- FFMPEG’s greatest acceleration affects a single function that few people will have heard
- The handwritten assembly returns in a niche filter that most users will never play
- AVX512 gives FFMPEG an absurd 100x gain, but only if your CPU admits it
The FFMPEG project, known for promoting some of the video editing software and most used media tools, is in the holders again.
The developers claim to have achieved what they call “the greatest acceleration so far”, offering a 100x yield gain in a recent update.
The capture? It only applies to a unique and dark function, and the means to achieve it are raising their eyebrows: handwritten assembly code, a technique largely seen as outdated by most developers today.
The assembly coding of nostalgia and skepticism sparks
The assembly language, once essential to make the most of limited hardware in the eighties and ninety years, has become a niche practice.
However, FFMPEG developers continue to depend on it for extreme optimization, calling themselves “evangelists of the assembly.”
In their last patch, they rewrite a filter called RangeDetect8_AVX512 using AVX512 instructions, part of a modern SIMD tool kit (individual instructions, multiple data) that helps the CPUs to perform multiple tasks in parallel.
In Systems without AVX512 support, the AVX2 variant still offers an improvement of 65.63%.
As the team points out, “it is a unique function that is now 100 times faster, not all of FFMPEG.”
This news follows a similar impulse reported in November 2024, where another patch brought certain operations to 94x faster.
In that case, part of the previous performance gap arose from the complexity of the non -coincident filter: the generic version C used an 8 TAPS convolution, while the SIMD version used a simpler 6 tapas approach.
Even the compilation of the C version in the launch mode with a better compiler such as Clang could close more than 50% of the gap, which suggests that some of the speed gains claimed may have been exaggerated when comparing the worst case with the best conditions.
“Record the assignor sucks the compilers,” the developers joked on social networks, highlighting the compiler inefficiencies.
Despite the warnings, this renewed approach in low -level coding has caused new conversations about performance optimization.
FFMPEG Power everything, from VLC Media Player to innumerable YouTube discharge tools, so even small improvements in isolated filters can undertake through widely used software.
However, it is worth noting that such results are often difficult to replicate and apply in broader parts of the code base.
While this type of deep optimizations are impressive, they may not reflect real world improvements for daily editing image editing users with video editing software.
Unless other basic functions receive a similar treatment, the promise of a faster FFMPEG could remain limited to technical reference points.
Via Tomshardware
