AMD in talks with Clearspeed (coprocessor potential for H264/JPEG2K realtime editing)
 

This is important because it shows the potential of the future direction of video, and the limit of current computer processing on NLEs, by being an answer to the question often asked around here, what are we goign to editing h264 with?

http://www.electronicsweekly.com/Art...ssorlinkup.htm


Analysis:

People involved in the Digital Cinema Camera projects, will know that clearspeed is one of the processing solutions I advocated for live compression and filtering of the RAW footage.

Realtime H264/Jpeg2000 editing potential:

In the Digital Cinema Camera threads, we estimated that encoding (h264 or JPEG2000, I can't remember which) required around 20 GFLOP of processing power, which, according to the article is the amount of processing power in next years Quad Core processors, which I hough were supposed to be at least 40 Gflop, but I'll assume the article is right and my memory is wrong here). With clearspeed 25 Gflop, and the processor, optionally with the existing GPU assist, we might have more than enough to edit h264/Jpeg2000 codec etc realtime. Thee is he possibility that low end processors in this combo might be enough, lowering costs.


Technical Analysis:

The other processing solutions I mentioned, were the Sony CELL that AMD is now calling, a wake up call, the GPU on the graphic card (which is limited by it's 3D focus until the next Direct X generations which promises more general purpose programmability, or they build custom hardware for different codecs, but still likely to be a big help at the moment) and other ones, mostly memory based processor arrays that can plug into your memory stick socket.

Clearspeed offers C programmability, and does a lot of the paralleling work for the programmers. Otherwise it is a massive array of processor on a chip like the integrated Ambarella chip that is suppose to encode quality h264 HD (but with all the sensor, camera and disk control, functionality) I have been advocating that the Ambarella (and GPU) could be used to accelerate PC h264 encoding/editing, but if the talks with AMD come though they might be irrelevant, we might get the clearspeed for free, and who said Ambarella or the GPU designers are goign to give us such a break soon. I have suspected that Intel might have something similar in the pipe line of some months, I know some people with another alternative design, but speculatively I don't know.

http://www.ambarella.com/

One note, they state 10W for power consumption at 25 Gflop, but I think it is supposed to be just over 1W (therefore 10W would then result in something similar to the cell (but likely unwieldy with too many processors).


Thanks

Wayne.