IE9 to get GPU acceleration
- Thread starter mrk
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Well that is the exact issue developers have now. Sometimes it is a miracle if two browsers display your page in the same way. With some browsers using GPU speed enhancements developers will have flashy content-heavy sites with whizzy bits that load instantly. Except on those browsers that haven't caught up...
Hmm I see, from a business POV maybe that would be an issue because office pcs rarely have a decent GPU good enough for Aero let alone Direct2D.
But there is a but.
Direct2D is only usable on Vista or Win7 and not XP so assuming a business upgrades to Win7 then their systems will be compatible anyway.
But there is a but.
Direct2D is only usable on Vista or Win7 and not XP so assuming a business upgrades to Win7 then their systems will be compatible anyway.
Caporegime
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Interesting stuff 
Direct2D and Aero Glass don't really need a decent GPU. As long as the PC isn't older than 2006-2007 then it's fine. Considering the vast majority of PC's in the Windows 7 / IE9 era more than meet this requirement there is no issue.
I'm sure Microsoft will keep the GDI pipeline around for compatibility for PCs and servers which don't have a GPU or don't have the DirectX components. That would also give them the option to ship IE9 to XP as well, which I suspect they will want to do given how hot the browser market competition is at the moment.
I'm sure Microsoft will keep the GDI pipeline around for compatibility for PCs and servers which don't have a GPU or don't have the DirectX components. That would also give them the option to ship IE9 to XP as well, which I suspect they will want to do given how hot the browser market competition is at the moment.
I have seen Aero running on some very low-spec machines. My brother's PC is an Athlon64 single core on an mATX board and only a Gig of RAM. It runs Windows 7 Aero beautifully.
Any computer in the last 3-5 years I think could handle 2D work on a GPU. The biggest decider as you say is the OS. And again, if the machine can handle Vista/Windows 7 they should have no problem.
That's just bad web design. Part of a web designers responsibility is to ensure their creations progressively degrade so that the user experience is acceptable no matter what the client platform is.
Exactly the issue, we currently have web developers spending so much time on cross browser compatibility at the detriment of site quality. Web design is a compromise of getting the best to as many people as possible and forgetting the minorities. Adding in the capability to have super flashy websites based on a users hardware is terrible. Are we going to end up back 5 years.. "Would you like to enter the GDI or Direct2D site?"
Its not just bad web design.
I'm going to comment on this for the Lulz.
Firstly, this is big PR about the fact that IE pre-9 still uses out of ye-olde API and that they're going to use the normal API that the rest of the OS uses, which just so happens uses the GPU for rendering when required. Also it jumps on the current GPU is the silver bullet bandwagon (sort of like GPGPU)..
Why is this big news? I thought that IE always used the standard OS graphics APIs to render. It seems rather backwards for every application to use it's own API for drawing don't you think?
I remember talking to mate about this, yes it's a step in the right direction but a step that should have been done a couple of years ago!
If they focus on one API/graphics engine, the same API/engine that windows uses, then they'll save money by not maintaining redundant code, the OEMs will love them because they only have one interface and they can optimise it heavily.
Firstly, this is big PR about the fact that IE pre-9 still uses out of ye-olde API and that they're going to use the normal API that the rest of the OS uses, which just so happens uses the GPU for rendering when required. Also it jumps on the current GPU is the silver bullet bandwagon (sort of like GPGPU)..
Why is this big news? I thought that IE always used the standard OS graphics APIs to render. It seems rather backwards for every application to use it's own API for drawing don't you think?
I remember talking to mate about this, yes it's a step in the right direction but a step that should have been done a couple of years ago!
If they focus on one API/graphics engine, the same API/engine that windows uses, then they'll save money by not maintaining redundant code, the OEMs will love them because they only have one interface and they can optimise it heavily.
IE 8 uses GDI and GDI+ to render pages. That's, as far as I'm aware, how Opera, Firefox and Chrome work too.
GDI has been in Windows since about v3.0. It's getting on a bit.
It was deprecated in Vista and replaced with a wrapper to maintain backward compat. However as a side-effect the hardware acceleration that has been there since the mid-90s was lost. But because CPUs are so fast nowadays nobody really noticed as such.
In Windows 7 they managed to reimplement some the hardware acceleration for the GDI wrapper. But it still isn't 'perfect' like it used to be in the old days.
Anyway, Direct2D is essentially the next-gen of GDI. This will increasingly become commonplace for applications wanting to get "free" hardware acceleration of their simple screen drawing functionality.
There will probably come a time when the GDI wrapper is rewritten to wrap itself around Direct2D.
GDI is not all that slow (even when the CPU is doing the work). But it is not very good at animation (i.e. refreshing at frequent intervals). Unfortunately web pages these days usually contain a lot of animated or interactive content so then the performance limitations of GDI start to show up. At least, it starts hogging the CPU when the CPU would rather be doing something else like say playing a HD video on another monitor. That's what Microsoft are doing this change in IE9 for... not out of necessity but because there is a general benefit there for everybody. Should make laptop/netbook batteries last longer too due to less CPU usage.
GDI has been in Windows since about v3.0. It's getting on a bit.
It was deprecated in Vista and replaced with a wrapper to maintain backward compat. However as a side-effect the hardware acceleration that has been there since the mid-90s was lost. But because CPUs are so fast nowadays nobody really noticed as such.
In Windows 7 they managed to reimplement some the hardware acceleration for the GDI wrapper. But it still isn't 'perfect' like it used to be in the old days.
Anyway, Direct2D is essentially the next-gen of GDI. This will increasingly become commonplace for applications wanting to get "free" hardware acceleration of their simple screen drawing functionality.
There will probably come a time when the GDI wrapper is rewritten to wrap itself around Direct2D.
GDI is not all that slow (even when the CPU is doing the work). But it is not very good at animation (i.e. refreshing at frequent intervals). Unfortunately web pages these days usually contain a lot of animated or interactive content so then the performance limitations of GDI start to show up. At least, it starts hogging the CPU when the CPU would rather be doing something else like say playing a HD video on another monitor. That's what Microsoft are doing this change in IE9 for... not out of necessity but because there is a general benefit there for everybody. Should make laptop/netbook batteries last longer too due to less CPU usage.
Soldato
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Looks like firefox is also planning something similar!
http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-10403604-264.html
http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-10403604-264.html
60 fps, just wait for the script kiddies to start rick-rolling with that!
Also I'm not so sure 60 fps would be a good idea. Advertising pays for the bandwidth, the increase in bandwidth means although the adverts may stay the same cost for the advertiser the ISPs will hate them and probably charge the end user for the additional bandwidth used. So I'm not convinced.
Also I'm not so sure 60 fps would be a good idea. Advertising pays for the bandwidth, the increase in bandwidth means although the adverts may stay the same cost for the advertiser the ISPs will hate them and probably charge the end user for the additional bandwidth used. So I'm not convinced.
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I'm sure they'd care more about Youtube offering 1080p video rather than websites taking advantage of the GPU in Windows.
Microsoft trying new ways to compete with their competitors.
Wonder if this will shift the marketshare back in their favor.
time will tell
I don't think Microsoft will ever get back to the 90% market they use to have with IE. But I do think that as more and more IE releases are made they will start to win back the support of web developers - and that is the majority of what Microsoft is trying to achieve now. Sooner or later web developers will realise that the real enemy are web browsers that implement incomplete draft standards such as HTML5. It's just the browser wars from the 90's all over again. W3C folks must be rolling their eyes at the immaturity of certain companies.
Just because the web browser is capable of rendering 60fps doesn't mean the video stream will be delivered at 60fps.
It's more about supporting web sites which have a modestly sized 1080p video in the center and then about 1,000 Flash adverts surrounding it. IE9 will eat a task like that up. Whereas a current day web browser will get bogged down and the 1080p video will stutter. And that's not the mention the tearing.