ATI Radeon GPU Accelerates Internet Explorer 9

The Internet is a powerful tool. Has anything more obvious ever been said? The Internet has quite possibly revolutionized technology more than any other innovation in history, and to quantify its impact would be nearly impossible. If I were to try, what I would tell you is that the BBC recently reported that in 1998 just over 84 million users were online in the US - today that number exceeds 230 million. China's growth in that same time period ranges from 2 million to 298 million. Even further, this year the Internet received a nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize. The Nobel Peace Prize! And what's at the center of Internet innovation? The browser. It's the one constant that has been at the heart of the Internet experience for as long as we can all remember. And the browsing experience is about to get even better.

At this week's MIX10 conference held by Microsoft, Dean Hachamovitch, Internet Explorer General Manager, delivered a keynote introducing the Internet Explorer 9 platform preview. Specifically, he discussed powerful visual technology - such as DirectX and Direct2D - that, when powered by AMD technology, enables a visual experience capable of taking the browser to another level. Here are a couple things about the harmony between hardware and software for you to be aware of with IE9:

• GPU acceleration enables improved screen response, higher quality text as well as high-quality screen zooming. These features are enabled by the latest ATI Radeon^TM HD graphics cards that support DirectX 10 and DirectX 11. This can help the browser experience be more intuitive, fluid and dynamic.
• Introduced with Windows 7, Direct2D is a hardware-accelerated, immediate-mode 2-D graphics API that provides high performance and high-quality rendering for 2-D geometry, bitmaps and text. With IE9's support of Direct2D and open HTML5 standards enabling richer multimedia tasks, AMD's CPU and GPU technology can offer outstanding support for these rich graphical experiences.
• IE9 is expected to offer greatly increased JavaScript performance over prior versions of IE. A new JIT will generate code based on the system's processor, which we expect to provide an improved experience on AMD CPUs.

At AMD we couldn't be more excited about IE9, which is a natural extension of the success of Windows 7 and meets the needs of the growing Internet population. AMD continues to work with multiple Microsoft technologies & teams, for instance Silverlight, and we are always looking for more ways to advance the platform. We are intently focused on optimizing our technology for the demanding user experience that relies more heavily on multimedia, enabling platforms based on AMD technology to deliver vivid digital experiences.

And when AMD's innovative technology expertise is combined with Microsoft's leading-edge software - both the development community and consumers ultimately benefit. What are you most excited about with IE9? We look forward to your thoughts.