

Microsoft Patents GPU-Accelerated Video Encoding - adbge
http://www.conceivablytech.com/3421/business/microsoft-patents-gpu-accelerated-video-encoding/

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micheljansen
How can this be worthy of a patent? This has been _the_ example of GPGPU from
day one. It is not even a technological invention, it is an application of
existing technology. It is like IBM patenting "using a computer for business
administration" or a kid patenting "swinging sideways on a child's swing"
(that last one is actually not made up: see
[http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn2178-boy-takes-
swing-a...](http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn2178-boy-takes-swing-at-us-
patents.html))

update: I just noticed that the New Scientist article actually refers to a
patent for "a system that issues reservations for using the toilet on an
aeroplane", issued to four IBM developers. How ironic :P

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GHFigs
_It is not even a technological invention, it is an application of existing
technology._

Can you cite an example of an invention which was not an application of
existing technology?

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micheljansen
Do you want to get into a philosophical discussion on what constitutes
technology? :P

I believe patents should be used to protect inventions of new technology (e.g.
things like light bulbs, telephones (ouch) or cars), not "methods for
illuminating the workplace", "methods for notifying people of cancelled
appointments" or "ways to transport oneself from home to work".

~~~
GHFigs
_Do you want to get into a philosophical discussion on what constitutes
technology?_

No. My question was unambiguous.

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astrange
Just as a side comment, x264 using one of its faster speed presets is both
faster and a better compressor (sometimes at the same time!) than any GPU-
accelerated encoder I know of. Attempts to port part of it to GPGPU are
welcome, if they're faster and not worse, but so far 5+ attempts at it seem to
have failed.

Luckily, the concept of CPU-accelerated video encoding is not patented.

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wmf
It will be interesting to compare x264 against Sandy Bridge's GPU encoder;
they added a scoreboard to accelerate wavefront-parallel motion estimation
(AFAIK this has been problematic for previous GPU encoders).

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deadsy
I'm not sure this patent is very strong. Anybody who did motion estimation on
video frames prior to the 2004 filing and did it with a co-processor could
probably claim to be prior art on the idea of GPU accelerated motion
estimation. The independent claims are quite wordy. This makes me think they
were probably made to put in specific claim details that weaken the patent by
making it narrower.

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videopatenter
I am not an expert at reading patents so correct me if I am wrong. From what I
understood it only appears to cover encoding accelerated using graphics APIs.
If you are not using the texture unit for performing loads and your data is
not stored as textures on the GPU (and you dont really need it for CUDA
programs), then the patent does not seem to apply.

As a sidenote, the article linked here gets some basic details wrong ("CUDA
was launched in 2008", it was launched earlier than that).

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alecco
Also they have a patent on 2 pass LZ compression. Insane.

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robryan
I think at a bare minimum any patent that feels like it's just been a race to
file a patent shouldn't be granted.

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tjarratt
That's why you have a team of patent lawyers spend a week taking the
engineer's specs and extending it into a 50+ page document.

