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March 9, 2007

speculation

Getting attacked by video encoders

Posted Mar. 9, ’07, 6:13 AM PT by Derik DeLong
Category | Apple » Speculation

Robert X. Cringely Robert X. Cringely has gone out on a ledge again, way far out. He’s now proclaiming that Apple will start building hardware video encoders and decoders into Macs rather than doing it in software and utilizing the CPU.

The working theory is that a $7 chip will decrease the CPU needs for most users, including those that are looking to encode their video data. He suggests that it’s risky for Apple as users choose lesser machines that will be just as capable at working with video data. I’m not sure I share the sentiment. I just don’t see that many users choosing between a MacBook and MacBook Pro, or Mac mini and iMac based upon video performance. With today’s Intel Macs, there’s more than enough power across the line for great video performance.

I will admit though that his theory about encoding, enhancing the video production process, and turning iChat conferences into low impact activities is rather compelling. Could more hardware for dedicated tasks be the next wave in computing? It’s an interesting idea.


1 Comments

Moofo said:

That reminds me of the time when Apple was rumored to put Phillips TriMedia chips in their mac to speed encoding and decoding of MPEG streams. As I recall, it was mainly for performa machines.

It never occurred on the mainstream, even on the Pippin since by the time they were done debugging and coding the usage of the chips, PPC chips were doing the job faster and with more efficient code.

I must agree it's wise to have specialized chips in machines to do very specific duties, however, if you have to do custom coding to use them, it's not going to be useful outside Apple Softwares as I doubt open source developer will modify the code for only one platform.

It's exactly as the Mac IIfx and the Quadras AV. Almost no one coded their software to take advantage of the specialized chips. That meant that the IIfx was woefully underexploited at the time, and th Quadras AV, even technologically advanced then, were "not that fast"

Kudos to Apple if they do it, as I'm sure iTunes, Quicktime and all their video software will greatly benefit, and it will probably mean more performance for the rest of the machine while encoding and decoding video and audio.

March 9, 2007 9:32 AM

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