Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) has revealed that its hardware acceleration plans for its Chrome browser will not reach fruition until version 9. The news came even as Google released the first developer's version of Chrome 8 this week; the company now says it had to delay certain hardware acceleration features to get it out of the door. Affected features include the hardware-accelerated APIs used to render CSS code, large layers and opacity fixes.

Separately, hardware-based video decoding was already pushed back to Chrome 9 a few days earlier. The delays are probably due to the inherent complexity of implementing GPU code.  Overall, the Google Chrome team has been working hard, and was able to achieve new milestones every six weeks of late, noted CNET. 

Hardware acceleration has been touted as a key feature in Microsoft's (NASDAQ: MSFT) Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) browser, an ability that is fast finding its way into mainstream browsers out there such as Mozilla Firefox and even Opera. Indeed, former Google web programmer Brad Neuberg attributed Microsoft for moving the industry in this direction when he was interviewed recently. Neuberg told CNET that: "[Microsoft] forced the other folks to wake up and realize the importance of hardware acceleration."

With the recent launch of IE9 beta, Microsoft appears to have a slight lead in the hardware acceleration race for now. Of course, Microsoft does recommend that businesses not do a switch to IE9 until its final release. For now, Chrome users who enjoy being right on the bleeding edge can enable existing 2D canvas hardware acceleration on the newest build of Chrome via the about:labs mechanism.

For more on this story:
- check out this article at CNET News
- check out this article at The Register

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