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Yes, currently there is no hardware encoder/decoder for AV1, but there is for h264 on many processors. This may change in the future if companies and users adop

Yes, currently there is no hardware encoder/decoder for AV1, but there is for h264 on many processors. This may change in the future if companies and users adopt it.

bscphil 8y ago
I might be mistaken, but I believe most high quality encodes in both h264 / hevc are not done using dedicated hardware encoders built into processors or graphics cards. While it's much faster there's usually some quality tradeoff. Instead, I believe that newer processors have additional instruction sets that enable much faster software encoding on the same codecs. Someone correct me if I'm wrong about this.
- vortico 8y ago
  You're right, there are fewer h264 encoders than decoders in consumer software, but still dozens. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC_products_and_implementations#Encoding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC_products_and_... There are precisely 0 for AV1 so far (except some may have a subset of the standard in FPGA by now).
mehrdadn 8y ago
> Yes, currently there is no hardware encoder/decoder for AV1, but there is for h264 on many processors. This may change in the future if companies and users adopt it. Does x86/x64 have any? What's the name of one of the instructions (for example)? I feel like mostly all I see is just bigger vector instructions...
- vortico 8y ago
  It's not a collection of x86_64 instructions, it's an separate specialized core on Intel CPUs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Quick_Sync_Video#Hardware_decoding_and_encoding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Quick_Sync_Video#Hardwar... and AMD https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Coding_Engine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Coding_Engine You need OS-dependent driver code to access it. Otherwise, if a decoder just uses x86_64 instructions, it's a software decoder.
  - mehrdadn 8y ago
    Whoa!!! So there's a CPU, a GPU, and a dedicated video decoder?? I had no idea. Thanks for sharing this!!
    - brewrwe 8y ago
      Yeah, its called a VPU aka Video Processing Unit. If your hardware implements video decoding, they likely have licensed or designed their own VPU IP block.

Yes, currently there is no hardware encoder/decoder for AV1, but there is for h264 on many processors. This may change in the future if companies and users adopt it.

bscphil 8y ago

I might be mistaken, but I believe most high quality encodes in both h264 / hevc are not done using dedicated hardware encoders built into processors or graphics cards. While it's much faster there's usually some quality tradeoff. Instead, I believe that newer processors have additional instruction sets that enable much faster software encoding on the same codecs. Someone correct me if I'm wrong about this.

vortico 8y ago
You're right, there are fewer h264 encoders than decoders in consumer software, but still dozens. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC_products_and_implementations#Encoding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC_products_and_... There are precisely 0 for AV1 so far (except some may have a subset of the standard in FPGA by now).

mehrdadn 8y ago

> Yes, currently there is no hardware encoder/decoder for AV1, but there is for h264 on many processors. This may change in the future if companies and users adopt it. Does x86/x64 have any? What's the name of one of the instructions (for example)? I feel like mostly all I see is just bigger vector instructions...

vortico 8y ago
It's not a collection of x86_64 instructions, it's an separate specialized core on Intel CPUs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Quick_Sync_Video#Hardware_decoding_and_encoding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Quick_Sync_Video#Hardwar... and AMD https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Coding_Engine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Coding_Engine You need OS-dependent driver code to access it. Otherwise, if a decoder just uses x86_64 instructions, it's a software decoder.
- mehrdadn 8y ago
  Whoa!!! So there's a CPU, a GPU, and a dedicated video decoder?? I had no idea. Thanks for sharing this!!
  - brewrwe 8y ago
    Yeah, its called a VPU aka Video Processing Unit. If your hardware implements video decoding, they likely have licensed or designed their own VPU IP block.