Monday, January 3, 2005
AMD's Alchemy CPU Aimed at Mobile Video Players
Posted by Jason Dunn in "NEWS" @ 08:20 PM
"Advanced Micro Devices has developed a low-power chip that it thinks will make portable video players more compelling by reducing the time needed to transfer content to the devices. The company is expected to announce the chip at the International Consumer Electronics Show this week. Portable video players with the new Alchemy Au1200 processor will play MPEG files recorded by digital video recorders, eliminating the need for users to change those files to a different format, says Rob Oliver, product marketing manager with AMD's Personal Connectivity Solutions Group (PCSG). AMD has designed a reference platform for manufacturers that includes the chip and media player software, and the company expects devices to emerge in the second quarter of this year, he says."
I was initially interested in this, but after digging further I realized this is a MIPS-based chip, which makes it essentially irrelevant from a Portable Media Center point of view (which are all ARM-based). Still, we might see some interesting devices to compete with the PMCs. This statement made me roll my eyes a bit though:
"The MPEG and DivX file formats produce higher quality images than the WMV file format, and videos recorded onto PMCs in those formats will play on large screens with no degradation in quality, he says."
While DivX produces excellent quality files, on par with WMV, but MPEG? I've yet to see an MPEG2 or MPEG4 video file that matches the quality and size of a WMV or DivX file. MPEG acceleration would help with playing native MPEG content (like a TV show recorded to a PVR) without needing to convert it.
I was initially interested in this, but after digging further I realized this is a MIPS-based chip, which makes it essentially irrelevant from a Portable Media Center point of view (which are all ARM-based). Still, we might see some interesting devices to compete with the PMCs. This statement made me roll my eyes a bit though:
"The MPEG and DivX file formats produce higher quality images than the WMV file format, and videos recorded onto PMCs in those formats will play on large screens with no degradation in quality, he says."
While DivX produces excellent quality files, on par with WMV, but MPEG? I've yet to see an MPEG2 or MPEG4 video file that matches the quality and size of a WMV or DivX file. MPEG acceleration would help with playing native MPEG content (like a TV show recorded to a PVR) without needing to convert it.
