Intel Demos Sandy Bridge, Shows off Video Transcode Engine
 

Intel confirmed that Sandy Bridge has dedicated video transcode hardware that it demoed during the keynote. The demo used Cyberlink’s Media Espresso to convert a ~1 minute long 30Mbps 1080p HD video clip to an iPhone compatible format. On Sandy Bridge the conversion finished in a matter of a few seconds (< 10 seconds by my watch).

Dedicated hardware video transcode is Intel’s way of fending off the advance of GPU compute into the consumer market, particularly necessary since you can’t do any compute on Intel’s HD graphics (even on Sandy Bridge).

Given Intel’s close relationship with the software vendors, I suspect we’ll see a lot of software support for this engine when Sandy Bridge ships early next year.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/3916/i...anscode-engine