[whatwg] suggestion for HTML5 spec

[Eduard Pascual]

On Sun, May 2, 2010 at 5:55 AM, Tab Atkins Jr. <jackalmage at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, May 1, 2010 at 8:25 PM,  <ryan14 at mail.com> wrote:
>> My suggestion for the HTML5 spec is that the video tag should have a feature
>> that can enable GPU acceleration on a user's graphics card, so it will take
>> some stress off the CPU.
>>
>> Do you like my suggestion?
>
> Nothing is stopping browsers from using the GPU to help speed up
> <video> playback right now, and in fact I think that some browsers are
> either already doing so, or are planning to do so in the relatively
> near future.

As a matter of fact, Microsoft already announced that IE9's rendering
engine would use GPU acceleration as much as possible (leveraging MS
Windows' DirectX technolgies) [1]. Some benchmarking of the platform
preview vs. IE8 show a more than welcome improve on performance [2].
Thus, it's not a matter of accelerating just <video>. UA vendors are
allowed to use any available technology, such as GPU processing, to
improve the user experience on all aspects; and IE9's approach will
benefit not only <video>, but everything that the browser renders (for
example, heavy JS-based animations may take huge profit from this).
I'm not a big fan of Microsoft's IE software, but I must concede that
the Redmond guys have taken a step on the right direction with this.
Especially having seen how IE8 was painfully slower than its older
siblings (IE6 and 7). I wouldn't be surprised if other browsers follow
suit.

Regards,
Eduard Pascual

[1] http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/Charles/IE-9-Surfing-on-the-GPU-with-D2D/
[2] http://blogs.msdn.com/johnmullinax/archive/2010/04/02/nvidia-shows-off-ie9-gpu-accleration.aspx