[libre-riscv-dev] [Bug 137] NLNet 2019 Video Acceleration Proposal 2019-10-031

[bugzilla-daemon at libre-soc.org]

https://bugs.libre-soc.org/show_bug.cgi?id=137

--- Comment #20 from cand at gmx.com ---
I believe it's too late to add AAC, however due to how ffmpeg is structured,
some of the work on the other codecs will speed up AAC too. Not as much as
focusing on it, but more than plain sw.

MPEG2, MP3, AC3 are all free, patents expired. Vorbis and Opus were explicitly
designed for that.

For the newer video codecs, it's possible any implementation would infringe
patents. So does 90% of ffmpeg code. IANAL, but only the sw patents I believe,
as the hw blocks we will have will not be specialized to any codec. Unlike a
modern GPU that has "H.264 frame in, RGB out" blocks, we will have
sub-operations such as "calculate transform XYZ for this data". Those are not
patentable in general, some specific algorithm in hw may be.

So my conclusion is that the hw is safe, but if a commercial entity wishes to
ship our software in the US, they will need to disable the newer video codecs
or to license patents. I.e. the exact same situation as ffmpeg code, if they
want to ship that in a product with new stuff enabled.

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