GPU acceleration coming to Flash

 

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By Stuart Turton

Posted on 2 Jun 2009 at 09:55

Adobe has announced it's working with Nvidia and Broadcom to bring GPU acceleration to Flash.

The partnership will see Flash video accelerated across the range of Nvidia GPUs, Intel Atom processors and netbooks featuring Broadcom's Crystal HD Enhanced Video, including the HP Mini range.

Accelerated H.264 should hopefully put an end to the days of juddering streaming video on netbooks, alleviating one of the and most common gripes associated with the low-cost laptops.

The companies claim hardware accelerated Flash support will be available in the first half of 2010. There's no word yet on whether the companies will be broadening support beyond their netbook-based technologies, though we've put in the call and will update the story when we know.

The work comes as part of Adobe's Open Screen Project, which aims to speed the proliferation of Flash Player across a myriad of devices by removing many of the licensing charges, and opening up its porting layer APIs - which will allow developers to begin porting without needing to go through Adobe.