ATI Avivo

Last updated
ATI Avivo
Developer(s) ATI
Initial release2005;18 years ago (2005)
Website ati.amd.com/technology/Avivo

ATI Avivo is a set of hardware and low level software features present on the ATI Radeon R520 family of GPUs and all later ATI Radeon products. ATI Avivo was designed to offload video decoding, encoding, and post-processing from a computer's CPU to a compatible GPU. ATI Avivo compatible GPUs have lower CPU usage when a player and decoder software that support ATI Avivo is used. ATI Avivo has been long superseded by Unified Video Decoder (UVD) and Video Coding Engine (VCE).

Contents

Background

The GPU wars between ATI and NVIDIA have resulted in GPUs with ever-increasing processing power since early 2000s. To parallel this increase in speed and power, both GPU makers needed to increase video quality as well, in 3D graphics applications the focus in increasing quality has mainly fallen on anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering.[ citation needed ] However it has dawned upon both companies that video quality on the PC would need improvement as well and the current APIs provided by both companies have not seen many improvements over a few generations of GPUs.[ citation needed ] Therefore, ATI decided to revamp its GPU's video processing capability with ATI Avivo, in order to compete with NVIDIA PureVideo API.[ citation needed ]

In the time of release of the latest generation Radeon HD series, the successor, the ATI Avivo HD was announced, and was presented on every Radeon HD 2600 and 2400 video cards to be available July, 2007 after NVIDIA announced similar hardware acceleration solution, PureVideo HD.

In 2011 Avivo is renamed to AMD Media Codec Package, [1] an optional component of the AMD Catalyst software. The last version is released in August 2012. [2] As of 2013, the package is no longer offered by AMD.

Features

ATI Avivo

During capturing, ATI Avivo amplifies the source, automatically adjust its brightness and contrast. ATI Avivo implements 12-bit transform to reduce data loss during conversion; it also utilizes motion adaptive 3D comb filter, automatic color control, automatic gain control, hardware noise reduction and edge enhancement technologies for better video playback quality.

In decoding, the GPU core supports hardware decoding of H.264, VC-1, WMV9, and MPEG-2 videos to lower CPU utilization (the bitstream processing/entropy decoding still requires CPU processing). ATI Avivo supports vector adaptive de-interlacing and video scaling to reduce jaggies, and spatial/temporal dithering, which attempts to simulate 10-bit color quality on 8-bit and 6-bit displays during process stage.

ATI Avivo HD

The successor of ATI Avivo is the ATI Avivo HD, which consists of several parts: integrated 5.1 surround sound HDMI audio controller, dual integrated HDCP encryption key for each DVI port (to reduce license costs), the Theater 200 chip for VIVO capabilities, the Xilleon chip for TV overscan and underscan correction, the Theater 200 chip as well as the originally-presented ATI Avivo Video Converter.

However, most of the important hardware decoding functions of ATI Avivo HD are provided by the accompanied Unified Video Decoder (UVD) and the Advanced Video Processor (AVP) which supports hardware decoding of H.264/AVC and VC-1 videos (and included bitstream processing/entropy decoding which was absent in last generation ATI Avivo). For MPEG-1, MPEG-2, and MPEG-4/DivX videos, motion compensation and iDCT (inverse discrete cosine transform) will be done instead.

The AVP retrieves the video from memory; handles scaling, de-interlacing and colour correction; and writes it back to memory. The AVP also uses 12-bit transform to reduce data loss during conversion, same as previous generation ATI Avivo.

HDMI supports the transfer of video together with 8-channel 96 kHz 24-bit digital audio (and optionally Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio streams for external decoding by AV receivers, since HDMI 1.3). Integration of an audio controller in the GPU core capable of surround sound output eliminates the need for S/PDIF connection from motherboard or sound card to the video card, for synchronous video and audio output via HDMI cable.

The Radeon HD 2900 series lacked the UVD feature, but still was given the ATI Avivo HD label.

ATI Avivo Video Converter

ATI has also released a transcoder software dubbed "ATI Avivo Video Converter", which supports transcoding between H.264, VC-1, WMV9, WMV9 PMC, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX video formats, as well as formats used in iPod and PSP. Earlier versions of this software uses only the CPU for transcoding, but have been locked for exclusive use with the ATI X1000 series of GPUs. Software modifications have made it possible to use version 1.12 of converter on a wider range of graphics adapters. [3] The ATI Avivo Video Converter for Windows Vista was available with the release of Catalyst 7.9 (September 2007 release, version 8.411).

The ATI Avivo Video Converter with GPU transcoding acceleration is now also available for use with HD 4800 and HD 4600 series graphics cards and is included with the Catalyst 8.12 drivers. Support for Vista x64 is available via a separate download starting with Catalyst 9.6 (9-6_vista32-64_xcode). The new software is faster than Badaboom, an encoder that uses NVIDIA's CUDA to accelerate encoding, but has a higher CPU utilization than Badaboom. One review reported visual problems with iPod and WMV playback using Catalyst version 8.12, and although concluding there was no clear winners, if forced to choose would go with the Avivo converter. [4]

Software support

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Graphics processing unit</span> Specialized electronic circuit; graphics accelerator

A graphics processing unit (GPU) is a specialized electronic circuit initially designed to accelerate computer graphics and image processing, but have later been used for non-graphic calculations involving embarrassingly parallel problems due to their parallel structure. Other non-graphical uses include the training of neural networks and cryptocurrency mining.

The R520 is a graphics processing unit (GPU) developed by ATI Technologies and produced by TSMC. It was the first GPU produced using a 90 nm photolithography process.

The Radeon R700 is the engineering codename for a graphics processing unit series developed by Advanced Micro Devices under the ATI brand name. The foundation chip, codenamed RV770, was announced and demonstrated on June 16, 2008 as part of the FireStream 9250 and Cinema 2.0 initiative launch media event, with official release of the Radeon HD 4800 series on June 25, 2008. Other variants include enthusiast-oriented RV790, mainstream product RV730, RV740 and entry-level RV710.

Unified Video Decoder is the name given to AMD's dedicated video decoding ASIC. There are multiple versions implementing a multitude of video codecs, such as H.264 and VC-1.

The following is a list of H.264/MPEG-4 AVC products and implementations.

The Evergreen series is a family of GPUs developed by Advanced Micro Devices for its Radeon line under the ATI brand name. It was employed in Radeon HD 5000 graphics card series and competed directly with Nvidia's GeForce 400 Series.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">AMD Radeon Software</span> Device driver and utility software package for AMD GPUs and APUs

AMD Radeon Software is a device driver and utility software package for AMD's Radeon graphics cards and APUs. Its graphical user interface is built with Electron and is compatible with 64-bit Windows and Linux distributions.

AMD PowerPlay is the brand name for a set of technologies for the reduction of the energy consumption implemented in several of AMD's graphics processing units and APUs supported by their proprietary graphics device driver "Catalyst". AMD PowerPlay is also implemented into ATI/AMD chipsets which integrated graphics and into AMD's Imageon handheld chipset, that was sold to Qualcomm in 2008.

X-Video Bitstream Acceleration (XvBA), designed by AMD Graphics for its Radeon GPU and APU, is an arbitrary extension of the X video extension (Xv) for the X Window System on Linux operating-systems. XvBA API allows video programs to offload portions of the video decoding process to the GPU video-hardware. Currently, the portions designed to be offloaded by XvBA onto the GPU are currently motion compensation (MC) and inverse discrete cosine transform (IDCT), and variable-length decoding (VLD) for MPEG-2, MPEG-4 ASP, MPEG-4 AVC (H.264), WMV3, and VC-1 encoded video.

Video Decode and Presentation API for Unix (VDPAU) is a royalty-free application programming interface (API) as well as its implementation as free and open-source library distributed under the MIT License. VDPAU is also supported by Nvidia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Radeon HD 6000 series</span> Series of video cards

The Northern Islands series is a family of GPUs developed by Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) forming part of its Radeon-brand, based on the 40 nm process. Some models are based on TeraScale 2 (VLIW5), some on the new TeraScale 3 (VLIW4) introduced with them.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Radeon HD 7000 series</span> Series of video cards

The Radeon HD 7000 series, codenamed "Southern Islands", is a family of GPUs developed by AMD, and manufactured on TSMC's 28 nm process. The primary competitor of Southern Islands, Nvidia's GeForce 600 Series, also shipped during Q1 2012, largely due to the immaturity of the 28 nm process.

Intel Quick Sync Video is Intel's brand for its dedicated video encoding and decoding hardware core. Quick Sync was introduced with the Sandy Bridge CPU microarchitecture on 9 January 2011 and has been found on the die of Intel CPUs ever since.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Radeon HD 8000 series</span> Family of GPUs by AMD

The Radeon HD 8000 series is a family of computer GPUs developed by AMD. AMD was initially rumored to release the family in the second quarter of 2013, with the cards manufactured on a 28 nm process and making use of the improved Graphics Core Next architecture. However the 8000 series turned out to be an OEM rebadge of the 7000 series.

The graphics processing unit (GPU) codenamed the Radeon R600 is the foundation of the Radeon HD 2000/3000 series and the FireGL 2007 series video cards developed by ATI Technologies.

The graphics processing unit (GPU) codenamed Radeon R600 is the foundation of the Radeon HD 2000 series and the FireGL 2007 series video cards developed by ATI Technologies. The HD 2000 cards competed with nVidia's GeForce 8 series.

Video Code Engine is AMD's video encoding application-specific integrated circuit implementing the video codec H.264/MPEG-4 AVC. Since 2012 it was integrated into all of their GPUs and APUs except Oland.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">AMD Eyefinity</span> Brand of AMD video card products

AMD Eyefinity is a brand name for AMD video card products that support multi-monitor setups by integrating multiple display controllers on one GPU. AMD Eyefinity was introduced with the Radeon HD 5000 Series "Evergreen" in September 2009 and has been available on APUs and professional-grade graphics cards branded AMD FirePro as well.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">AMD PowerTune</span> Brand name by AMD

AMD PowerTune is a series of dynamic frequency scaling technologies built into some AMD GPUs and APUs that allow the clock speed of the processor to be dynamically changed by software. This allows the processor to meet the instantaneous performance needs of the operation being performed, while minimizing power draw, heat generation and noise avoidance. AMD PowerTune aims to solve thermal design power and performance constraints.

Video Core Next is AMD's brand for its dedicated video encoding and decoding hardware core. It is a family of hardware accelerator designs for encoding and decoding video, and is built into AMD's GPUs and APUs since AMD Raven Ridge, released January 2018.

References

  1. "AMD Technology Glossary". AMD . Retrieved 2013-11-01.
  2. "Previous AMD Display Drivers". AMD . Retrieved 2013-11-01.
  3. "Rage3D thread". Archived from the original on 2016-03-03. Retrieved 2007-04-13.
  4. "PC Perspective - Battle of GPU Transcoders: ATI Avivo Converter and NVIDIA Elemental Badaboom". Archived from the original on 2008-12-16. Retrieved 2009-01-20.