Does hardware accelerated Flash make a difference?

We all know that Steve Jobs’ mob hates Flash – and it is called a CPU hog by the Apple CEO but is he right?

The Apple iPad will be using a new standard for video, called HTML5, an open standard that will not rely on plug-ins to the browser.

How does HTML5 compare to Flash 10.0 and Flash 10.1 – which promises hardware acceleration to prove whether Flash indeed is a CPU hog or not.

Here are the most interesting Windows related results from StreamingMedia’s blog entry by Jan Ozer:

• While Chrome’s numbers were more efficient on Windows, playback with Flash Player 10.0 was about 24% more efficient than HTML5, while Flash Player 10.1 was 58% more efficient.

• Version 10.1 also dropped Firefox’s CPU utilization by a whopping 73% and Internet Explorer’s CPU utilization by 35%.

There you have it – Steve Jobs is wrong, it all depends on hardware support for Flash GPU acceleration and if the Apple iPad sees Flash as a CPU hog – then it is a fault of the hardware rather than the software. Of course if Steve Jobs instead talked about the fact that Flash is security issue he may have had a point.

You can download the public beta of Flash 10.1 here and have some fun comparing CPU usage yourself by using Youtbue HTML5 vs Flash and post your results in Hardware Heaven’s forum.

Source: Streaming Media via Read Write Web