Video processing (cont’d)

FiringSquad: How does the Radeon X1800’s MPEG-2 decoding abilities compare to the Xilleon 220H? (number of streams, precision of the decoding, etc.)

Godfrey Cheng: The Radeon X1800 can easily decode a single HD MPEG-2 – we have not really mapped out beyond a single stream because there is no application in the PC space. The Xilleons are the monsters of the CE world…..last time I checked they can decode 104 HD streams and 877 SD streams simultaneously….. (just kidding but it can do multiple 2 HD streams and our latest Xilleon is the 240).

[Alan's comment: The PC and CE world are on a collision course. Eventually it'll matter. NVIDIA doesn't do multiple video streams either. It'd be nice to have in the short-term for media and video editing, but once dual HD tuners becomes more prominent, picture-in-picture HD is going to be a nce feature.

For reference, the Xilleon 240 was recently announced in August. The Xilleon 220H is the previous-gen product from ATI found in many shipping products. It also does multiple HD streams.]

FiringSquad: How much of the Radeon X1800’s compute abilities are due to dedicated blocks on the GPU, and how much is achieved through the 3D pipeline allowing future upgrades?

Godfrey Cheng: There are parts of video processing are better done with dedicated blocks of HW and other things are better done with our programmable shaders - we have both. Ultimately this doesn’t matter since the output is the only thing that is important but I will comment that it is critical to consider power consumption & fan noise when we make these architecture decisions.

[Alan comment: This also has implications on the level of trickle-down. Dedicated blocks allow for "dedicated HTPC" chips (imagine an ATI motherboard with high-end integrated video) while processing through the 3D pipeline means that next year's mid-end gaming GPUs can benefit also. NVIDIA also does a combination of dedicated blocks and 3D GPU]