Re:AV1: A new general-purpose video codec
by erikpukinskis on Tuesday April 10, 2018 @12:19AM
(#16798959)
Right but I guess I’m asking if they COULD be or if you’d need like a FPGA for that.
AFAIK a lot of "hardware" codecs are DSPs with some extra instructions that are good for video (like sum of absolute differences). In theory maybe they could support new algorithms with a firmware update. In reality, such firmware may simply not be developed or the DSP may not be fast enough to run a new codec.
Re:AV1: A new general-purpose video codec
by greenpenguin on Tuesday April 10, 2018 @07:03AM
(#16800440)
Most DSPs I've worked with have an assortment of really specific extra instructions added for the particular application. I suspect these DSPs are similar - adding a new codec probably means adding a few more instructions, or even the odd hardware block dangling off the side.
Re:AV1: A new general-purpose video codec
by vanderZwan on Tuesday April 10, 2018 @09:07AM
(#16801036)
Do you think the Mill family of processors could find a niche here? (if it ever sees the light of day, and I hope so because the technical videos are super-interesting (and educational))
People suggesting Mill as the solution to every problem without giving any reasons certainly doesn't give a good impression.
Re:AV1: A new general-purpose video codec
by vanderZwan on Tuesday April 10, 2018 @07:18PM
(#16806547)
The Mill has been described as having more in common with a DSP than with a regular CPU. Apologies, I thought that was common knowledge.
Even if AV1 and VP9 share structurally similar components, no VP9 decoder is going to work out of the box. It may mean that people who produce AV1-capable encoding/decoding hardware have a better starting point, though (provided they had VP9 hardware, beforehand)