Back when I started my career with ATI, I was working in marketing for a product called the ATI All-in-Wonder^TM HD Card (AIW) --basically a high performance graphics card for gaming coupled with a TV tuner to allow you watch, record, and edit HD content. It was a brilliant concept; we were years ahead of the curve. And, consumers-at least the video mavens-loved them. We had our own little cult following. Fast forward a few years and HD video is a mainstream application. Consumers now enjoy video content on their notebooks, desktops and use their PC’s to power their big screen HD experiences every day.

Today, the AIW concept of watch-record-edit has made its way into AMD-based mainstream notebooks via ATI Theater^TM HD, enabling consumers to edit and consume their content on virtually any device. For example: Mom takes a video of little Johnny playing soccer with any video recorder, such as a popular, unbelievably easy-to-use, FlipCam. Now, the game’s over and all Mom has to do is plug the camera in via USB to the family notebook and voilà! In minutes or even seconds, the content she captured at the game is converted to the desired format and ready to post to YouTube. Spectacularly simple. No engineering degree required.

Let’s break this down into two parts: GPU Video Encode & Video Playback

GPU Video Encode

The definition of a video transcoding is simple:

“Video transcoding is the process of converting data from one video format (e.g. MPEG2) to another format (e.g. H.264). Historically, the CPU has been the one sole compute engine to do all the converting needed by an end-user”.

With High-Definition (HD) video gone mainstream thanks to digital TV transition in different countries around the world and HD camcorders (such as AVCHD) becoming more affordable, there is now more demand for additional processing capability to edit and convert HD content. In order to edit and convert with relatively reasonable speed, end-users needed a PC with high-end CPU configuration…that is, until recently.

Consumers are now able to convert their video files leveraging their GPU hardware inside their PC. Simply put, with graphics cards and applications specially constructed to take advantage of the GPU, you are now able to tap into the massive amounts of parallel compute power, you may not even have been aware your PC had. Cool, huh?

If you are in the market for a notebook, make sure you have ATI Radeon^TM HD 4000 Series Premium graphics. And, with notebooks powered by VISION Premium and Ultimate technologies from AMD, you will be able to take advantage of GPGPU Video Transcode with ATI Stream Accelerated Plug-in with either CyberLink MediaShow Espresso or Sony® Movie Studio 9 Platinum.

In a nutshell, when you need to convert video from its original format to fit on your media player or posting to YouTube, the fastest and most efficient way is to harness the performance capabilities of your GPU.

And, if you have ever encoded/converted video to play on an your multimedia device, you know it can take upwards of 3-4 hours (depending on resolution and format conversion and-not to mention--the configuration of your PC) with average CPU usage hitting close to 100% most of the time during the conversion.

However, utilizing ATI Stream Technology from AMD, on certain notebook designs powered by Vision technology from AMD, based on the 2009 AMD Mainstream Notebook Platform, we are seeing upwards of 75% faster conversion times and up to 2x times the performance with GPGPU transcoding enabled versus standard CPU enabled transcoding. This is because ATI Stream leverages all the processing resources of an notebook powered by Vision technology from AMD, both CPU and GPU for a fast transcoding, while keeping the PC responsive to ensure a good user experience. That’s the AMD balanced platform advantage at work!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjMItx5K3jc

Video Playback

Have you ever looked at your DVD movies on your HDTV videos and thought “Man, I wish these looked better?”

Fear not, AMD has a solution.

We have collaborated with ArcSoft to enable them to develop software that will up-convert your DVD videos into near HD quality videos. Believe it?
Here is an example of what’s possible:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zh3FQ5JNYzk

ArcSoft launched SimHD in July 2009, this software will enable a consumer to take their ATI Radeon HD 4000 series GPU and put it to some real work, DVD upscaling. As the video above clearly showcases, the image on the left is near HD quality and is almost crystal clear and very vibrant. The image on the right is standard definition and is kinda blah and boring….

No magic to behold here, DVD upscaling is a function of the the GPU matching the pixel count from a standard video or DVD to match the pixel count of the HDTV. This is done in real-time and accelerated on the GPU using ATI Stream Technology.
The result is taking a 480i/p image and processing it to a new image size of 720p or even 1080i.

The GPU used to be all about FPS (frames per second). But today, the GPU is all about delivering the “visual experience,” either in more productivity time via fast transcoding, more lifelike gaming via DirectX 11 or enabling end-users to view their SD videos in almost-HD quality. The GPU has become one of if not the most important decision factor when purchasing a PC, either a notebook or desktop.

Make sure that when you are at a retail store, you ask about the GPU; make sure it will enable you to be more productive and have a true HD experience. It’s not all about gaming anymore. AMD is the only company to deliver a balanced platform for computing, a balance between CPU and GPU is the right solution for the today and tomorrow.

Our very own Pat Moorhead has done a great review of a new AMD Next-Generation laptop with the above features enabled here.

Ian “Cabrtosr” McNaughton

Ian McNaughton is senior manager of advanced marketing at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.

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Have you wondered what all the hype around Microsoft Windows 7 and DirectX 11 is all about? We will shed some light and answer some of those questions in this blog.

Let’s start with Windows7, everyone, including my own mother, is talking about this amazing operating system. Microsoft is rumoured to be launching the successor to Windows Vista in late October. What does it mean to you the PC user?

I cover my experience with Windows 7 in this blog; in a nutshell, the experience has been fantastic. It seems that Microsoft has worked out all the kinks and quirkiness of Windows Vista and are about to launch an incredible OS for the PC. Windows 7 (when compared to Windows Vista) is designed to offer the user a much more refined experience, smaller footprint, faster response times, long battery life and a much more visually intense and enjoyable PC experience.

Wrapped up in all the new Windows 7 OS splendour is a new API (Application programming Interface) called DirectX 11. Basically, the API allows developers to program software that uses a standard set of terms to communicate with the libraries and the OS. Think of it as game developers have some new toys to play with inside Windows to allow them to deliver better software.

DirectX has been around since 1995 with the launch of Windows95, a full history can be found here.

Let me break down the features and benefits of DirectX 11 -- the main features being:
-Tessellation  -- Multithreaded Rendering  - DirectCompute

Tessellation is a technology that has been around for a few GPU (graphics processing unit) generations. AMD has had Tessellation support since 2001, which was then called Truform; we also implemented Tessellation in the XBOX 360 GPU, then codenamed “Xenos”. Tessellation is a feature which increases the number of polygons in an image. Basically, Tessellation enables a more lifelike image, both of objects and landscape. Back in the day characters who were CG (computer generated) looked very blocky, almost cartoon like; with the use of Tessellation, developers are now able to significantly increase the number of triangles to draw an image, thus creating a more lifelike quality in games.

Multithreaded Rendering is a feature which allows DirectX to be processed via multiple CPU threads. This means that a dual-, triple- or quad-core CPU can have a higher utilization across all cores than DirectX APIs in the past. Historically the OS would load up a single core for commands to the GPU, in essence creating an overload on the first core and under utilizing the additional cores. With only one core issuing commands to a GPU, we have seen CPUs hold back the potential performance of the GPU. With Multithreaded Rendering, DirectX will take better advantage of all the available cores. This should result in a better experience for the multi-core user because of a faster processing pipeline and increased scaling.

DirectCompute is a feature which allows access to the shader cores/pipeline for Stream Computing (graphics acceleration) type applications and physics acceleration. One of the biggest technology breakthroughs of the past 5 years has been the notion that processing can be moved from the traditional CPU to the much more parallel GPU. Simply put, the CPU manages tasks sequentially; it accomplishes a task then moves on to the next task in a very orderly fashion and with tremendous speed. Today’s CPUs can work at speeds of up to 108.8 GigaFLOPS (Floatingpoint Operations Per Second).

A GPU is designed to work with many slower cores in parallel, giving a much wider vector -meaning a wider road for more cars to travel on -- than a CPU. This allows tasks to be completed faster if the program or software is developed to take advantage of many-many cores, albeit slower ones. Today’s GPUs can work at speeds up to 1.36 TeraFLOPS, giving the GPU a significant (almost 11 times faster) advantage when the proper software is run. This advantage truly delivers on the processing capabilities of Stream Computing. DirectCompute allows easier access to the GPU’s many cores for parallel processing; if the user is running applications that take advantage of Stream Computing then the performance experience increases considerably. We are seeing transcoding as the first type of task that is seeing tremendous benefit using Stream Computing. This means if you are an avid HD video or music user you will benefit when converting files to play on your laptop or iPod type devise; Stream Computing can significantly cut down the wait-time for enjoying your converted media.

Now, if you are a gamer you undoubtedly will be asking me “What games are going to support DirectX 11″? This is always a tightrope to walk for us as we are unable to pre-announce our technology partners titles and the specs around those titles; still, we want to give the consumer confidence that we’ve been assured there will be substantial titles in the market that take full advantage of your ATI Radeon DirectX 11-compliant graphics card. So, as this blog is published, here are the future DirectX 11 games we can talk about:

Dirt2 by Codemasters
BattleForge by EA
S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Call of Pripyat by GSC Game World

- Check out this early spoiler for Dirt 2 -

www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZAwniLT22U

Game developers discuss the benefits of DirectX11

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghazN5L7Ncw

Windows7 and DirectX11 are right around the corner, as is the newest ATI Radeon family of graphics cards. As always, it’s our goal to blur the lines between reality and what is rendered. I believe we have made a major leap towards crossing that chasm with our ATI RadeonTM HD 5000 series products and their support for DirectX 11.

Tessellation -- Minimized

With Tessellation -- Maximized!

Between now and the launch of Windows 7 and DirectX 11, we will continue to uncover the technical details, as well as the visual implications, for the user experience.

At the time of this blog, AMD will be the first GPU vendor to market with a fully compliant and enabled DirectX 11 graphics product. So don’t be fooled by claims in the market about DX10 GPU’s supporting DirectX 11….

My good friend Tim Smalley from bit-tech.net has a great in-depth article on DirectX 11: A look at what’s coming – Check it out.

Cheers!

Ian “Cabrtosr” McNaughton

Ian McNaughton is senior manager of advanced marketing at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.