Does the Pixel Bender with Flash would use the GPU ?

Question

I write a Pixel Bender kernal for my flash.

I know that the pbk would run in another thread.

But when I run my swf, the GPU usage shows 0%.

I want to know does the Pixel Bender with Flash would use the GPU.

Answer 1

Adobe say this about the GPU in Flash Player 10.1:

"The desktop player still uses software rendering for this release."

Source: http://help.adobe.com/en_US/as3/mobile/WS948100b6829bd5a6-54120f1012593d8f030-8000.html

Also see this: http://www.kaourantin.net/2008/05/adobe-pixel-bender-in-flash-player-10.html

It's a little old, but I believe it still to be true.

Answer 2

As Joony says, PixelBender does not (currently, 2010) use the GPU. But it does run multi-threaded, not just in a different thread. On a multi-core machine (almost all, nowadays) this is still a big performance boost if you need to do a lot of independent computation. ActionScript can only (currently, 2010) run on one thread, while PixelBender can use lots.