News Intel says video encoding belongs on the CPU

[CardJoe]

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2008/06...s-on-the-cpu/1

COMPUTEX 2008: Intel and Nvidia are still sitting in a tree in their war of facts and friction. Intel says video encoding is better on the CPU.

[bowman]

So, someone want to do a test of this and see if it holds any water? The quality is better?

I have an AMD CPU, and one thing that makes me cringe is other AMD users defending themselves from Intel fans by claiming that AMD 'feels smoother'. It's patently ridiculous. And before I can see some sort of tangible proof of this, this seems like just that from a different perspective.

[amacieli]

nVidia is clearly encroaching on one of the key Intel marketing messages for its new multi-core procs. Of course Intel is going to hit back, even if what they say doesn't make 100% sense (although I believe that you'll still need a good processor to keep the GPU fed).

With Photoshop soon to be nVidia-powered, and (gasp!) even a Folding@Home client on the way, let's judge the actual results.

But think about it - Adobe's Photoshop is one of the best in its class, used by image pros everywhere - why would Adobe include nVidia acceleration if it produced poor-quality pics? Can anyone tell me why a Premiere accelerator would be any different?

[MrMonroe]

They are way scared.

Intel's strategy through this entire fight has been to compare current nVidia and ATI technology to future Intel tech. (And to misrepresent current GPU tech to begin with) When they finally do release Larrabee, CUDA will have even more force behind it and even ATI cards will have jumped radically ahead of what Intel has projected.

Long story short, Intel will succeed in making their products better at doing the things they are already good at, and they'll get nowhere near pushing nVidia or ATI out of their established markets. Too bad they will have wasted time trying.

[amacieli]

@MrMonroe: I don't think they're wasting their time - the vast majority of PC users use integrated graphics, and Larrabee will probably have the most impact in that segment. Why not bandy about comparisons with super hi-tech to make yours look great ("hey, little guy, the stuff we're pumping out compares well with what the hard-core gamers use!!"). But like you say, the day that Intel starts to overtake nVidia for regular gamers will be when a certain Biblical place becomes a magnet for skiing, if you catch my drift (no pun intended). Unless Intel just ups and buys nVidia (once it's had a chance to swallow its pride).

[chicorasia]

Originally Posted by MrMonroe

Intel's strategy through this entire fight has been to compare current nVidia and ATI technology to future Intel tech.

Exactly. It is like claiming that current cars are nothing compared to future flying cars. Has anyone seen Larrabee-accelerated Photoshop? Or Premiere? Or Final Cut?

Anyway, videos are made of pixels AND frames. If it splitting the frame into pixels yields "poor" results, why not send a whole frame to each stream processor?

[salesman]

Intel better do something amazing with statements like this.

[mclean007]

Originally Posted by amacieli

why would Adobe include nVidia acceleration if it produced poor-quality pics? Can anyone tell me why a Premiere accelerator would be any different?

Photoshop editing is a different animal to video encoding. Applying a Photoshop transform or filter performs a specific mathematical calculation on each pixel. This is exactly what GPUs are excellent at doing. As stated in the article, video encoding requires two things, because it is a lossy compression process - first, you need to analyse the moving image to determine how best to deploy your available "budget" of bits per frame. Then you use that "budget" to apply various mathematical models to pixels. In other words, the different parts of the image interact more with one another than in a Photoshop operation, and Intel is suggesting that this makes the CPU a superior platform for encoding.

That said, there is no reason why you can't use the CPU for the analysis and the GPU for the brute force required to run the compression algorithms afterwards. I don't see how Intel can justify a statement that the image quality of GPU encoded video will necessarily be inferior.

[badders]

Some clever dick will apply this well - a multi threaded process that runs on a mult-cored CPU, decides which parts of the frame need what bitreates. The encoding is then done in CUDA on the GPU, leaving the CPU free to check the next part of the frame.

[Zurechial]

Not every developer knows C?
I'm nothing more than an amateur coder, but I personally wouldn't imagine there are many professional developers who don't have a grasp of C..

[amacieli]

@mclean007 - your second paragraph is certainly what I had in mind - hits the issue on the head - and like I said, CPU will certainly be required too. On the other side of the coin, nVidia is also spinning way more than it should about GPU capabilities. GPU excels at many (but not all) math problems, but nobody's saying that the CPU is going to die in favor of the GPU.

badders +1

[Bluephoenix]

badders +2

[Tyinsar]

Originally Posted by Article

I thought it’d be interesting to see if Intel would change its tune in the future once it had something that had the raw processing power to deliver similar application performance to what is being claimed with CUDA. Intel said that comparing this to a GPU is impossible, because the GPU doesn’t have full x86 cores.

Shades of Windows 3 vs. OS/2 - tons of F.U.D. and little substance - I hope it doesn't turn out the same.

[Icy EyeG]

badders +3, indeed!

With CUDA, you can only code programs in C and C++, while x86 allows the developer to choose whatever programming language they prefer – that’s obviously a massive boon to anyone that doesn’t code in C.

How about GPULib, a library of mathematical functions for Very High Level Languages (Java, Python, MATLAB, IDL)?

My guess is that more examples like this will follow, that will allow the use of CUDA with Very High Level Languages (I use Perl a lot, so I would definitely make use of a "CUDA extension"...).

Moreover, here's a crazy thought: couldn't nVIDIA develop a Larrabee-like GPU using cores with ARM or Power architecture (since they don't have a x86 license)?

[Tyinsar]

Originally Posted by Icy EyeG

...Moreover, here's a crazy thought: couldn't nVIDIA develop a Larrabee-like GPU using cores with ARM or Power architecture (since they don't have a x86 license)?

or buy Via

[HourBeforeDawn]

lol why cant we all get a long and have both the cpu and gpu work together instead of fighting each other lol

[DXR_13KE]

is it me or intel has a bull's anus for a mouth... they are always talking BS....

[Haltech]

Summary of both companies
Intel - Jack of all trades, master in nothing
Nvidia - Master in Graphics and Parallel processing, dosn't do anything else

Why cant there be a middle ground????

[Mentai]

So intel are losing a couple of major apps to gpu's. Big deal. People are still going to want/need fairly decent cpu's, they're probably not going to sell any less, it just means nvidia is going to sell more. Being that intel are directly invading nvidia's market space, and not the other way round, I don't see why they're always bitching about everything. Sheesh.

[C0nKer]

Originally Posted by Zurechial

Not every developer knows C?
I'm nothing more than an amateur coder, but I personally wouldn't imagine there are many professional developers who don't have a grasp of C..

Exactly. Engineers of all discipline, heck, even high school kids in India know C.