James Delahunty
13 Oct 2010 11:33
Microsoft Corp. has been awarded a patent for a GPU-accelerated video encoding system. The Redmond-based giant applied for the patent titled "Accelerated video encoding using a graphics processing unit," back in October 2004 and now six years later it has been granted the patent.
The Microsoft patent outlines a concept where the graphics unit is utilized to perform motion estimation on videos, as well as other vital aspects of encoding. It covers all bases of GPU-accelerated video encoding, giving Microsoft control of a major new technology that is already used in prosumer applications on the market.
After the release of Windows Vista and DirectX 10, NVIDIA and AMD released GPUs with support for general purpose GPU computing (GPGPU). NVIDIA released the GeFore 8800GTX card with underlying CUDA architecture, while AMD's ATI unit loaded GPU acceleration technology into its HD 2000, 3000 and 4000 cards.
Microsoft has embraced the technology in Windows 7, which has native support for GPU-acceleration tasks. It also promises GPU-acceleration in Internet Explorer 9 will dramatically improve the performance of web applications and multimedia content.