> >     1) fully decode in TRV(sp?) chip?
> >             adds complexity, chip takes longer to design
> 
> Infeasible with our budget.

Economic budget or time budget?  Do we have an idea of how much
larger the die would be?  I suspect the main problem would be
design time.

> >     2) Partly in CPU, partly in TRV chip?
> >             from previous discussion, this may be difficult
> >             or impossible?
> 
> The only way IMHO.

But I keep reading that large amounts of data have to go back and
forth between CPU and GPU?  Would PCIe x16 be enough?  There
are other ways, like putting the GPU on the hypertransport bus,
but that would *greatly* reduce the mainboards you could use.
You could put a CPU on the OGC card, but that would increase
the economic cost and power&heat cost significantly.

> >     3) wait for AMD to sell a AMD64 30,000+ x16 CPU?
> 
> Impossible, light isnt that fast.

IIRC they now have 6000+ x2, so they only have to find a 5x
speed improvement.  (And of course I just made up the 30,000
number, I don't know what the real requirement would be.)
I read that Barcelona will have 128 bit SSE instructions
and x4.  I assume they will eventually have a CPU that is fast
enough to decode video and also do other things at the same time.
And a few years later it will be affordable.  Question is how
long do we have to wait, and will we live long enough to see it?

> >     4) wait for TI to sell a faster DSP?
> 
> DSPs wont help as much as you think. DSP are for signal
> processing, not for video decoding. Yes, video decoding
> is to a certain extend signal processing, but not in a
> way that maps easily into DSP like systems.

If TI can bump the speed up 2x or so (just a guess) it should
be fast enough.  I have no idea when or if we will see this.

> >     5) find out what the standalone Blu-Ray and HD-DVD
> >        players use, and see if we can use that
> 
> Forget that... unless you want to deal with NDAs and
> closed source libraries.

I assume someone makes a chip that decodes in hardware that
these things use?  If so, then it is possible to do in hardware.

What really matters is that we have documentation on how to talk
to the board, allowing device drivers to be written.  If that is
possible, we could hold our nose and use a NDA'd chip.  Depends
on what information they will make available.  Some companies
will not tell you what you need to know even with a NDA.

> >     6) something else?
> 
> Keep the current aproach.

Which is basically the same as 3 - wait for a super fast CPU.
And kiss a big part of the market goodbye.
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