ATI's Avivo Platform - H.264 Decode and Transcode Acceleration on R5xx

Improved Connectivity

The final message of Avivo, once again delivered through the R5xx GPUs, is one of improved connectivity.

As we mentioned in our R5xx roadmap discussion, all of the upcoming GPUs from ATI feature two integrated dual-link TMDS transmitters, meaning that you can support two high resolution LCD panels as long as the card makers put the right ports on board. The support for two dual-link DVI ports means that Avivo graphics cards will be able to support two Apple 30" Cinema Displays, something very few cards can do today. For high end panel users, the Avivo GPUs will also support 10 or 16-bit DVI outputs.

Avivo also improves the quality of the TV output on graphics cards by using ATI's Xilleon TV encoder that is found in many of today's televisions. Once again, we'll have to wait and see exactly how the quality measures up to the competitors, but it should be a step in the right direction for improving TV output quality.

The other major improvement that Avivo graphics cards will offer is a 10-bit display pipeline, so that each color component during gamma correction, color correction, scaling and dithering has a minimum of 10-bits of precision.

Matrox was the first consumer vendor to introduce a 10-bit display pipeline, which they called 10-bit GigaColor in their Parhelia line of graphics cards. ATI is obviously later to the game, but it is better late than never. We've already discussed the benefits of a 10-bit display engine in our Parhelia review.

Final Words

Although ATI's announcement today kicks off Avivo, we really won't get a good feel for what the platform can really do until ATI finally launches their R5xx GPUs. ATI is saying that the first Avivo enabled GPUs should be shipping by the end of this month, meaning that the first R5xx GPUs should be available by then. Once we have hardware in-house, we can really put Avivo to the test.

At this point, we're mostly excited about the GPU assisted transcode and decode features of the R5xx series of GPUs, and even more excited that both features are supposed to be available by the end of this year. As we get more information on release dates and product offerings, we will of course keep you updated.