During the pandemic, spending on apps increased by 40%, and YouTube led the way, and Google seems to be looking to maintain that popularity.
Custom chips actually can change a tech company’s resourcefulness, that’s what we saw with Apple and the M1. Now, Gigante de Buscas has decided to develop a powerful second generation of Argos, its own customized chip that aims to deliver more video quality for less use of broadband and mobile data.
According to the CNET portal, hundreds of second-generation Argo’s chips are already running in Google’s data centers. If you need to upload a 4K resolution video to YouTube, from now on the content can be ready in hours instead of days.
To develop Argos, Google had a team of 100 dedicated engineers since 2015, according to the company’s vice president, Scott Silver. The second-generation chip can perform video compression much more efficiently, in various formats, and with optimizations for different screen sizes.
Considering the hard work of decoding video for youtube, Argos should bring about very significant changes. Every minute, about 500 hours of video are published on the platform. According to Google, the new chip should handle this amount of upload 20 to 33 times more efficiently than conventional servers.
This is only possible because the second generation of Argos has support for the AV1 codec, developed in 2018 by Alliance for Open Media, which controls the configuration of the main streamings in the market, such as Netflix, Google, Amazon Prime Video, and others.
AV1 is a replacement for VP9 and offers 30% better-compressed video transmission more quickly. As a result, Google should be able to deliver better quality YouTube service at reduced costs.
Several companies and services already have AV1, such as Google Chrome, Photos, Meet, and Android TV. Social networks like Facebook and Vimeo also use the codec as a basis for compression.
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Do you often use YouTube to upload videos? What did you think of the novelty? Tell your experience in the comments!
Source: cnet