Adobe finds hardware helpers for Flash

Stephen Withers
Wednesday, 03 June 2009 07:24

IT Industry - Development

Adobe is working with its hardware partners to improve Flash performance on lower-end hardware.

Although Flash is widely used and supported (Apple's iPhone is a major exception), badly-written Flash content can sap even a relatively powerful CPU such as an Intel Core 2 Duo.

One way around this is to shift more of the work onto the graphics processor, and that's what Adobe is aiming to do with the assistance of Nvidia and Broadcom.

Nvidia and Adobe have announced that they are working on Flash acceleration across the Nvidia range, including the Tegra, a system-on-a-chip intended for smartphones, netbooks, mobile Internet devices and so on.

Many Tegra-based devices were revealed at Computex, where the Adobe/Nvidia announcement was made.

"Nvidia and Adobe share precisely the same vision – visually compelling applications running on every device, said Michael Rayfield, general manager, handheld business at Nvidia.

"Consumers don't have to sacrifice streaming video performance on small inexpensive platforms such as netbooks. A Tegra-based platform enables the rich, smooth playback they expect from a desktop PC," he added.

Please read on for information about the Adobe/Broadcom announcement.