Ittiam to Publicly Showcase ARM Mali GPU Compute Accelerated HEVC and VP9 at Mobile World Congress 2014
February 21, 2014
Ittiam announces power-efficient implementations of HEVC & VP9 Decoders, optimized for ARM® Mali™ and ARM Cortex®-A processors
BANGALORE, India–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Ittiam Systems announces the general availability of power-efficient and highly-optimized software solutions, balancing compute and energy efficiencies, for decoding of algorithmically intense, next-generation Video Codecs. With HEVC and VP9 staking claims to significant bandwidth savings over H.264 and VP8 respectively, the call for incorporating these new-age standards has grown stronger and louder, from silicon vendors catering to the set top box market, all the way to application processors embedded within smartphones and tablets. With all the advantages touted, it is only a matter of time before we see the Online Video Services Ecosystem widely adopt these cutting-edge standards as the codecs of choice for efficient content consumption on portable devices.
The Ittiam solution, built with first-class support from ARM at various levels, focuses on power, scale and portability with equal importance given to each. In order to reduce the ‘cost’ of decoding on mobile devices, Ittiam’s architecture offloads compute intensive tasks to the ARM Mali GPU using standard GPU Compute APIs, with significant leverage of the GPU to achieve an overall lower power profile. With intelligent partitioning of the algorithm and by identifying unique, compute-intensive functions that are well suited for GPU processing we are able to significantly lower the load imposed on the CPU by the codec, leading to advantages on multiple fronts. These advantages include freeing the CPU for other system or user tasks which results in better responsiveness and performance; lowering CPU clock demands; or, more importantly, offering significantly longer battery-life thanks to the energy efficiencies gained by this GPU Compute solution. The Ittiam implementation achieves class-leading levels of performance, with wide coverage of support across a variety of ARM Mali T6xx GPU generations, enabling higher performance with use of the on-board GPU.
“Ittiam’s solution lowers the entry barrier for VP9 capable performance for smartphones and other platforms.”
Mukund Srinivasan, General Manager for the Consumer and Mobility Business at Ittiam, said, “These paradigm shifts open a unique window of opportunity for focused media-related Intellectual Property providers like Ittiam Systems®. The main hurdle to cross, in these innovative solutions, comes in the form of how to manage the enhanced compute demands of a complex codec standard on mobile devices, since it bears significantly more complex coding tools as compared to VP8 or H.264. However, collaborating with a longstanding partner and a technology pioneer like ARM enabled us to generate original solutions to the complex problems posed in the design and implementation of consumer electronic systems.”
Matt Frost, Senior Business Product Manager, WebM Project, said “With VP9, ARM Mali-based devices will allow people to watch YouTube in high definition at half the bandwidth currently used. ARM and Ittiam are the latest to maximize the compute capabilities of their platform through VP9, offering high-resolution, power-efficient VP9 video with software-based solutions. This will help OEMs and silicon companies deploy VP9 video solutions both on existing and newer Mali-based devices.”
“Ittiam’s H.265 and VP9 decoders have been designed to take advantage of the full capabilities of modern mobile SoCs based on the ARM Mali-T600 series of GPUs and Cortex-A series of processors. By identifying highly parallel operations and offloading these to the GPU, Ittiam is able to deliver an implementation that significantly improves battery life during playback of high definition H.265 and VP9 video content,” said Roberto Mijat, visual computing marketing manager, ARM. “Ittiam’s solution lowers the entry barrier for VP9 capable performance for smartphones and other platforms.”
Ittiam’s demonstrations can be seen by visiting ARM’s booth at Hall 6 – C10 in the Mobile World Congress show in Barcelona, starting 24-Feb-2014, or at Ittiam’s own Booth at MWC (Hall 8.1K24)
ARM Cortex and ARM Mali are registered trademarks of ARM Limited.
Contact:
Ittiam Systems
Mukund Srinivasan, +1.408.520.9234
+91.806.660.1140
mukund.srinivasan@www.ittiam.com
or
ARM Limited
Roberto Mijat, +44 77.61.33.527
roberto.mijat@arm.com