SoC 2008/x264/Speed Optimizations

This project is part of Google Summer of Code 2008. Student: Holger Lubitz Mentor: Alex Izvorski

Project Abstract

My goal is to search for speed optimizations in x264 (and, time allowing or if anything seems an obvious port, possibly a bit in vlc and ffmpeg as well). I intend to thouroughly profile the thing and find out where we might do better.

Implementation

Will be mainly on a day to day basis - find something, see if something can be done about it. My main development system so far was an Athlon X2 3800+, so I mainly did 64bit and MMX, some SSE code so far, but it recently lost its case to a new and shiny Q9300 (will be back in service once that case arrives - seems it may take a while). I intend to be learning a lot of SSSE3 and SSE4.1 and will hopefully find some uses for it.

Current Status

Battling with Hardware. Fedora 9 is said to have the latest and greatest of all distributions in regard to supporting the Intel Onboard-Graphics (it's just a little bit behind on the version number and i think most of the newer stuff is already in). However, my G35 mobo does not really like me yet. Some things still to be found out. Expect me to rant a bit on the channel if it was just another really bad day.

Other than that, I hope to get into vtune next week, maybe even try to get the free IDA going somehow. And then we'll see where that gets me.

Schedule

Had a presentation on May 23rd (yeah, just the right time to buy and install new hardware). Will need to hand in the write up for all of it soonish. After that, mainly weather dependent. Cold heads code, hot heads need to be near (preferably cold) water. Well. Wasn't coding what nights were made for?