MainConcept and AMD Collaborate for GPU Acceleration

MainConcept, a wholly-owned subsidiary of DivX, Inc. and a provider of video and audio codecs and software development kits, broadcast and professional markets, has signed a strategic collaboration agreement with AMD to accelerate digital video encode.

Through this collaboration, MainConcept plans to leverage ATI Stream technology from AMD (News - Alert) and OpenCL standards to accelerate the encoding capabilities within its H.264/AVC or Advanced Video Coding Pro Encoder codec package by taking advantage of available graphics processors in PCs.

H.264/AVC is an industry standard video codec supported by the MainConcept Codec SDK, which contains everything professional software developers need to integrate video and audio compression into their applications.

MainConcept intends to harness the compute power of GPUs, in addition to the multi-CPU support already enabled in H.264, to speed up the encoding process with advanced video coding.

"MainConcept is committed to supplying a codec for every platform, and AMD can help them achieve this goal with our ATI Stream technology, enabled on AMD's consumer and professional graphics solutions, and built on the OpenCL industry standard application programming interface," Janet Matsuda, senior director, AMD Professional Graphics said.

"By choosing to accelerate encoding for H.264/AVC Pro Encoder with ATI Stream technology, not only is MainConcept helping its developers speed up the encoding process by tapping into the power of GPUs but they are also allowing the applications they develop to run on even more computing platforms," Matsuda added.

OpenCL is designed to enable developers to write vendor-neutral, cross-platforms applications capable of being accelerated by the most appropriate processors within a system, thereby enabling developers the freedom to choose. 

"H.264 uses the latest innovations in video compression technology to provide incredible video quality from the smallest amount of video data, and numerous broadcast, cable, videoconferencing and consumer electronics companies consider it the video codec of choice for their new products and services," Muzaffer Beygirci, managing director of MainConcept said.

"By collaborating with AMD to accelerate the encoding capabilities of our H.264/AVC codec package, we can provide our users with optimal compression and format conversion rates for digital video across a broad range of applications," Beygirci added.

MainConcept official also confirmed that the company will be demonstrating this encode acceleration for the first time on AMD's latest professional graphics solution, the ATI FirePro V8800, at the 2010 NAB Show April 12 to April 15 in Las Vegas.