Google has released a native version of Chrome for ARM64 devices, optimizing for the latest “AI PC” solutions such as the Snapdragon X.
Google decides to leverage on-board MFT to make ARM64 Chrome experience better on Windows
It seems that Google has released a dedicated version of Chrome for ARM devices with the sole aim of improving user experience on the platform.
WindowsReport revealed that Google has decided to leverage Media Foundation Transforms (MFTs) on ARM64 production in the new version of Chrome to enable hardware accelerated video encoding. This will allow Chrome to be less reliant on ARM CPUs, ultimately freeing up the CPU for other tasks. The open source project Chromium explained the change in a commit request:
The previous CL fixes most of the issues seen on Qualcomm hardware. The Encode Rate Control tests still fail on current lab TryBot devices because the actual bitrate is far outside the acceptable range. These failures are not seen on the new hardware (when running locally).
– Via Chromium
The change is expected to reduce encoding times for Chrome on ARM, reducing wait times when recording or editing videos within Chrome. The use of MFT also improves multitasking efficiency considerably, and battery life is improved by reducing dependency on the CPU. The change will reportedly be introduced in the Canary version of Chrome first, but overall, it's a great addition to the growing AI PC hype, given that Google Chrome is an essential part of computing.
It would be even better to know how the mentioned changes contributed to real-time processing speeds, but for now we have to wait for the results of reliable tests.
News source: Windows Report
