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Date:      Sun, 27 Jul 1997 00:40:57 +0300 (EEST)
From:      Petri Helenius <pete@sms.fi>
To:        "Gary T. Corcoran" <garycorc@idt.net>
Cc:        Anthony.Kimball@East.Sun.COM, multimedia@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Software MPEG-2  (Was: Posting prefix)
Message-ID:  <199707262140.AAA00828@silver.sms.fi>
In-Reply-To: <33DA685A.446B9B3D@idt.net>
References:  <199707242045.PAA03915@compound.east.sun.com> <199707242113.OAA15573@rah.star-gate.com> <199707250502.IAA29406@silver.sms.fi> <199707250706.CAA03136@compound.east.sun.com> <33DA685A.446B9B3D@idt.net>

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Gary T. Corcoran writes:
 > Tony Kimball wrote:
 >  
 > I heard Intel (first hand) say that a 233MHz MMX Pentium will *almost*,
 > *but not quite* be fast enough for software MPEG-2 decode (they tried it).
 > In other words, while it generally worked, for high complexity/high motion
 > scenes, it hiccuped.  So until most of us have 300+ MHz processors, we'll
 > need to use hardware for MPEG-2 decoding.

While I don't want to start a discussion about the benefits of general
purpose processors I would say that at the current level of technology
it's much cheaper to decode MPEG-2 and to some extent MPEG in hardware
since the cost of general purpose processor to do that is at least
fivefold to the chip doing the job at full rates.
 > 
 > Of course, if you'd like to get a head start and start writing code for
 > future processors, be my guest...  ;-)
 > 
 > Or maybe you can find a "trick" that Intel didn't think of... ???
 > 
Pete



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