flash can't use GPU??

[NewGenAdam]

I'm confused.

Engadget says
"one of the big factors accounting for [flash being far better on PC than Mac] is that Flash is able to take advantage of GPU hardware acceleration in Windows, while Adobe is effectively cut out of the loop on Mac"
-http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/10/html5-vs-flash-comparison-finds-a-few-surprises-settles-few-de/

But I thought one of Snow Leopard's biggest selling points was OpenCL,

which, according to Apple,
"is a technology that makes it possible for developers to tap the vast gigaflops of computing power currently in the graphics processor and use it for any application"
-http://www.apple.com/macosx/technology/


Huh??

 

[spinnerlys]

But Adobe does not seem to have implemented OpenCL in their Flash code yet, maybe that is about to change?

 

[maflynn]

But Adobe does not seem to have implemented OpenCL in their Flash code yet, maybe that is about to change?

How much platform specific coding do you think adobe wants to put in their code base? I suspect very little, so that may mean they'll not embrace openCL but find the lowest common denominator that works on both windows and Mac (and Linux to some degree)

 

[NewGenAdam]

How much platform specific coding do you think adobe wants to put in their code base? I suspect very little, so that may mean they'll not embrace openCL but find the lowest common denominator that works on both windows and Mac (and Linux to some degree)

Ick. So it's Adobe being lazy, rather than Apple being prohibitive?
My feelings were that OpenCL makes it as easy as possible to exploit GPUs.

 

[spinnerlys]

How much platform specific coding do you think adobe wants to put in their code base? I suspect very little, so that may mean they'll not embrace openCL but find the lowest common denominator that works on both windows and Mac (and Linux to some degree)

So Flash is platform independent?

They already managed to get a better version with the latest beta, one that uses less CPU resources, so why wouldn't the take advantage of OpenCL?
As far as I remember, it was not that much code anyway, but I may confuse that with GCD.

 

[wrldwzrd89]

So Flash is platform independent?

They already managed to get a better version with the latest beta, one that uses less CPU resources, so why wouldn't the take advantage of OpenCL?
As far as I remember, it was not that much code anyway, but I may confuse that with GCD.

As I understand it, keeping the code base cross-platform AND introducing things like GCD into the mix is really hard to do right. The fact that GCD uses blocks, a C extension that other compilers don't yet understand, doesn't help any.

 

[maflynn]

So Flash is platform independent?

Yes from a code base perspective. Any vendor wants to keep their code base the same across platforms as much as possible. If they start adding specific code to take advantage of a given platform, that will quickly turn into a maintenance nightmare and introduce bugs

 

[VforVelveta]

I don't think OpenCL is what Engadget is talking about. On Windows, Flash uses the h.264 decoder on the GPU (assuming it has one), whereas OpenCL just uses the GPU for general processing. So yes, using OpenCL would make things a bit more efficient, but its not the same thing as actually routing video though the specific h.264 hardware decoder. Apple doesn't allow such low level access in OSX, but rather software goes through the Quicktime APIs.