Hardware-accelerated Flash 10.1 coming today? AMD seems to think so

Brian Ambrozy 10 Jun, 2010 at 11:40am ET Article published in Tech

Update: 14:31 EST – Flash 10.1 is now officially available directly from Adobe

According to a blog post by AMD’s Clarice Simmons, Adobe is about ready to unleash Flash 10.1 today. Flash 10.1 is Adobe’s first runtime release of the Open Screen Project. The reason AMD is so interested in Adobe Flash? It’s because Flash 10.1 H.264 content can be hardware accelerated by GPUs.

Adobe Flash 10.1 has been in beta and then release candidate status for months. As of this writing, however, the main release page still lists 10.0.45.2 as the current version.

Recent GPUs from AMD, NVIDIA, and Intel will hardware-accelerate Flash content. Broadcom mobile decoder chips are supported as well. For a full list, you can see the full release notes (PDF).

Comments

10 Jun 2010 ~ 11:58am RyanMM If this stops Firefox and Chrome from eating up 100% of one of my cores when Flash memory leaks get out of control, great. But if the tradeoff is 100% GPU usage when Flash craps the bed, then I hope they offer a way to disable it.
10 Jun 2010 ~ 2:58pm Tushon It's all about out of process plugins in FF4. Flash trying to shat bricks all over your computer? Kill its process. Whammy!
10 Jun 2010 ~ 6:03pm ardichoke Interesting. Do we know HOW recent the Intel chip needs to be? Link to hardware list plox? Also, did they release for Linux as well?
10 Jun 2010 ~ 7:55pm primesuspect
I did link to the list - it's in the PDF release notes.

Still, LAZZZYYYY

Release notes wrote:

Intel Hardware video decoding of H.264 content in Flash Player 10.1 is supported on IntelÂ® 4 Series Chipset family and the all New 2010 IntelÂ® Coreâ„¢ Processor Family with IntelÂ® HD Graphics starting with the graphics driver version 15.16.5.2021(8.15.10.2021) for 32/64-bit Windows Vista and Windows 7.
For the Atom/IntelÂ® GMA 500 chipset, hardware decode is supported starting with the graphics driver version 5.2.1.2020 (8.14.10.2020) for 32-bit WindowsÂ® 7. For all supported Intel GPUs, we recommend using an Aero windows theme. Performance is significantly improved for fullscreen playback with Aero-enabled Windows environments.

Release notes wrote:

Adobe Flash Player 10.1 offers GPU-acceleration for NVIDIA ION and supported NVIDIA GeForce and Quadro-powered PCs. The latest drivers are available at http://www.nvidia.com/drivers, and the latest list of supported GPUs is available at http://www.nvidia.com/object/gpus_supporting_adobeflash.html.
Release notes wrote:
Hardware video decoding of H.264 content in Flash Player 10.1 is supported on AMD/ATI products with UVD2 with the ATI Catalystâ„¢ Software Suite, starting with version 9.11 for the ATI Radeonâ„¢ family of products, and driver release 8.68 for the ATI FireProâ„¢ family of products.
Radeon HD 4xxx (and higher)

Mobility Radeon

Mobility Radeon HD 4xxx series (and higher)

Integrated/Motherboard

Radeon HD 3xxx (and higher)

FirePro

FirePro V3750, FirePro V7750, FirePro V8700, and FirePro V8750 (and later)
Release notes wrote:

Hardware video decoding of H.264 content in Flash Player 10.1 is supported on the Broadcom BCM70012 as well as the BCM70015 video decoding chipset, found in systems with Broadcom Crystal HD Enhanced Video Accelerator hardware. Driver support is available at http://www.broadcom.com/support/crystal_hd.
10 Jun 2010 ~ 11:00pm ardichoke Pssh... not lazzzyy.... just didn't have time to read the release notes.
10 Jun 2010 ~ 11:16pm leorick Finally. I have been waiting for a long time. It feels like a year from the day adobe announced this.
11 Jun 2010 ~ 8:10am AlexDeGruven FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU Adobe!

Regular download (without Adobe Downloader) doesn't update the plugin (still shows 10.0.x in about: plugins).

Tried using the Adobe Downloader, but it crashes every time.

Edit: Looks like it's a problem somewhere in my lappy. Remoted in to home and it worked just fine there.
12 Jun 2010 ~ 11:04am leorick Actually, a lot of people are having problems using Adobe's Downloaded. Some gets stuck at 5%, some fails, etc.

This is why i always download manually through the troubleshooting page. The link is at the bottom.
14 Jun 2010 ~ 1:32am leorick Sorry, that was "Adobe Downloader" not downloaded