TODAY AT SIGGRAPH, Intel announced their new tool for simplifying the development of hardware accelerated video applications. The tool which is currently in beta is the Intel Media Software Development Kit (SDK).  It provides developers with a single interface to optimize performance and accelerate video applications for Intel's processors and Intel's graphics chipsets.

At the time of the announcement software developers Avid, Corel, Cyberlink and Nero have products in development to take advantage of the optimizations.  One thing that has not been pointed out is that developers will continue to enjoy support in future processors and graphics chips including the previously announced Larrabee graphics architecture, without recoding.

A beta download of Intel Media SDK can be found here.