Nvidia PureVideo

Last updated

PureVideo is Nvidia's hardware SIP core that performs video decoding. PureVideo is integrated into some of the Nvidia GPUs, and it supports hardware decoding of multiple video codec standards: MPEG-2, VC-1, H.264, HEVC, and AV1. PureVideo occupies a considerable amount of a GPU's die area and should not be confused with Nvidia NVENC. [1] In addition to video decoding on chip, PureVideo offers features such as edge enhancement, noise reduction, deinterlacing, dynamic contrast enhancement and color enhancement.

Contents

Operating system support

The PureVideo SIP core needs to be supported by the device driver, which provides one or more interfaces such as NVDEC, VDPAU, VAAPI or DXVA. One of these interfaces is then used by end-user software, for example VLC media player or GStreamer, to access the PureVideo hardware and make use of it.

Nvidia's proprietary device driver is available for multiple operating systems and support for PureVideo has been added to it. Additionally, a free device driver is available, which also supports the PureVideo hardware.

Linux

Support for PureVideo has been available in Nvidia's proprietary driver version 180 since October 2008 through VDPAU. [2] Since April 2013[ citation needed ] nouveau also supports PureVideo hardware and provides access to it through VDPAU and partly through XvMC. [3]

Microsoft Windows

Microsoft's Windows Media Player, Windows Media Center and modern video players support PureVideo. Nvidia also sells PureVideo decoder software which can be used with media players which use DirectShow. Systems with dual GPU's either need to configure the codec or run the application on the Nvidia GPU to utilize PureVideo. Media players which use LAV, ffdshow or Microsoft Media Foundation codecs are able to utilize PureVideo capabilities.

OS X

OS X was sold with Nvidia hardware, so support is probably available.[ citation needed ]

PureVideo HD

PureVideo HD (see "naming confusions" below) is a label which identifies Nvidia graphics boards certified for HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc playback, to comply with the requirements for playing Blu-ray/HD DVDs on PC:

  1. End-to-end encryption (HDCP) for digital-displays (DVI-D/HDMI)
  2. Realtime decoding of H.264 high-profile L4.1, VC-1 Advanced Profile L3, and MPEG-2 MP@HL (1080p30) decoding @ 40 Mbit/s
  3. Realtime dual-video stream decoding for HD DVD/Blu-ray Picture-in-Picture (primary video @ 1080p, secondary video @ 480p)

The first generation PureVideo HD

The original PureVideo engine was introduced with the GeForce 6 series. Based on the GeForce FX's video-engine (VPE), PureVideo re-used the MPEG-1/MPEG-2 decoding pipeline, and improved the quality of deinterlacing and overlay-resizing. Compatibility with DirectX 9's VMR9 renderer was also improved. Other VPE features, such as the MPEG-1/MPEG-2 decoding pipeline were left unchanged. Nvidia's press material cited hardware acceleration for VC-1 and H.264 video, but these features were not present at launch.

Starting with the release of the GeForce 6600, PureVideo added hardware acceleration for VC-1 and H.264 video, though the level of acceleration is limited when benchmarked side by side with MPEG-2 video. VPE (and PureVideo) offloads the MPEG-2 pipeline starting from the inverse discrete cosine transform leaving the CPU to perform the initial run-length decoding, variable-length decoding, and inverse quantization; [4] whereas first-generation PureVideo offered limited VC-1 assistance (motion compensation and post processing).

The first generation PureVideo HD is sometimes called "PureVideo HD 1" or VP1, although this is not an official Nvidia designation.

The second generation PureVideo HD

Starting with the G84/G86 GPUs (Tesla (microarchitecture)) (sold as the GeForce 8400/8500/8600 series), Nvidia substantially re-designed the H.264 decoding block inside its GPUs. The second generation PureVideo HD added a dedicated bitstream processor (BSP) and enhanced video processor, which enabled the GPU to completely offload the H.264-decoding pipeline. VC-1 acceleration was also improved, with PureVideo HD now able to offload more of VC-1-decoding pipeline's backend (inverse discrete cosine transform (iDCT) and motion compensation stages). The frontend (bitstream) pipeline is still decoded by the host CPU. [5] [6] The second generation PureVideo HD enabled mainstream PCs to play HD DVD and Blu-ray movies, as the majority of the processing-intensive video-decoding was now offloaded to the GPU.

The second generation PureVideo HD is sometimes called "PureVideo HD 2" or VP2, although this is not an official Nvidia designation. It corresponds to Nvidia Feature Set A (or "VDPAU Feature Set A").

This is the earliest generation that Adobe Flash Player supports for hardware acceleration of H.264 video on Windows.

The third generation PureVideo HD

This implementation of PureVideo HD, VP3 added entropy hardware to offload VC-1 bitstream decoding with the G98 GPU (sold as GeForce 8400GS), [7] as well as additional minor enhancements for the MPEG-2 decoding block. The functionality of the H.264-decoding pipeline was left unchanged. In essence, VP3 offers complete hardware-decoding for all 3 video codecs of the Blu-ray Disc format: MPEG-2, VC-1, and H.264.

All third generation PureVideo hardware (G98, MCP77, MCP78, MCP79MX, MCP7A) cannot decode H.264 for the following horizontal resolutions: 769–784, 849–864, 929–944, 1009–1024, 1793–1808, 1873–1888, 1953–1968 and 2033–2048 pixels. [8]

The third generation PureVideo HD is sometimes called "PureVideo HD 3" or VP3, although this is not an official Nvidia designation. It corresponds to Nvidia Feature Set B (or "VDPAU Feature Set B").

The fourth generation PureVideo HD

This implementation of PureVideo HD, VP4 added hardware to offload MPEG-4 Advanced Simple Profile (the compression format implemented by original DivX and Xvid) bitstream decoding with the GT215, GT216 and GT218 GPUs (sold as GeForce GT 240, GeForce GT 220 and GeForce 210/G210, respectively). [9] The H.264-decoder no longer suffers the framesize restrictions of VP3, and adds hardware-acceleration for MVC, a H.264 extension used on 3D Blu-ray discs. MVC acceleration is OS dependent: it is fully supported in Microsoft Windows through the Microsoft DXVA and Nvidia CUDA APIs, but is not supported through Nvidia's VDPAU API.

The fourth generation PureVideo HD is sometimes called "PureVideo HD 4" or VP4, although this is not an official Nvidia designation. It corresponds to Nvidia Feature Set C (or "VDPAU Feature Set C").

The fifth generation PureVideo HD

The fifth generation of PureVideo HD, introduced with the GeForce GT 520 (Fermi (microarchitecture)) and also included in the Nvidia GeForce 600/700 (Kepler (microarchitecture)) series GPUs has significantly improved performance when decoding H.264. [10] It is also capable of decoding 2160p 4K Ultra-High Definition (UHD) resolution videos at 3840 × 2160 pixels (doubling the 1080p Full High Definition standard in both the vertical and horizontal dimensions) and, depending on the driver and the used codec, higher resolutions of up to 4032 × 4080 pixels.

The fifth generation PureVideo HD is sometimes called "PureVideo HD 5" or "VP5", although this is not an official Nvidia designation. This generation of PureVideo HD corresponds to Nvidia Feature Set D (or "VDPAU Feature Set D").

The sixth generation PureVideo HD

The sixth generation of PureVideo HD, introduced with the Maxwell (microarchitecture), e.g. in the GeForce GTX 750/GTX 750 Ti (GM107) and also included in the Nvidia GeForce 900 (Maxwell) series GPUs has significantly improved performance when decoding H.264 and MPEG-2. It is also capable of decoding Digital Cinema Initiatives (DCI) 4K resolution videos at 4096 × 2160 pixels and, depending on the driver and the used codec, higher resolutions of up to 4096 × 4096 pixels. GPUs with Feature Set E support an enhanced error concealment mode which provides more robust error handling when decoding corrupted video streams. It supports partial hardware decoding for H.265 FHD.

The sixth generation PureVideo HD is sometimes called "PureVideo HD 6" or "VP6", although this is not an official Nvidia designation. This generation of PureVideo HD corresponds to Nvidia Feature Set E (or "VDPAU Feature Set E").

The seventh generation PureVideo HD

The seventh generation of PureVideo HD, introduced with the GeForce GTX 960 and GTX 950, a second generation Maxwell (microarchitecture) GPU (GM206), adds full hardware-decode of H.265 HEVC Version 1 (Main and Main 10 profiles) to the GPU's video-engine. Feature Set F hardware decoder also supports full fixed function VP9 (video codec) hardware decoding. [11]

Previous Maxwell GPUs implemented HEVC playback using a hybrid decoding solution, which involved both the host-CPU and the GPU's GPGPU array. The hybrid implementation is significantly slower than the dedicated hardware in VP7's video-engine.

The seventh generation PureVideo HD is sometimes called "PureVideo HD 7" or "VP7", although this is not an official Nvidia designation. This generation of PureVideo HD corresponds to Nvidia Feature Set F (or "VDPAU Feature Set F").

The eighth generation PureVideo HD

The eighth generation of PureVideo HD, introduced with the GeForce GTX 1080, GTX 1070, GTX 1060, GTX 1050 Ti & GTX 1050, GT 1030 & GT 1010, a Pascal (microarchitecture) GPU, adds full hardware-decode of HEVC Version 2 Main 12 profile, and increases the resolution for VP9 and HEVC decoding to 8K, including 8K UHDTV and up to 8K fulldome 8192x8192.

Previous Maxwell GM200/GM204 GPUs implemented HEVC playback using a hybrid decoding solution, which involved both the host-CPU and the GPU's GPGPU array. The hybrid implementation is significantly slower than the dedicated hardware in VP8's video-engine.

The eighth generation PureVideo HD is sometimes called "PureVideo HD 8" or "VP8", although this is not an official Nvidia designation. This generation of PureVideo HD corresponds to Nvidia Feature Set H (or "VDPAU Feature Set H").

The ninth generation PureVideo HD

The ninth generation of PureVideo HD, introduced with the NVIDIA TITAN V, a Volta (microarchitecture) GPU.

The ninth generation PureVideo HD is sometimes called "PureVideo HD 9" or "VP9", although this is not an official Nvidia designation. This generation of PureVideo HD corresponds to Nvidia Feature Set I (or "VDPAU Feature Set I").

The tenth generation PureVideo HD

The tenth generation of PureVideo HD, introduced with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti, RTX 2080, RTX 2070, RTX 2060, GTX 1660 Ti, GTX 1660 & GTX 1650, a Turing (microarchitecture) GPU, adds full hardware-decoding for three additional HEVC Version 2 profiles (Main 4:4:4, Main 4:4:4 10 and Main 4:4:4 12) to the GPU's video-engine.

The tenth generation PureVideo HD is sometimes called "PureVideo HD 10" or "VP10", although this is not an official Nvidia designation. This generation of PureVideo HD corresponds to Nvidia Feature Set J (or "VDPAU Feature Set J").

The eleventh generation PureVideo HD

The eleventh generation of PureVideo HD, introduced with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090, RTX 3080 Ti, RTX 3080, RTX 3070 Ti, RTX 3070, RTX 3060 Ti, RTX 3060, RTX 3050 Ti and RTX 3050, an Ampere (microarchitecture) GPU, with fifth generation NVDEC introduces 8K@60 hardware-decoding capability for AV1 Main profile (4:0:0 and 4:2:0 chroma subsampling with 8 or 10-bit depth) with resolution of up to 8192 x 8192 pixels to the GPU's video-engine.

The eleventh generation PureVideo HD is sometimes called "PureVideo HD 11" or "VP11", although this is not an official Nvidia designation. This generation of PureVideo HD corresponds to Nvidia Feature Set K (or "VDPAU Feature Set K").

Naming confusion

Because the introduction and subsequent rollout of PureVideo technology was not synchronized with Nvidia's GPU release schedule, the exact capabilities of PureVideo technology and their supported Nvidia GPUs led to a considerable customer confusion. The first generation PureVideo GPUs (GeForce 6 series) spanned a wide range of capabilities. On the low-end of GeForce 6 series (6200), PureVideo was limited to standard-definition content (720×576). The mainstream and high-end of the GeForce 6 series was split between older products (6800 GT) which did not accelerate H.264/VC-1 at all, and newer products (6600 GT) with added VC-1/H.264 offloading capability.

In 2006, PureVideo HD was formally introduced with the launch of the GeForce 7900, which had the first generation PureVideo HD. In 2007, when the second generation PureVideo HD (VP2) hardware launched with the Geforce 8500 GT/8600 GT/8600 GTS, Nvidia expanded Purevideo HD to include both the first generation (retroactively called "PureVideo HD 1" or VP1) GPUs (Geforce 7900/8800 GTX) and newer VP2 GPUs. This led to a confusing product portfolio containing GPUs from two distinctly different generational capabilities: the newer VP2 based cores (Geforce 8500 GT/8600 GT/8600 GTS/8800 GT) and other older PureVideo HD 1 based cores (Geforce 7900/G80).

Nvidia claims that all GPUs carrying the PureVideo HD label fully support Blu-ray/HD DVD playback with the proper system components. For H.264/AVC content, VP1 offers markedly inferior acceleration compared to newer GPUs, placing a much greater burden on the host CPU. However, a sufficiently fast host CPU can play Blu-ray without any hardware assistance whatsoever.

Table of GPUs containing a PureVideo SIP block

Graphic card brand nameGPU chip code namePureVideo HDVDPAU feature setFirst Release DateNotes
GeForce 6 seriesNV4xVP1Not SupportedNV40-based models of the 6800 do not accelerate VC-1/H.264
GeForce 7 seriesG7xVP1Not Supported-
GeForce 8800 Ultra, 8800 GTX, 8800 GTS (320/640 MB)G80VP1Not SupportedNovember 2006-
GeForce 8400 GS, 8500 GTG86VP2AApril 2007-
GeForce 8600 GT, 8600 GTSG84VP2AApril 2007-
GeForce 8800 GS, 8800 GT, 8800 GTS (512 MB/1 GB), 9600 GSO, 9800 GT, 9800 GTX, 9800 GTX+, 9800 GX2, GTS 240 (OEM)G92VP2AOctober 2007-
GeForce 8400 GS Rev. 2G98VP3 [12] BDecember 2007Earlier cards use G86 core type without VP3 support
GeForce 8200, 8300C77VP3BJanuary 2008Not suitable for running CUDA
GeForce 9600 GSO 512, 9600 GTG94VP2AFebruary 2008-
GeForce 9600M GTG96VP3 [13] A [14] June 2008-
GeForce GTX 260, GTX 275, GTX 280, GTX 285, GTX 295GT200VP2AJune 2008-
GeForce 9400 GT, 9500 GTG96VP2 [15] AJuly 2008-
GeForce 9300M GS, 9300 GS, 9300 GEG98VP3 [12] BOctober 2008Mostly found in laptops and on motherboards
Ion, Ion-LE (first-generation Ion) [16] C79VP3B-
Ion 2 (next-generation Ion)GT218VP4C-
GeForce 205, 210/G210, 310, G210M, 305M, 310M, 8400 GS Rev. 3 [17] GT218VP4 [9] COctober 2009

(April 2009 for the 8400 GS Rev. 3 [17] )

Introduced decoding of MPEG-4 (Advanced) Simple Profile (Divx/Xvid)
GeForce GT 220, 315, GT 230M, GT 240M, GT 325M, GT 330MGT216VP4 [9] COctober 2009-
GeForce GT 240, GT 320, GT 340, GTS 250M, GTS 260M, GT 335M, GTS 350M, GTS 360MGT215VP4CNovember 2009-
GeForce GTX 465, GTX 470, GTX 480, GTX 480MGF100VP4CMarch 2010-
GeForce GTX 460, GTX 470M, GTX 485MGF104VP4CJuly 2010-
GeForce GT 420 OEM, GT 430, GT 440, GT 620 (non-OEM), GT 630 (40 nm), GT 730 (DDR3), GT 415M, GT 420M, GT 425M, GT 435M, GT525M, GT 540M, GT 550MGF108VP4CSeptember 2010-
GeForce GTS 450, GT 445M, GTX 460M, GT 555MGF106VP4CSeptember 2010-
GeForce GTX 570, GTX 580, GTX 590GF110VP4CNovember 2010-
GeForce GTX 560 Ti, GTX 570M, GTX 580M, GT 645GF114VP4CJanuary 2011-
GeForce GTX 550 Ti, GTX 560M, GT 640 (OEM)GF116VP4CMarch 2011-
GeForce 410M, GT 520MX, 510, GT 520, GT 610, GT 620 (OEM)GF119VP5DApril 2011Introduced 4K UHD video decoding
GeForce GT 620M, GT 625M, GT 710M, GT 720M, GT 820MGF117VP5DApril 2011-
GeForce GT 630 (28 nm), GT 640 (non-OEM), GTX 650, GT 730 (OEM), GT 640M, GT 645M, GT 650M, GTX 660M, GT 740M, GT 745M, GT 750M, GT 755MGK107VP5DMarch 2012-
GeForce GTX 660 (OEM), GTX 660 Ti, GTX 670, GTX 680, GTX 690, GTX 760, GTX 760 Ti, GTX 770, GTX 680M, GTX 680MX, GTX 775M, GTX 780M, GTX 860M, GTX 870M, GTX 880M GK104VP5DMarch 2012-
GeForce GTX 650 Ti, GTX 660, GTX 670MX, GTX 675MX, GTX 760M, GTX 765M, GTX 770MGK106VP5DSeptember 2012-
GeForce GTX 780, GTX 780 Ti, GTX TITAN, GTX TITAN BLACK, GTX TITAN ZGK110VP5DFebruary 2013-
GeForce GT 630 rev. 2, GT 635, GT 640 rev. 2, GT 710, GT 720, GT 730 (GDDR5), GT 730M, GT 735M, GT 740MGK208VP5DApril 2013-
GeForce GTX 745, GTX 750, GTX 750 Ti, GTX 850M, GTX 860M, 945M, GTX950M, GTX960MGM107VP6EFebruary 2014Introduced DCI 4K video decoding
GeForce 830M, 840M, 920MX, 930M, 930MX, 940M, 940MX, MX110, MX130GM108VP6EMarch 2014-
GeForce GTX 970, GTX 980, GTX 970M, GTX 980MGM204VP6ESeptember 2014-
GeForce GTX 750 SE, GTX 950, GTX 960GM206VP7FJanuary 2015Introduced VP9 and HEVC (Main and Main 10) video decoding
GeForce GTX TITAN X, GeForce GTX 980 TiGM200VP6EMarch 2015
GeForce GTX 1070, GTX 1070 Ti, GTX 1080GP104VP8HMay 2016Introduced VP9 and HEVC decoding at 8K and HEVC Main 12
GeForce GTX 1060GP106VP8HJuly 2016
NVIDIA TITAN Xp, TITAN X, GeForce GTX 1080 TiGP102VP8HAugust 2016
GeForce GTX 1050, GTX 1050 TiGP107VP8HOctober 2016
GeForce GT 1030, MX150GP108VP8HMay 2017
Tesla V100-SXM2, V100-PCIE, NVIDIA TITAN V, Quadro GV100GV100VP9INovember 2017
NVIDIA TITAN RTX, GeForce RTX 2080 TiTU102VP10JSeptember 2018Introduced HEVC video decoding of 4:4:4 profiles
GeForce RTX 2080 Super, RTX 2080, RTX 2070 SuperTU104VP10JSeptember 2018
GeForce RTX 2060, RTX 2060 Super, RTX 2070TU106VP10JOctober 2018
GeForce GTX 1650 Super, GTX 1660, GTX 1660 Super, GTX 1660 TiTU116VP10JFebruary 2019
GeForce GTX 1650TU117VP10JApril 2019
Nvidia A100GA100VP10JMay 2020
GeForce RTX 3090, RTX 3080 Ti, RTX 3080GA102VP11KSeptember 2020Introduced 8K@60 AV1 Main profile decoding
GeForce RTX 3070 Ti, RTX 3070, RTX 3060 TiGA104VP11KOctober 2020
GeForce RTX 3060GA106VP11KJanuary 2021
GeForce RTX 3050 Ti, RTX 3050GA107VP11KMay 2021
GeForce RTX 4090AD102VP11KOct 2022
GeForce RTX 4080AD103VP11KNov 2022
GeForce RTX 4070, GeForce RTX 4070 TiAD104VP11KJan 2023

Nvidia VDPAU Feature Sets

Nvidia VDPAU Feature Sets [18] are different hardware generations of Nvidia GPU's supporting different levels of hardware decoding capabilities. For feature sets A, B and C, the maximum video width and height are 2048 pixels, minimum width and height 48 pixels, and all codecs are currently limited to a maximum of 8192 macroblocks (8190 for VC-1/WMV9). Partial acceleration means that VLD (bitstream) decoding is performed on the CPU, with the GPU only performing IDCT, motion compensation and deblocking. Complete acceleration means that the GPU performs all of VLD, IDCT, motion compensation and deblocking.

Feature Set A

Supports complete acceleration for H.264 and partial acceleration for MPEG-1, MPEG-2, VC-1/WMV9

Feature Set B

Supports complete acceleration for MPEG-1, MPEG-2, VC-1/WMV9 and H.264.
Note that all Feature Set B hardware cannot decode H.264 for the following widths: 769-784, 849-864, 929-944, 1009-1024, 1793-1808, 1873-1888, 1953-1968, 2033-2048 pixels.

Feature Set C

Supports complete acceleration for MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4 Part 2 (a.k.a. MPEG-4 ASP), VC-1/WMV9 and H.264.
Global motion compensation and Data Partitioning are not supported for MPEG-4 Part 2.

Feature Set D

Similar to feature set C but added support for decoding H.264 with a resolution of up to 4032 × 4080 and MPEG-1/MPEG-2 with a resolution of up to 4032 × 4048 pixels.

Feature Set E

Similar to feature set D but added support for decoding H.264 with a resolution of up to 4096 × 4096 and MPEG-1/MPEG-2 with a resolution of up to 4080 × 4080 pixels. GPUs with VDPAU feature set E support an enhanced error concealment mode which provides more robust error handling when decoding corrupted video streams. Cards with this feature set use a combination of the PureVideo hardware and software running on the shader array to decode HEVC (H.265) as partial/hybrid hardware video decoding.

Feature Set F

Supports complete acceleration of HEVC Main (8-bit) & Main 10 (10-bit) and VP9 profile 0 (8-bit) with a resolution of up to 4096 × 2304 pixels. [18]

Feature Set G

Supports complete acceleration of HEVC Main 12 (12-bit) with a resolution of up to 4096 × 4096 pixels. [18]

Feature Set H

Supports complete acceleration of VP9 profile 2 (10-bit) and maximum resolution of up to 8192 x 8192 pixels (8k resolution) for all HEVC and VP9 profiles. [18]

Feature Set I

As feature set H with increased efficiency. [18]

Feature Set J

Supports complete acceleration of three additional HEVC Version 2 profiles (Main 4:4:4, Main 4:4:4 10 and Main 4:4:4 12). [18]

Feature Set K

As feature set J with increased efficiency. Initially, hardware AV1 decoding support was introduced only to the Nvidia's proprietary NVDEC API for the eleventh generation PureVideo HD GPUs. AV1 decoding was added to the open source VDPAU API feature set K more than a year later in January 2022. [18]

See also

Hardware video hardware technologies

Nvidia

AMD

Intel

Qualcomm

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">GeForce</span> Brand of GPUs by Nvidia

GeForce is a brand of graphics processing units (GPUs) designed by Nvidia and marketed for the performance market. As of the GeForce 40 series, there have been eighteen iterations of the design. The first GeForce products were discrete GPUs designed for add-on graphics boards, intended for the high-margin PC gaming market, and later diversification of the product line covered all tiers of the PC graphics market, ranging from cost-sensitive GPUs integrated on motherboards, to mainstream add-in retail boards. Most recently, GeForce technology has been introduced into Nvidia's line of embedded application processors, designed for electronic handhelds and mobile handsets.

<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. After their initial design, GPUs were found to be useful 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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">GeForce 6 series</span> Series of GPUs by Nvidia

The GeForce 6 series is the sixth generation of Nvidia's GeForce line of graphics processing units. Launched on April 14, 2004, the GeForce 6 family introduced PureVideo post-processing for video, SLI technology, and Shader Model 3.0 support.

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).

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.

Video Acceleration API (VA-API) is an open source application programming interface that allows applications such as VLC media player or GStreamer to use hardware video acceleration capabilities, usually provided by the graphics processing unit (GPU). It is implemented by the free and open-source library libva, combined with a hardware-specific driver, usually provided together with the GPU driver.

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.

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">GeForce 900 series</span> Series of GPUs by Nvidia

The GeForce 900 series is a family of graphics processing units developed by Nvidia, succeeding the GeForce 700 series and serving as the high-end introduction to the Maxwell microarchitecture, named after James Clerk Maxwell. They are produced with TSMC's 28 nm process.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">GeForce 10 series</span> Series of GPUs by Nvidia

The GeForce 10 series is a series of graphics processing units developed by Nvidia, initially based on the Pascal microarchitecture announced in March 2014. This design series succeeded the GeForce 900 series, and is succeeded by the GeForce 16 series and GeForce 20 series using the Turing microarchitecture.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Maxwell (microarchitecture)</span> GPU microarchitecture by Nvidia

Maxwell is the codename for a GPU microarchitecture developed by Nvidia as the successor to the Kepler microarchitecture. The Maxwell architecture was introduced in later models of the GeForce 700 series and is also used in the GeForce 800M series, GeForce 900 series, and Quadro Mxxx series, as well as some Jetson products, all manufactured with TSMC's 28 nm process.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pascal (microarchitecture)</span> GPU microarchitecture by Nvidia

Pascal is the codename for a GPU microarchitecture developed by Nvidia, as the successor to the Maxwell architecture. The architecture was first introduced in April 2016 with the release of the Tesla P100 (GP100) on April 5, 2016, and is primarily used in the GeForce 10 series, starting with the GeForce GTX 1080 and GTX 1070, which were released on May 17, 2016, and June 10, 2016, respectively. Pascal was manufactured using TSMC's 16 nm FinFET process, and later Samsung's 14 nm FinFET process.

High Efficiency Video Coding implementations and products covers the implementations and products of High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC).

Crystal HD is Broadcom's hardware semiconductor intellectual property (SIP) core that performs video decoding.

Nvidia NVENC is a feature in Nvidia graphics cards that performs video encoding, offloading this compute-intensive task from the CPU to a dedicated part of the GPU. It was introduced with the Kepler-based GeForce 600 series in March 2012.

Nvidia NVDEC is a feature in its graphics cards that performs video decoding, offloading this compute-intensive task from the CPU.

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Turing (microarchitecture)</span> GPU microarchitecture by Nvidia

Turing is the codename for a graphics processing unit (GPU) microarchitecture developed by Nvidia. It is named after the prominent mathematician and computer scientist Alan Turing. The architecture was first introduced in August 2018 at SIGGRAPH 2018 in the workstation-oriented Quadro RTX cards, and one week later at Gamescom in consumer GeForce RTX 20 series graphics cards. Building on the preliminary work of its HPC-exclusive predecessor, the Turing architecture introduces the first consumer products capable of real-time ray tracing, a longstanding goal of the computer graphics industry. Key elements include dedicated artificial intelligence processors and dedicated ray tracing processors. Turing leverages DXR, OptiX, and Vulkan for access to ray-tracing. In February 2019, Nvidia released the GeForce 16 series of GPUs, which utilizes the new Turing design but lacks the RT and Tensor cores.

References

  1. "NVIDIA GT200 Revealed - GeForce GTX 280 and GTX 260 Review | NVIDIA GT200 Architecture (cont'd)". www.pcper.com. 16 June 2008. Retrieved 2016-05-10.
  2. "NVIDIA Driver Brings PureVideo Features To Linux". Phoronix . 2008-11-14.
  3. "Nouveau Video Acceleration". freedesktop.org .
  4. "PureVideo: Digital Home Theater Video Quality for Mainstream PCs with GeForce 6 and 7 GPUs" (PDF). NVIDIA. p. 9. Retrieved 2008-03-03.
  5. "PureVideo Support table" (PDF). NVIDIA. Retrieved 2007-09-27.
  6. "PureVideo HD Support table" (PDF). NVIDIA. Retrieved 2008-10-28.
  7. "G98 first review". Expreview. Retrieved 2008-12-04.
  8. "Implementation limits VDPAU decoder". Download.nvidia.com. Retrieved 2013-09-10.
  9. 1 2 3 "NVIDIA's GeForce GT 220: 40nm and DX10.1 for the Low-End". AnandTech. Retrieved 2013-09-10.
  10. "AnandTech Portal | Discrete HTPC GPU Shootout". Anandtech.com. Retrieved 2013-09-10.
  11. "Video Encode and Decode GPU Support Matrix". NVIDIA. Retrieved 2020-02-10.
  12. 1 2 "nV News Forums - View Single Post - VDPAU capablilities and generations?". Nvnews.net. Archived from the original on 2013-05-22. Retrieved 2013-09-10.
  13. "NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT - NotebookCheck.net Tech". Notebookcheck.net. 2013-01-16. Retrieved 2013-09-10.
  14. "Appendix A. Supported NVIDIA GPU Products". Us.download.nvidia.com. 2005-09-01. Retrieved 2013-09-10.
  15. "NVIDIA Official Forums".
  16. "Specifications". NVIDIA. Retrieved 2013-09-10.
  17. 1 2 GeForce 8 series#Technical summary
  18. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 "Appendix G. VDPAU Support". Http.download.nvidia.com. 2022-01-11. Retrieved 2022-01-22.