http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS9502138983.html
Chipmaker Via's S3 Graphics division has announced a high-performance discrete graphics processor positioned as the first to meet the embedded industry's thermal requirements. The 4300E targets gaming and signage, offers HD video, DVI or HDMI output, and mixes dedicated and shared video memory.
Click here for a larger view of S3's 4300e http://www.linuxdevices.com/files/misc/s3_4300e.jpg
http://www.ixbt.com/short/images/s3-g430gt_crs.jpg
S3's 4300E supports DirectX 10.1, OpenGL 2.1, plus accelerated HD video in WMV-9 HD, MPEG-2 HD, VC-1, H.264, DivX and AVS formats. It also provides support for PVP (protected video playback) copy protection, and allows HD playback of Blu-Ray media with relatively low CPU utilization, S3 says.
The 65nm 4300E can be operated at clock speeds from 300MHz to 650MHz. At 300MHz it runs fanlessly, and at 650MHz it supports GDDR3 (graphics double data rate 3) RAM, with video memory speeds up to 900MHz.
Up to 256MB of GDDR2 or GDDR3 video memory can be dedicated to the 4300E. In addition, S3's "AcceleRAM" technology lets the processor use a combination of dedicated and system memory. Transfers between system memory and the graphics processor take place across the 4300e's PCI Express 2.0-compliant bus, which supports x1, x4, x8, and x16 lane widths. The 4300E offers power-saving features, including dynamic clock controls and individual execution units that can be turned off when idle, says S3.
Finally, the 4300e supports output to LVDS-interfaced flat panels, DVI, CRTs, and HDMI with HDCP (high-bandwidth digital copy protection). It has built-in dual-link DVI/HDMI transmitters, dual-channel LVDS transmitters, and two analog RAMDACs.
The 4300e is compatible with Linux, Windows Vista, Windows XP, and Windows XP Professional. An SDK (software development kit) and hardware development kit will be available in June, the company says.
Pricing and availability information for the 4300e was not released.
Igor Nikanov wrote:
Chipmaker Via's S3 Graphics division has announced a high-performance discrete graphics processor positioned as the first to meet the embedded industry's thermal requirements. The 4300E targets gaming and signage, offers HD video, DVI or HDMI output, and mixes dedicated and shared video memory.
There's a lot going on in the hardware accelerated HDTV area lately. Beside the two big graphic chipsets, there's the Intel Atom/Poulsbo chipset offering full HDTV acceleration at low power, the Intel G45 chipset, the AMD 780G chipset, and a cooperation of NVidia and VIA for a new unnamed HD capable low cost chipset.
The question is: Which of them will offer decent open source drivers for HD decoding, and when?
Cheers,
Udo
Hi!
Udo Richter schrieb:
There's a lot going on in the hardware accelerated HDTV area lately. Beside the two big graphic chipsets, there's the Intel Atom/Poulsbo chipset offering full HDTV acceleration at low power, the Intel G45 chipset, the AMD 780G chipset, and a cooperation of NVidia and VIA for a new unnamed HD capable low cost chipset.
The question is: Which of them will offer decent open source drivers for HD decoding, and when?
I wonder if every vendor pushes his own API for using these decoding accelerators? Or is there some "standard" (It's surely beyond XvMC)?
Matrix-multiplying (AMD,Nvidia,S3,Intel) with (Linux, X.Org, Mplayer/ffmpeg, Gstreamer,...) gives surely a lot of (duplicate) code.
Ciao
Martin
The question is: Which of them will offer decent open source drivers for HD decoding, and when?
I wonder if every vendor pushes his own API for using these decoding accelerators? Or is there some "standard" (It's surely beyond XvMC)?
there's VAAPI - Video Decode Acceleration API Specification http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/vaapi
but seems it hasn't finished yet :(
Igor
On Wed, Apr 23, 2008 at 09:56:23AM +0400, Igor wrote:
The question is: Which of them will offer decent open source drivers for HD decoding, and when?
I wonder if every vendor pushes his own API for using these decoding accelerators? Or is there some "standard" (It's surely beyond XvMC)?
there's VAAPI - Video Decode Acceleration API Specification http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/vaapi
but seems it hasn't finished yet :(
And then there's some "XvMC for H.264/AVC" work/patches:
http://people.freedesktop.org/~zhen/xds2007_xvmc.pdf
http://www.x.org/wiki/Events/XDS2007/Notes (link taken from here)
-- Pasi
And I was just about to get exited, until I read this:
XvMC issues ● Limited hardware driver support – Intel i810, i915/945 MC, 965 MC working in progress – Unichrome VLD – ATI, Nvidia (?) ● Limited modern video codec support, just for MPEG1/2, can't support H.264/AVC. – Multiple intra/inter prediction modes (multiple motion vector styles) – Multiple reference pictures – No in-loop filter
So it appears there is no hope for my old machine with an AGP port, and nvidia G-Force 4 MMX 440. Looks like I will have to upgrade, but the craze will have to settle first before I buy anything. I wonder why they don't create add-on cards in PCI format? so that it will work on older machines? I guess they want you to upgrade to keep on making money...
Isn't there a method to use OpenGL to assist HD decoding?
On 23/04/2008, Pasi Kärkkäinen pasik@iki.fi wrote:
On Wed, Apr 23, 2008 at 09:56:23AM +0400, Igor wrote:
The question is: Which of them will offer decent open source drivers
for
HD decoding, and when?
I wonder if every vendor pushes his own API for using these decoding accelerators? Or is there some "standard" (It's surely beyond XvMC)?
there's VAAPI - Video Decode Acceleration API Specification http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/vaapi
but seems it hasn't finished yet :(
And then there's some "XvMC for H.264/AVC" work/patches:
http://people.freedesktop.org/~zhen/xds2007_xvmc.pdf
http://www.x.org/wiki/Events/XDS2007/Notes (link taken from here)
-- Pasi
vdr mailing list vdr@linuxtv.org http://www.linuxtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/vdr
Hi!
Theunis Potgieter schrieb:
So it appears there is no hope for my old machine with an AGP port, and nvidia G-Force 4 MMX 440.
I sit in a similar board (GF3 / GF2MX).
Looks like I will have to upgrade, but the craze will have to settle first before I buy anything. I wonder why they don't create add-on cards in PCI format? so that it will work on older machines? I guess they want you to upgrade to keep on making money...
I don't think a simple PCI card can handle the bandwidth. Think Full-HD PAL Video:
1920*1080*3 Byte/Pixel (RGB) * 25 FPS = 148MiB/s uncompressed RGB Data (For performance reasons one probably would even use 32bit/Pixel). The "classic" PCI Bus only does 133MB/s.
Isn't there a method to use OpenGL to assist HD decoding?
AFAIK most of the current accelerators (AMD AVIVO, nVidia PureVideo,...) use the programmable shaders for decoding, scaling, colorspace translation, etc. Most of the newer AMD/ATI cards seem not to have a "traditional" backend scaler anymore (making it hard for opensource driver devs to implement XVideo as they now have to touch the 3D engine).
Ciao
Martin
So in an ideal world, it would be great to have a pci add-on card, that does not only do assisting, but actually does all the features, so by sending the compressed stream directly to board, and it does all the un-compressing and uses its own internal memory (on board memory) to do movement of uncompressed streams and doing additional post processing on the picture. Similar to a FF-card but independent of DVB and can do *High 10 Profile (Hi10P)*.
I know it is a pipe dream. So in a perfect world it would be nice to have something like the following: pci board with a sigma 8635 chip for decoding (o rsomething similar) and a S3 chip for post processing (or something similar) onto one board with a s-video out, HDMI out, spdif out/audio out. And can do 1920x1080 progressive scan PAL @ 25 or even 50 frames per second. So that we can be ready for when BluRay hits the market (affordable). the output can either be by using a X driver or frame buffer driver. Oh well the wish list goes on :)
So the end user can then upgrade the output device when he/she can afford an upgrade to a HD output device and of course don't forget all have Open Source drivers hehe. Tomorrow I will wake up and realise the truth of it all...
To the future of open source!
On 23/04/2008, Martin Emrich emme@emmes-world.de wrote:
Hi!
Theunis Potgieter schrieb:
So it appears there is no hope for my old machine with an AGP port, and nvidia G-Force 4 MMX 440.
I sit in a similar board (GF3 / GF2MX).
Looks like I will have to upgrade, but the craze will have to settle first before I buy anything. I wonder why they don't create add-on cards in PCI format? so that it will work on older
machines? I
guess they want you to upgrade to keep on making money...
I don't think a simple PCI card can handle the bandwidth. Think Full-HD PAL Video:
1920*1080*3 Byte/Pixel (RGB) * 25 FPS = 148MiB/s uncompressed RGB Data (For performance reasons one probably would even use 32bit/Pixel). The "classic" PCI Bus only does 133MB/s.
Isn't there a method to use OpenGL to assist HD decoding?
AFAIK most of the current accelerators (AMD AVIVO, nVidia PureVideo,...) use the programmable shaders for decoding, scaling, colorspace translation, etc. Most of the newer AMD/ATI cards seem not to have a "traditional" backend scaler anymore (making it hard for opensource driver devs to implement XVideo as they now have to touch the 3D engine).
Ciao
Martin
vdr mailing list vdr@linuxtv.org http://www.linuxtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/vdr
Hi!
Igor schrieb:
there's VAAPI - Video Decode Acceleration API Specification http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/vaapi
but seems it hasn't finished yet :(
But the Idea sounds quite nice... I dream of a VDR box with an S3 graphics card, decoding full HD DVB-S2 with only free software at low power consumption ;-)
Ciao
Martin
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Igor -
Igor Nikanov
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Martin Emrich -
Pasi Kärkkäinen -
Theunis Potgieter -
Udo Richter