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IE9 to be GPU-accelerated

Microsoft dropped a major announcement at the MIX conference today. They released the Internet Explorer 9 platform preview and along with that we learned that IE9 would be be GPU accelerator. This next version of Internet Explorer will be the first browser to be capable to handling this sort of GPGPU activity.

Nvidia, Microsoft’s partner in the endeavor (the one handling the GPU side of the release) explained IE9’s new features in a blog post:

Today, with introduction of Internet Explorer 9, Microsoft gives us another milestone for visual computing. Internet Explorer 9 includes a new JavaScript engine, support for HTML5 and hardware accelerated graphics and text. Internet Explorer 9 is the first browser designed to take advantage of modern hardware, resulting in graphics and performance improvements throughout the browser including the first to deliver hardware accelerated scalable vector graphics( SVG); the first to enhance JavaScript engine performance with the benefit of shifting from the CPU to the GPU; and the first to deliver GPU-Powered HTML5.

The big features are those mentioned at the end–hardware-accelerated SVG as well as GPU-powered Javascript and HTML5. HTML5 handles H.264/MPEG-4 AVC video and MP3/AAC audio (not to mention CSS3) which will benefit from the GPU acceleration. The new Javascript engine is multi-core compatible and is focused on fast performance and increased compatibility.

At the moment it looks like ATI users are out of luck. We’ll see what happens down the road–it doesn’t seem prudent for Microsoft to leave ATI or other graphics providers out of a major browser release.

You can get the IE9 platform preview here. This isn’t a beta (it’s more of a developer preview), so don’t expect complete usability or user-friendliness just yet.

Original article posted on http://www.geek.com/articles/chips/ie9-to-be-gpu-accelerated-20100316/