David Kanter (dkanter@realworldtech.com) on 10/1/10 wrote:
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>Anon (no@email.com) on 10/1/10 wrote:
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>>David Kanter (dkanter@realworldtech.com) on 10/1/10 wrote:
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>>Realtime (or better) editing of consumer HD video camera footage? (a h.264 derivative,
>>horrible to edit..)? Nah, who wants that.
>
>I agree consumers may want this...but it's still primarily graphics. Also, is all
>editing amenable to the GPU? I don't really know enough to say. I'd expect most of it should be...but I'm not sure.

Modern video editing software like Sony Vegas has moved a significant chunk of the work to GPU's.

The real killer isn't the software stack but rather the power consumption of the hardware. The embedded chips on smart phones will have dedicated encoding logic but are weak in GPGPU compared to desktops. It'll be awhile before portable gadgets are able to do hardcore editing on the go. Embedded devices in your living room or laptops are another story...

>>(throw in realtime resolution enhancement,
>>relighting, and depth detection for bonus points, all >doable but slow today).
>>Photorealistic interactive movies? bah, pipedream, never >happen!
>
>That's also graphics. And GPUs will never catch up to what someone like Pixar, etc. can do.
>
>>What you are probably missing is the simple fact that >humans have ONE high bandwidth
>>input channel (naturally accessible) - vision. THAT is why >graphics have a future,
>>and sound did not - sound is a very limited channel in >comparison. Display technologies
>>and their cost is what holds back vision.
>
>Um, how about the limits of the human eye? I agree vision is high bandwidth...but
>it's not even remotely infinite. Moreover, the increase in quality due to increases
>in resolution is decreasing. i.e. the quality difference between 640x480 and 1080P
>is huge. The difference between 2K and 4K is much less.

I remember an old Anandtech article (http://www.anandtech.com/show/2833/2) covering this topic back during AMD's introduction of their Eyefinity multiple display technology. They claim that the human eye can perceive 100 million pixels. That's only half the story as roughly 7 million are in focus. So it does seem that after 7 million pixels you start to hit the first wave of diminishing returns and after 100 million across a person's entire range of vision is overkill.

So a Radeon 5870 driving six 2560 x 1600 displays is only quarter of the way to overkill. Thankfully you can link four Radeon 5870's together to reach that overkill level. Performance at such resolutions is a different matter but they can reach that level today.