Yesterday, at a meeting with some journalists, Intel stated that CPUs realize video encoding, as that is a task
designed for them and that the future would not bring any changes. According to Intel representatives, the CPU is used by DivX for dynamical adjustments of details across scenes. The processor is the only part that can ensure that the denser areas of scenes are provided with the high level of detail they require.

“When you’re encoding on the CPU, the quality will be higher because we’re determining which parts of the scene need higher bit-rates applying to them,” said François Piednoel, senior performance analyst at Intel.

The discussion turned to CUDA and the massive performance increase Nvidia claimed it would bring. CUDA may deliver a change of paradigm for software developers, and some of the big names like Adobe seem already on the trend. According to Piednoel, CUDA will probably not deliver the level of performance expected, due to the fact that it spits the scene up and every pixel is treated the same, a brute force method. Yet, although Intel speculates the area, Nvidia never said anything about video quality - until now.
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