what the big deal is about using integrated graphics on the cheapest models. Especially when PCs are doing the exact same thing.

[wizard]

Hi Guys;

First off Shamino above, should be given a lot of credit for his insight. There is a lot of legal BS that goes along with implementing Blu-Ray which is likely why Apple has yet to deliver. More importantly people have to realize that Blu-Ray while it may use H.264 is not H.264. It is a very important distinction as you can decode and view H.264 today on Mac Platforms.

Second; there isn't a hardware platform yet that can decode Blue ray on a PC, in every form and extension it supports! With our without GPU acceleration. Sure you can do 1 stream of H.264 with passable quality on many a GPU but Blue-Ray offers up more than that. Still I have to believe that a big motivation for Apple will simply be to deliver a way to offer up Blu-ray content that doesn't screw up the rest of their systems the way MS did.

In some other forums on other sites, there has been a lot of discussion about what Apple could transition to that would offer up the advantage that Apple management alluded to. Many of us think that a specialize processor is part of the plan. Of course we diverge a bit as to what exactly that is. My suggestion is this, that Apple wants and needs a co-processor that is flexible enough to offer up on all its platforms. I'm talking IPod Touch Nano on up. What I see here is a vector processing array that can be scaled depending on the platform it is stuffed into.

So imagine Apple taking a concept that somewhat resembles the vector units in Cell that are optimized to do video decode and other tasks of interest to Apple. A iPod might implement one or two vector units, a Mini 8 and a Mac Pro 32. Each would have exactly the same vector unit, OpenCl would provide the avenue to using the supplied hardware.

Now before everybody flips out about Cell and power usage I will remind everyone that Cell was an IBM designed chip! Here we have PA Semi doing the design with a tremendous amount of low power experience combined with Apples background with Alt-Vec. It should be completely reasonable to expect that such a processor could replace the current decode unit in an iPod without a huge increase in power usage. Do a SOC and the power usage might go down. Give this co-processor the ability to do its own I/O and you have a way to significantly off load the main processor and maintain IP security. Since the processors are more general purpose and hopefully live as a fully equal on the processor bus the alternative uses are unlimited.

Now about that alternative use. Imagine vector code that you write being able to work on both an iPod Touch and a Mac Pro without a rewrite. There certainly would be a speed difference but that is to be expected. The idea is that the main CPU instruction set means very little to you as a developer as you have a universal facility to target or you simply rely on OpenCL.

Now that is raw speculation but if what Apple is hinting at is hardware I see it as a reasonable possibility.

Dave

[encro]

Sigh... I too want a 720p iSight but theres a problem...

...the problem is called ISP asshats. With what for example Comcast gives you (45KB up) you can't even stream 640x480 in full quality - ever see what you get on the other end? Blurry blurry crap.

Problem isn't with the quality of the webcams as it is w/ the service to transfer that video...

I mean it doesn't matter if Apple throws in a 1080p 3CCD camera in place of an iSight, the quality on the other end won't change... :(

The second Cringely article (http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2008/pulpit_20080801_005339.html) talks about this. The chips do compression also so it may be possible. I've been able to stream 640x480 in Skype before with quality video under 25KB/s. There are other factors that can affect a connection other than your ISP.

[brendanspah764]

I'd rather have a discrete graphics card in the Macbook (maybe the 8600?) and a better card on the MBP (8800?).

Well, if they manage to do that without making the laptop work as George Foreman Grill while decoding video. :-P

YESSS

[iMacmatician]

Apple's got over 20 BILLION in cash, not what one would consider "balanced" books. They need to be putting discreet graphics in laptops. Period. And they need to stop buying the previous generation graphics.Maybe the $20 billion is for future iPhone development.

:p

[deannnnn]

As someone who basically lives inside Final Cut Pro, I'd love to see this happen...

[Cappy]

Maybe the $20 billion is for future iPhone development.

:p

My guess is that they're doing what MS did with their stash and save it for the various lawsuits that arise from being a monopoly. Don't be fooled like some others because Apple certainly is a monopoly in the music industry so they're a prime target like MS has been.

[yadmonkey]

My guess is that they're doing what MS did with their stash and save it for the various lawsuits that arise from being a monopoly. Don't be fooled like some others because Apple certainly is a monopoly in the music industry so they're a prime target like MS has been.

This world monopoly. I do not think it means what you think it means.

[gnasher729]

Hey, if they are talking about putting a chip in to handle QT and H.264 duties while freeing up graphics cards for other things, I'm all for it. But if this is another cost-cutting attempt than I am not impressed.
The only one actually talking about h.264 hardware is Cringeley. I'd just like to say that dedicated h.264 _to free up graphics cards for other things_ is quite pointless. h.264 = watching videos. You don't play any 3d games while watching video. The only good reason for h.264 hardware would be power savings.

Apple's got over 20 BILLION in cash, not what one would consider "balanced" books. They need to be putting discreet graphics in laptops. Period. And they need to stop buying the previous generation graphics. Apple has always lagged behind in the graphics department. Look at the "announcement" a couple of months ago that the ATI 3870 would be available for the Mac Pro. Big friggin' deal. The 4870 is out, and has been out. Next... :rolleyes:
There are lots of people (like me) who have no need for anything better than integrated graphics. It handles everything fine that I need it for. Others have different needs, but I don't want to pay more for their needs.

However, Apple is planning further ahead anyway. And Apple is really best buddies with Intel. And Intel has a new chip on its way that is at the same time a powerful engine for a graphics card and at the same time perfectly useful for high performance computing. And Apple is right now developing both the software to use many cores easily, and to use graphics hardware. I could see a laptop chip containing a single Core2 core plus two or four Larrabee cores, which would give you a combination that is reasonably low power, faster than current laptops for normal task, has good graphics power and beats a current MacPro with specialised software.

[gnasher729]

My guess is that they're doing what MS did with their stash and save it for the various lawsuits that arise from being a monopoly. Don't be fooled like some others because Apple certainly is a monopoly in the music industry so they're a prime target like MS has been.

Apple is such a big monopoly in the music industry, they cannot even force the record companies to give Apple a license to sell DRM-free music. A monopoly is in a position to say "You do as you're told or else...". Apple is nowhere near that position.

[Cappy]

I'd rather have a discreet graphics card as well.

This sounds like an attempt by Apple to once again avoid discreet graphics in the low end prodcts and possibly discontinue their use on the higher end models. Anything to save a buck.... :rolleyes:

Hey, if they are talking about putting a chip in to handle QT and H.264 duties while freeing up graphics cards for other things, I'm all for it. But if this is another cost-cutting attempt than I am not impressed.

I seriously doubt it's a cost cutting move unless they've brought in executives from the early 90's back to Apple to make decisions like this. If anything the Apple of today is more about distinguishing or protecting themselves. They cannot win in a price war so they have to come up with angles and promote those. Honestly though I don't put anything into this rumor.

If true though, it sounds more like the Apple of old where they came out with a Mac model that had a dsp chip coupled in the system with a 68040. Many were interested in it but it didn't hang around long as processors soon came out where the dsp was no longer needed and the processors were cheaper. Not to mention that it was easier for developers to write for the processor than the dsp in the first place.

People need to remember that this is all rumor so getting excited about it good or bad really is just setting youself up later.

If I were to rumor about chips, I would be thinking hard about chips that allow Apple to truly tie the OS to their hardware as far as Macs are concerned.

Apple's got over 20 BILLION in cash, not what one would consider "balanced" books. They need to be putting discreet graphics in laptops. Period. And they need to stop buying the previous generation graphics. Apple has always lagged behind in the graphics department. Look at the "announcement" a couple of months ago that the ATI 3870 would be available for the Mac Pro. Big friggin' deal. The 4870 is out, and has been out. Next... :rolleyes:

Apple has done this since....forever. I wouldn't expect that to change now. Honestly I don't think it's so much a cost issue as creating the drivers constantly to keep up. In the end cost is an issue with this but the common thought is regarding chip costs. One needs to consider that developing drivers has a cost as well. And before someone mentions on the pc side where a single driver seems to support everything, that's not always the case. Many times than can be merely a package that contains multiple drivers or driver configurations depending on the hardware.

Long ago though I had a thought that one day if Apple was perceived "cool" enough that they might be able to sell a premium game system(Alienware comes to mind as an example) that was Mac based where they did have the latest blazing video card. In that case it would be a chicken/egg thing though where game developers are going to want to see the marketshare potential in order to bring games over to the Mac.

...after thinking a bit more...I would be curious to see if between this and comments and rumors regarding the product transition that Apple has mentioned over the next quarter if perhaps it really is about Macs. I don't think I've read or heard anyone mention the Apple TV yet. Apple might be looking to improve it with this and maybe give it a little more punch.

[Cappy]

Apple is such a big monopoly in the music industry, they cannot even force the record companies to give Apple a license to sell DRM-free music. A monopoly is in a position to say "You do as you're told or else...". Apple is nowhere near that position.

If you follow that path then you would be saying that MS was not a monopoly.

I think you're a victim to what the definition of monopoly is. Remember it is perfectly legal to be a monopoly. It's how you wield that power is when the justice dept comes knocking. No matter though my point is more about those "companies" that come out of the woodwork when they research their patents and look for angles to go after Apple. Some may even attempt going through the government if they feel Apple is mishandling their position but that wasn't my point to begin with.

[iMacmatician]

There are lots of people (like me) who have no need for anything better than integrated graphics. It handles everything fine that I need it for. Others have different needs, but I don't want to pay more for their needs. Options would be good. :)

However, Apple is planning further ahead anyway. And Apple is really best buddies with Intel. And Intel has a new chip on its way that is at the same time a powerful engine for a graphics card and at the same time perfectly useful for high performance computing. And Apple is right now developing both the software to use many cores easily, and to use graphics hardware. I could see a laptop chip containing a single Core2 core plus two or four Larrabee cores, which would give you a combination that is reasonably low power, faster than current laptops for normal task, has good graphics power and beats a current MacPro with specialised software.Perfectly stated. I would REALLY LIKE that!

[darkelipse04]

[QUOTE=winterspan;6018832]Yep, you are totally correct. I agree with you and the others here that this rumor doesn't make any sense. At this point, full H.264/VC-1 decoding is done by all relatively new discrete GPUs, and now finally on the Intel "Montevina" X4500 integrated graphics chipset.

Where has it been said that the Montevina paired with the basic X4500 can do full decoding of H.264 ?
"The difference between the GMA X4500 and the GMA X4500HD is that the GMA X4500HD is capable of "full 1080p high-definition video playback, including Blu-ray disc movies", the GMA X4500 however does not have that capability."
I somehow doubt Apple will be using the X4500HD.

[thecartoonguy]

Really? We're going all "PITCH A TENT" over this Blu-Ray nonsense again? Currently a mid range player is in the $500.00 range. Sure there are a few cheaper models and they may work 10% of the time. Unless the cost becomes worth it and the market grows Blu-ray will not be in Apple's line up. Besides, why would you want a Blu-Ray on anything less than a 20- 24" screen? Additionally, the cost of the disks are still fairly high, unless you have Netflicks......ya know what? Never mind. Demand the Blu-Ray, the solid gold case, and then bitch about the weight and cost. Honestly...... yes I'm cranky, due to a cold, which I swear death himself has created.

[polee]

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry8320/4.2.2 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/167)

Sorry but what's a dedicated encoder? Is that like a software update that I could install on my current macbook with performance enhancements to follow.

[thecartoonguy]

Apple's got over 20 BILLION in cash, not what one would consider "balanced" books. They need to be putting discreet graphics in laptops. Period. And they need to stop buying the previous generation graphics. - This was a quote. Not sure why it did not show up that way.

I think Apple is holding on to their cash as a reminder to save for a rainy day. If memory serves the company almost closed their doors back in the 80's for many reasons, including not enough cash on hand. With that said, they really should invest in a video company and bring their game up, so to speak.

[ezekielrage_99]

Where has it been said that the Montevina paired with the basic X4500 can do full decoding of H.264 ?
"The difference between the GMA X4500 and the GMA X4500HD is that the GMA X4500HD is capable of "full 1080p high-definition video playback, including Blu-ray disc movies", the GMA X4500 however does not have that capability."
I somehow doubt Apple will be using the X4500HD.

The X4500HD is apparently only for desktop systems at the moment.

[CyberBob859]

Everybody keeps mentioning how the newer processors and GPUs have enough computational power to handle h.264 encoding themselves.

What about the newer, low-power Atom processors? I'm guessing that systems based on these chips will not have high-power GPUs and an h.264 encoding chip on the motherboard may make sense.

[Val-kyrie]

Depending on what this chip really does, it may allow Apple to support Blu-Ray movie playback without ruining the rest of Mac OS X.

One of the big problems with Windows Vista is that it supports software playback of HD content. Thanks to the requirements imposed by the movie studios, Microsoft has had to specify and develop (whether it works or not) massive amounts of DRM infrastructure, including CODECs that keep the video encrypted during the decoding process, the ability to selectively detect and disable video cards that don't observe the rules, tilt-bits to detect bus-snoopers, etc.

I suspect Apple doesn't want to play this game. If I were them, I'd refuse to compromise a good multimedia architecture simply because some movie studios demand it.

One possible way around all this might be a dedicated HD-decode chip, as a part of the video card. Mac OS can then feed the raw, encrypted, content from the disc straight to the chip, where the video goes straight to the video output, without ever passing through main memory. Sort of like the overlay model used by video-playback cards, back before CPUs were powerful enough to play real-time video.

This way, the studios get their insane encryption requirements met and Mac OS doesn't get crippled by the attempt to enforce it.

And, of course, when you're not playing a BD movie, you've got a nice powerful auxiliary GPU that can be used for whatever else the system needs.

This is the most plausible explanation I have heard so far.

[fpnc]

Not going to happen. No way, no how. It makes no sense either economically or as a potential feature. Core 2 processors combined with modern, low-end GPUs can already handle HD content for decode and their just isn't enough need to do HD encoding in real-time or anything even approaching realtime (for the average user).

Beside that, with next year's Core i7 processors, embedded GPUs, OpenCL, and Grand Central there won't be any need for this rumored, dedicated, hardware-based H.264 acceleration. Apple isn't going to introduce a completely new and costly hardware architecture that will be obsolete and/or unnecessary in less than a year.

[ChrisA]

I'm certain that if it is true (and I hope it is) then it is merely about including drivers for the video acceleration that is present in any recent ATI/AMD and NVIDIA graphics card or integrated graphics

Yes. I suspect very soon all Macs will use specialized hardware to accelerate video decompression. The best way to do this would be to use the GPU. I seriously doubt Apple will build in video decoders other then GPUs

[mike12806]

Apple's got over 20 BILLION in cash, not what one would consider "balanced" books. They need to be putting discreet graphics in laptops. Period. And they need to stop buying the previous generation graphics. - This was a quote. Not sure why it did not show up that way.

I think Apple is holding on to their cash as a reminder to save for a rainy day. If memory serves the company almost closed their doors back in the 80's for many reasons, including not enough cash on hand. With that said, they really should invest in a video company and bring their game up, so to speak.

No, Apple is holding onto their cash because they've accumulated it so quickly over the past, say, five years, they haven't had time to strategize how best to divest it. I don't think anyone could've predicted the explosion of the "Apple" brand that we have seen since the introduction of the iPod, and subsequently the iPhone.

[Powerbooky]

QuickTime dedicated encoder/decoder chips? Don't think so. Although the GPU seems to be "the return of the co-processor" nowadays, but are they capable to support encoding?

Personally I think that Apple needs to improve much in the software version of QT first. Currently QT Pro still doesn't have a decent H.264 encoder that doesn't change colorspace when not asked for. Not to mention correct handling of ITU601 video-levels. And what about support for all H.264 level formats, like 4:2:2 and 10 bit support?

[guzhogi]

I'll believe it when I see it. I know some GPUs offer h.264 decoding so Apple would only have to make an encoder chip and maybe decoder for non-h.264 Quicktime formats (if there are any). It would be interesting to see if this happens, how they'd use Grand Central w/ it.

Also, this does kinda fit w/ the rumors of Apple leaving Intel as their chipset maker as well as Apple buying PA Semi-Conductor. Anyone else think this can also go towards iPods/iPhones? I'm sure they have hardware decoders, but maybe Apple's going to bring the designing of those chips in-house? We'll see if/when it happens.

[slackpacker]

Honestly if Apple would use the Power that the MacPro's Already have.... we would not need any other chips.

But in a sneaky way this is a great way for Apple to make unique motherboard that the Hackers cannot HACK.... Because OS X would need the Specialty Graphics hardware to run... and Apple could finally say UP yours to the Pystar like Clone hawkers.

[spatlese44]

Honestly if Apple would use the Power that the MacPro's Already have.... we would not need any other chips.

But in a sneaky way this is a great way for Apple to make unique motherboard that the Hackers cannot HACK.... Because OS X would need the Specialty Graphics hardware to run... and Apple could finally say UP yours to the Pystar like Clone hawkers.

I've been thinking about how Apple might do this, and it brings up an interesting senerio:

Let's say Apple comes up with a chipset that isn't hackable (at least more difficult). OK, maybe it will allow the install of Snow Leopard, which I'm assuming will run on my MB as well. At what point do they cut us off and say that the next OS X won't install on "old" machines? Will it be Snow Leopard? Talk about wanting to wait for an update before buying. This would be a pretty big line in the sand, not that being stuck with Leopard or even Tiger would be the end of the world.

[iMacmatician]

Personally I think that Apple needs to improve much in the software version of QT first. Currently QT Pro still doesn't have a decent H.264 encoder that doesn't change colorspace when not asked for. Not to mention correct handling of ITU601 video-levels. And what about support for all H.264 level formats, like 4:2:2 and 10 bit support?Maybe QuickTime X will solve that.

Using media technology pioneered in OS X iPhone, Snow Leopard introduces QuickTime X, a streamlined, next-generation platform that advances modern media and Internet standards. QuickTime X features optimized support for modern codecs and more efficient media playback, making it ideal for any application that needs to play media content.

[shamino]

Realtime Uncompressed playback of HD needs FAST HD Array's and DATA throughput rather than a GPU which would do nothing to move the massive amounts of RAW data that HD video is.
Case in point: Many years ago, my employer was demonstrating some new network switching equipment by feeding raw uncompressed 1080i video through it (from camera through network to display, without any compressors). The stream consumed 1.3Gbps.

That is far higher than any consumer device can deliver. For comparison, it is 1.6x a FireWire 800 port's theoretical maximum, 2.2x the throughput of the fastest single hard drive, and 43% of the total bandwidth of a SATA 2.0 interface.

You can double that for a 1080p60 video stream.

A Blu-Ray disc's data rate (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray#Recording_speed) is 36Mbps, for a 1x drive. So a 1080p movie is getting, at minimum 72:1 compression (2600Mbps/36Mbps = 72.2).
... Comcast gives you (45KB up) you can't even stream 640x480 in full quality - ever see what you get on the other end?
That explains why, when I use iChat to talk with my uncle (who is on Comcast), he can see me fine, but his video is mostly frozen.

Fortunately, we're not all using Comcast. My FiOS connection has a 5Mbps up-channel. (Which is why my uncle sees me just fine.)

[commander.data]

Where has it been said that the Montevina paired with the basic X4500 can do full decoding of H.264 ?
"The difference between the GMA X4500 and the GMA X4500HD is that the GMA X4500HD is capable of "full 1080p high-definition video playback, including Blu-ray disc movies", the GMA X4500 however does not have that capability."
I somehow doubt Apple will be using the X4500HD.
The where is very simple. Just take a look at Intel's chipset product page.

http://www.intel.com/products/notebook/chipsets/gm45/gm45-overview.htm

The only mobile IGP 4 series chipset they have listed is the GM45 which includes the GMA X4500MHD. Which, if it isn't obvious from the name, is the mobile version of the desktop GMA X4500HD.

http://www.hkepc.com/?id=1525&page=3&fs=idn#view

And even the "regular" desktop GMA X4500 non-HD can do h.264 and Blu-ray acceleration just fine. The GMA X4500 uses 13% CPU utilization in h.264 compared to 10% in the GMA X4500HD and 86% in the GMA X3500. In Blu-ray, the GMA X4500 uses 27% CPU compared to 23% in the GMA X4500HD and 95% on the GMA X3500. And this is on early drivers with a 1.6GHz Celeron.

[Trip.Tucker]

[snip]



Apple isn't going to use any more Intel onboard graphics in upcoming Macbooks/Mac Mini/Apple TV. That's one of the reasons they purchased their own chip company.

HDMI ports for every Mac.;)

Which graphics chip company did Apple purchase?

[Trip.Tucker]

What is wrong with the sentence? It seems correct, "which" immediately followed the object being further described.

It is correct if the context is read correctly and the context is H.264, not the object - "blu ray".

Lets take your example and extrapolate: "Incidentally, H.264 is one of the codecs used in Blu-Ray high definition video discs installed in computers and used in homes which Apple has yet to adopt." - So Apple has yet to adopt homes? The which follows homes.

No, the context is initially presented and in this case it is H.264.

[randyhudson]

New flash! Apple has had such chips built-in ever since they began shipping Macs with real video cards. ATI has been using their GPUs to encode video since 2005 (Avivo).

This article makes no sense. Why would Apple invest in OpenCL (to expose existing GPU resources), and then turn their back on it to develop yet another alternative?

[slackpacker]

Windows Has GPU support as of Today

http://www.nvidia.com/content/forcewithin/us/download.asp

Come on Apple jeeez.

[AidenShaw]

http://i.dell.com/resize.aspx/desktop_studio_hybrid_295/295

http://www.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/desktop-studio-hybrid?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs&ref=homepg

Core 2 Duo (up to 2.6GHz)
up to 4 GiB
up to 320 GB
available BD-ROM, DVD RW
optical audio out
HDMI/DVI
GbE
1394

starts at $499, $749 with slot loading BD

http://i.dell.com/images/global/products/desktop_studio/desktop_studio_highlights/desktop_studio_hybrid_design2.jpg http://i.dell.com/images/global/products/desktop_studio/desktop_studio_highlights/desktop_studio_hybrid_design4.jpg

[arkitect]

http://www.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/desktop-studio-hybrid?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs&ref=homepg

Core 2 Duo (up to 2.6GHz)
up to 4 GiB
up to 320 GB
available BD-ROM, DVD RW
optical audio out
HDMI/DVI
GbE
1394

starts at $499

You know?
That is one nice little computer.

[xbjllb]

An explosion of media? I'm liking that. :cool:

That's totally valid, but then why isn't there Blu-ray in the Mac Pros and/or iMacs? 4/8 cores should be enough.

So I'm thinking the absence of Blu-ray in Macs is mainly from another reason.

It's simple... you can't put blu-ray into an iPod or iPhone... haven't you heard Apple is sneaking out of the desktop business? :apple:

[mdriftmeyer]

New flash! Apple has had such chips built-in ever since they began shipping Macs with real video cards. ATI has been using their GPUs to encode video since 2005 (Avivo).

This article makes no sense. Why would Apple invest in OpenCL (to expose existing GPU resources), and then turn their back on it to develop yet another alternative?

News flash: the chips won't be dedicated h.264 chipsets. H.264 HD will be one piece of functionality.

If you want a real discussion on the implications:

http://forums.appleinsider.com/showthread.php?t=89701

[guzhogi]

Not going to happen. No way, no how. It makes no sense either economically or as a potential feature. Core 2 processors combined with modern, low-end GPUs can already handle HD content for decode and their just isn't enough need to do HD encoding in real-time or anything even approaching realtime (for the average user).

Beside that, with next year's Core i7 processors, embedded GPUs, OpenCL, and Grand Central there won't be any need for this rumored, dedicated, hardware-based H.264 acceleration. Apple isn't going to introduce a completely new and costly hardware architecture that will be obsolete and/or unnecessary in less than a year.

Very good points. However, for the people doing HD encoding, there may quite a fe people who use iMovie a bit & it'll help. As for Core i7, OpenCL, et al, maybe Apple's going to just start working on the encoder/decoder w/ those things in mind. That way, we could make the most out of them plus they'd be pretty close to real-time when they come out.

On a side note, a few years ago, I was just thinking about OpenGL, OpenAL, and wondered what other Open(whatever)Ls there are and found OpenRL, made by this company called Aspex-Semi. Aspex designs h.264 encoders/decoders so maybe Apple can buy that up, too or something. Just my 2¢

[theBB]

Lets take your example and extrapolate: "Incidentally, H.264 is one of the codecs used in Blu-Ray high definition video discs installed in computers and used in homes which Apple has yet to adopt." - So Apple has yet to adopt homes? The which follows homes.
As Apple is not yet to adopt homes, that is a good example of bad usage. "Which" has to follow the object being described, very simple really... If you want it to describe the subject of this sentence instead, you have to reconstruct the sentence, so that "which" follows H.264 somehow.

If you've been writing sentences using "which" at the end of the sentence in the belief that it still describes the subject of the sentence no matter how many phrases come between them, you've been wrong all along.

I am not that picky about grammar, but if you are gonna go about dissing the authors, I think you should read up a bit more about this.