Quote:
Originally Posted by pilotbob
It possible can be with alot of code and also the performance is bad. It is like the difference between having a GPU in your PC, and not.
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It's most likely less code than the amount of hardware in the alternative, since the code is higher level than the hardware. It's true that the performance can be much better if implemented in hardware. OTOH, sometimes software is faster because of dynamic optimizations or what have you.
Quote:
Originally Posted by pilotbob
Once the stuff is moved into the firmware:
1. It works much better and faster.
2. Devs can just take advantage of it without writting low level code. They can focus on the features rather than the plumbing.
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1. Huh? It's definitely neither better nor faster to have code in the firmware than on some external medium. In fact, firmwares are often loaded from some external medium.
2. Nobody even hinted at suggesting application developers do the low level code. The alternatives are: provide an
API to a software-only library, or provide an
API to a hardware-accelerated library. The APIs of these alternatives could be identical, so the app devs wouldn't necessarily even know how much of what is done in hardware. (And again, whether the software is in the firmware or not is of no consequence (except that firmwares can be harder to upgrade, but can thus also be safer from being broken).)