[HN Gopher] Intel becomes the first to offer full AV1 support wi...
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Intel becomes the first to offer full AV1 support with its new Arc
GPUs
Author : clouddrover
Score : 75 points
Date : 2022-04-03 13:29 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.neowin.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.neowin.net)
| zionic wrote:
| Finally! Given the large overall percentage of web bandwidth
| that's video this will really help.
|
| Hopefully Apple pushes this over HEVC/VVC garbage in their next
| release.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| Google's own devices don't have hardware support for AV1
| playback yet.
|
| It's probably a bit early to complain about Apple.
| EddieRingle wrote:
| > Google's own devices don't have hardware support for AV1
| playback yet.
|
| The Tensor SoC in the Pixel 6 supports AV1 decoding:
|
| https://www.anandtech.com/show/17032/tensor-soc-
| performance-...
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| > _It 's probably a bit early to complain about Apple._
|
| Why? Apple mints new silicon by its own design every year
| like swiss clock work. Google on the other hand, depends on
| the likes of Quallcomm, Mediatek and Samsung for the silicon,
| whenever they decide to add AV1 IP blocks, leading to a
| chicken and egg situation.
|
| Google could probably fore their hand by switching to AV1
| before HW support arrives, but then Youtube UX will suck on
| all smartphones leading to shit battery life and overheating.
|
| Plus, video codec IP blocks are always a hot potato for the
| SoC vendors as they're tied in various third party licensing
| and patent schemes they don't like to deal with.
| SllX wrote:
| Yeah but given the lead times on Apple silicon, I would
| expect that if they hadn't already made the decision to
| support AV1, then we're not going to see it for a few
| years.
|
| Conversely if they made the decision a few years ago, we
| might start to see support trickle out across their lines
| starting this year.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| With VP9 Apple added decode to their custom hardware and
| then didn't tell anyone until they started to support it
| in software a few years later.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| > Google could probably fore their hand by switching to AV1
| before HW support arrives, but then Youtube UX will suck on
| all smartphones leading to shit battery life and
| overheating.
|
| Google could also face yet more antitrust action if they
| continue to use their Youtube monopoly as a weapon against
| competition as they previously have with Microsoft's
| Windows Phone and Amazon's Echo Show.
| phkahler wrote:
| AV1 isnt just Google, the standard if free for anyone to
| use.
|
| Google may be guilty of some things, but pushing AV1
| being an antitrust violation is not one of them.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| Google has certainly used it's Youtube monopoly against
| Windows Phone and Amazon's Echo Show and Fire TV in the
| past.
|
| Which makes it unwise to continue to talk about how
| Google can use their Youtube monopoly again to force it's
| competitor's hands on anything.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _Hopefully Apple pushes this over HEVC /VVC garbage in their
| next release._
|
| I think AV1 is neat, but calling it HEVC "garbage" seems harsh
| considering the enormous leap H.265 represents over H.264. Even
| if AV1 is ~20% more efficient than HEVC, lots of "better"
| codecs have failed to become mainstream.
|
| Because VVC appears to trounce* AV1, Apple may just skip AV1.
| (*https://www.winxdvd.com/video-transcoder/h266-vvc-vs-
| av1.htm....)
|
| > _...this will really help._
|
| An Intel-made laptop GPU is not going to be the thing that
| makes or breaks AV1.
| mchusma wrote:
| VVC is great, but AV1 is fast enough for realtime use, while
| VVC is not. Cisco has had it working for some time.
| Basically, AV1 to me seems like it's basically a zero
| tradeoff solution vs older codecs, so is a good "new
| standard" to base around then think about what is next from
| here.
|
| https://blog.webex.com/video-conferencing/cisco-leap-
| frogs-h...
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _VVC is great, but AV1 is fast enough for realtime use,
| while VVC is not._
|
| Today, in software. But yes, definitely worth considering!
| whydid wrote:
| They have hardware acceleration for encoding and decoding HEVC
| in all their products. Why would they promote a new codec
| without hardware acceleration?
| miohtama wrote:
| Apple is a stakeholder in HEVC patents so I would expect them
| to fight to the bitter end against non-Apple invented
| technologies.
| garblegarble wrote:
| Apple is also a member of the alliance making AV1, The
| Alliance For Open Media
| tux3 wrote:
| Apple's history of membership in AOM is complicated(tm).
|
| They joined late and became a founding member
| retroactively, but I wouldn't use that as a very strong
| signal.
|
| Apple is never the first to support open standards.
| ysleepy wrote:
| html5 ? caldav/carddav (their spec though)? usb-c?
| avahi/mdns? they do sometimes get a standards boner, it's
| just very specific and strategic.
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| Ah yes, that Apple that at some point even adopted
| Jabber. Doesn't really exist anymore...
| posguy wrote:
| Yet HTML5 isn't a first class citizen on Apple's most
| popular operating system, nor is USB-C even on Apple's
| current best selling product.
| rektide wrote:
| I'm double surprised! I really thought av1 was.gonna take a long
| time to encode. I wonder if it can do the same as before... can
| it do 4k60? I dunno what existing GPUs can do tbh.
|
| Also surprised the efficiency is t that wildly much of a leap.
| 50% over h264, 20% over h265. Maybe this is part of the tradeoff
| when trying to encode realtime, versus offline & in multiple
| passes. I feel like for offline encoding there's way bigger gains
| but I dunno!
| mcraiha wrote:
| Also software decoding of AV1 is already fast enough, so
| specially what game streaming people need is the AV1 hardware
| encoder https://openbenchmarking.org/test/pts/dav1d#results
| baybal2 wrote:
| > 20% over h265
|
| On what codec settings?. IMO h256 and AV1 are extremely close
| depending on individual, and still experimental, codec tweaks.
|
| MP3 coding was near garbage at 128kbps, but over the years the
| codec community managed to make 128kbps significantly better
| audibly without changing the format
|
| Next gen h256 coders will likely copy whatever non-bitstream
| optimisation they can from AV1 coders, and they will be a near
| match again.
| phkahler wrote:
| >> Next gen h256 coders will likely copy whatever non-
| bitstream optimisation they can from AV1 coders, and they
| will be a near match again.
|
| Not only is that speculation, but more importantly they will
| not be copying the licensing terms of AV1.
| joshcryer wrote:
| AV1 beats h265 by some 10-15% and it's still improving. h265
| has had plenty of time to mature. I don't think there's much
| headroom for h265 and anyway the JVET/MPEG has moved on to
| VVC, which beats AV1 by some 25-29% and it is still
| improving. They know they'll lose the short term war and are
| looking longer term.
|
| AV1 was supposed to be "on par" with h265 but has jumped
| ahead by a bit and will likely improve for quite awhile until
| AV2 is worked on. Will it reach VVC levels? Probably not. But
| it will certainly be better than h265/HVEC.
|
| Source for size comparisons:
| https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/apsipa-
| transactions-...
| kingcharles wrote:
| VVC honestly astounds me. It makes me wonder how far we can
| go with video compression.
|
| I look back at MPEG-1 Video CDs and it is unbelievable how
| incredible a video image you could now produce in the same
| 600Mb storage.
| karmakaze wrote:
| > While AMD and Nvidia both offer AV1 decoding with their
| newest GPUs, neither have support for AV1 encoding.
|
| So this announcement is specifically about encoding.
| gotaquestion wrote:
| Surprised to see Intel using "ARC" as a trademark when ARC
| international has been around for ages and bought by Synopsys in
| 2010, which now offers ARC processors. I thought trademarks in
| the same domain weren't allowed?
| JaimeThompson wrote:
| Even stranger is Intel Ark has been their specs repo for a long
| time. https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark.html
| clouddrover wrote:
| The AV1 section of the Intel Arc Graphics announcement video:
|
| https://youtu.be/q25yaUE4XH8?t=598
| jalino23 wrote:
| I'm new to codecs coming from frontend webdev mostly JS. is
| anyone able to point me to some resources on how to know via cli
| or programmatically to detect if a hardware codec is installed?
| and if it's currently being utilized by web video player
|
| the two ways I recently learned is only for listing codecs.
|
| for windows is via legacy media player
|
| for linux is via ffmpeg
|
| and I'm still confused how video players talk to codecs and why
| they are installed separately and how code can interface with
| them if they are installed seperately
| chews wrote:
| Built in Puerto Rico fabs if I'm not mistaken
| wmf wrote:
| No, I don't think TSMC N6 is made in Puerto Rico.
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