A new partnership between Adobe and Nvidia provides users with a better viewing experience

Jun 6, 2009 10:46 GMT  ·  By

Adobe has just announced a new collaboration with Nvidia to enable some features of its Flash Player to be hardware accelerated using the latter’s technology. The joint venture is part of the Open Screen Project, Adobe's partnership program with major OEMs, chipset vendors, content providers and developers whose aim is providing a consistent feel and functionality for Flash Player across all platforms and devices it is available for.

“Nvidia and Adobe share precisely the same vision – visually compelling applications running on every device,” mentioned Michael Rayfield, general manager, Handheld Business at Nvidia. “Consumers don’t have to sacrifice streaming video performance on small inexpensive platforms such as netbooks. A Tegra-based platform enables the rich, smooth playback they expect from a desktop PC.”

The new collaboration will enable users running Nvidia products to benefit from the hardware acceleration capabilities their graphics processors provide. This feature will be available for a multitude of devices including netbooks, tablet smartphones and other portable devices and Flash Player will be able to make use of all Nvidia processors including the recently launched Tegra. The chip maker's hardware acceleration will enable users to watch full H.264 video playback as well as enjoy other rich content on devices that normally wouldn't have the processing power to handle it.

This is very good news for users of netbooks and other low-spec or mobile devices as it will allow them to view higher-quality content and not having to sacrifice performance for mobility. “Nvidia’s unique expertise makes it an ideal partner for Adobe to integrate cutting-edge graphics and video acceleration into the Adobe Flash Platform, benefiting all types of devices,” added David Wadhwani, general manager and vice president, Platform Business Unit at Adobe. “Flash Player will leverage the power of the GPU to provide a rich, desktop-compatible Web experience on a wide range of devices.”