AtomZ530 / US15W performance playback Flash content

[FLeu]

Hi

I have an embedded board that uses a Z530 and US15W chipset.

I use Windows Embedded Standard 2009 (XPe) as OS (booting from microSD) and found that playing back Adobe Flash content from within the browser (IE7) with even low resolutions are very choppy.

I feel like this can't be normal, is it? Any suggestions?

Thanks

Franz

[Kirk_B_Intel]

This is a known limitation of upoptimized video code running on Z530. Adobe has been promising to release the Z530 optimized version of Flash for a while now. Intel was involved in getting the optimized code to Adobe and now we are just waiting for it to make it into their main release.

You might want to see if you can get the beta of the latest version 10 release from Adobe as that is rumored to have SOME of the optimizations enabled.

We may just need to be a bit more patient- help is on the way from Adobe.

Hope this helps.

[IRath]

Hi Mclion,

By the way can anyone let me know the procedure to boot the XPe from SD slot in Atom Z5xx?

Is any standard procedure is available for this? Is any BIOS changes required for this?

Regards,

Imman

[FLeu]

@Kirk

I'll try the prerelease from the Adobe Labs. Hope it helps. I am currently very disappointed from the performance of this 1.6GHz CPU.

Thanks.

@Imman

To boot from SD you usually get a driver package as Component (sld) from the board manufacturer, i.e. Kontron in my case.

Without details, this would be:

- SD Bus Class driver (from Microsoft) to support the Host Controller

- SFF Storage driver (from Microsoft, and Kontron in my case) to support SD drive.

Of course, the BIOS needs to support it as well. However, if the board comes with a slot, I would assume that it does that already.

HTHFranz

[FLeu]

Seems not to be so easy. According to Adobe labs and forum:

- Acceleration is for H.264 (only ?)

- In current rc2 is disabled for GMA500 because of bad drivers

- Currently only for Win7 -> not available for XP and therefore XPembedded

snip fron release notes:

Hardware video decoding of H.264 content in Flash Player 10.1 is supported on Intel® 4 Series Chipsetfamily and the all New 2010 Intel® Core™ Processor Family with Intel® HD Graphics starting with thegraphics driver version 15.16.5.2021(8.15.10.2021) for 32/64-bit Windows Vista and Windows 7.For the Atom/Intel® GMA 500 chipset, hardware decode is supported starting with the graphics driverversion 5.2.1.2020 (8.14.10.2020) for 32-bit Windows

I downloaded the current rc2 of Flash 10.1.

So, what driver for XP shall I use to test anyhow?

Thanks

Franz

[FLeu]

I have some very bad news.

Snip from a thread I opened at adobe:

Sorry, there are no plans to support Intel GPUs on WinXP.

-chris

Flash Player Engineering

and the link to the thread:

http://forums.adobe.com/thread/631921?tstart=0 http://forums.adobe.com/thread/631921?tstart=0" >Forum thread

This is very bad news to the huge group of people that use this platform with Windows embedded because this is based on XP.

Franz

[Kirk_B_Intel]

Yes, Adobe engineers are not planning on doing it, however Intel is working with Adobe and one of their contract houses to support it as best as possible. I'm guessing this is one of those "one hand does not know what the other is doing" things at Adobe. For embedded, XP is still very important (as well as Linux)..

[FDECO1]

Hi,

I am using an AtomZ530 with US15W, with a custom Linux, and I have really poor performance playing Adobe Flash content, even in the absence of video content.

I have read that Flash content can be played using different modes (window, opaque, transparent, direct, gpu). Are these modes (and especially gpu mode) operate on this platform and can they bring improvements ?

Thanks

Florian

[ABHISHEK_G_Intel]

Work is in Progress with Adobe and their contract house to provide best possible user experience of playing back Adobe flash content (including video) on Linux. It would be nice to see this support by Adobe Flash 10.1 gold release

[FLeu]

I have tested the RC's of V10.1 on a XPembedded (WES2009). With the RC2 there was a big improvement over the current, official V10 release. Unfortunately, with the RC4 it was back to how it was with V10 -> unusable.

McL

[FLeu]

@Kirk and @AbhiG

Any news regarding the Flash support on XP?

Could you please check on the status with your partner at Adobe and/or their contract house?

I have a customer that I need to deliver some systems in about 3 weeks and he wants to be able to playback Flash content.

Thanks

Franz

[FLeu]

@Kirk and @AbhiG ... and everybody else, of course

Since 10.1 has been released I really need to bring this up gain.

(Actually, the released 10.1 is the same as the RC7 downloaded from Adobe labs before.)

If video is windowed performance is much better than it was with 10.0. However, if set to fullscreen the video is very choppy and most of the time has a delay between video and audio. CPU load is not higher while in fullscreen as it is in windowed mode: Usually jumping somehwere between 50 .. 80 \% on both cores. This leads me to the conclusion that the issue is somehwere in the graphic driver performance.

I simply can't believe that this is the way it will be for all users of XP on Atom / Poulsbo devices, even with 1.6GHz CPU clock.

I really hope that you are telling me that this will be further improved by either better graphic drivers and/or a better adapted Flash version.

I am looking forward to hear from you.

Best regards,

Franz

[FLeu]

*bump*

.. is there anybody home ?!?

[Kirk_B_Intel]

For XP, it is the way it is as Adobe cannot be convinced to retrofit XP, however it should be better for Linux and WIn7.

I wish we had a better answer...

[FLeu]

What a bummer.

Until Windows Embedded Standard 2011 is on the market, this means that Atom chipsets can not be used in Windows Embedded designs that need Flash playback capability.

Thanks anyway

Franz