ABSTRACT
Only a few years ago AV devices were hardware centric with little software value. Video product engineers were experts in real time, frame accurate, circuit, and system design. Today the roles have reversed, with software being the center of functional value for most devices. Software, coupled with sufficient CPU power, can perform almost any AV operation in real time. Thanks to Moore’s law, AV-specific hardware is being relegated to I/O and some real time 2D/3D effects and signal processing. Standard definition MPEG encoding and SD/HD decoding are done easily with a common CPU. HD MPEG 2 encoding, especially MPEG 4 Part 10 (H.264), still requires hardware support. Looking down the road, hardware AV processing will become a rare commodity and software will rule. One interesting trend is to use the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU, common in all PCs) to do real time 2D/3D effects.
