[Cin] Prepping HW upgrade options for AV1 de-/encoding

Terje J. Hanssen terjejhanssen at gmail.com
Wed Dec 13 17:02:23 CET 2023



Den 11.12.2023 14:23, skrev Andrew Randrianasulu:
>
>
> пн, 11 дек. 2023 г., 16:13 Terje J. Hanssen via Cin 
> <cin at lists.cinelerra-gg.org>:
>
>
>
>     Den 08.12.2023 23:56, skrev Terje J. Hanssen:
>>
>>
>>     Den 08.12.2023 12:50, skrev Andrew Randrianasulu:
>>>
>>>
>>>     пт, 8 дек. 2023 г., 13:57 Andrew Randrianasulu
>>>     <randrianasulu at gmail.com>:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>         пт, 8 дек. 2023 г., 13:37 Terje J. Hanssen via Cin
>>>         <cin at lists.cinelerra-gg.org>:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>             Den 03.12.2023 22:29, skrev Terje J. Hanssen:
>>>>             Already touched this topic barely in another thread
>>>>             https://lists.cinelerra-gg.org/pipermail/cin/2023-December/007346.html
>>>>
>>>>             But so many SW and HW pieces are mentioned around, it
>>>>             is almost a full-time reading and study:
>>>>             VAAPI, MESA, VULKAN, Intel Quick Sync Video etc......
>>>>
>>>>             I realize my aging hardware which is fast enough for
>>>>             other tasks, needs some "AV1 upgrade", if possible.
>>>>
>>>>             But first I wonder, what is expected possible to do
>>>>             (obtain) with AV1 de-/encoding on my existing 64bit
>>>>             hardware:
>>>>
>>>>                 1) laptop 2018: Dell XPS 13-9370: quad core
>>>>                 i7-8550U CPU (8. gen Kabylake) and Intel UHD Graphics
>>>>
>>>>                 2) WS infinity:  MSI Z170A mobo: quad core i7-6700K
>>>>                 CPU (6. gen Skylake), NVIDIA GeForce GT-730 graphics
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>             A budget friendly first "AV1 HW upgrade" of the
>>>>             workstation 2) if possible, would be to add a new GPU
>>>>             as Intel Arc A380.
>>>>             But the question is if this will work at all on that
>>>>             much older (2015) Skylake platform with i7-6700K CPU?
>>>>             I've seen CPU bottlenecks has been mentioned and that
>>>>             Arc A380 is targeted at newer generations CPU ...
>>>
>>>             Extracted from the first wikipedia reference below about
>>>             Intel Alchemist GPUs:
>>>
>>>               * Featuring 8 Xe-cores, the*A380 supports PCI Express
>>>                 4.0* and has a total board power (TBP) of 75W. The
>>>                 graphics card is equipped with 6GB GDDR6 memory and
>>>                 a graphics memory interface of 96 bits, providing a
>>>                 memory bandwidth of 186GB/s.
>>>               * Bus interface A380: PCIe 4.0 x8 and for >=A580: PCIe
>>>                 4.0 x16
>>>
>>>             That is, the keyword here seems to be PCIe 4.0 bus speed
>>>             as a requirement to utilize the Arc A380 GPU for HWA AV1
>>>             encoding (maybe also for other GPUs?)
>>>
>>>
>>>         well, despite so much time spend looking at dev process for
>>>         mesa3d I still do not know full details and media encoder
>>>         process. But isn't it like putting uncompressed frame in
>>>         vram (as long as you have enough of it - so probably n raw
>>>         frames between keyframe ideally?) let media engine chw on
>>>         it, pull resulting compressed bitstream out of vram via
>>>         pci-express?
>>>
>>>         So I speculate pcie bandwidth in itself will only matter if
>>>         you compress both big frame size and long keyframes, so dma
>>>         engine on card must constantly pump new raw frame data via bus.
>>>
>>>         I saw some mention of big (resizeable) BAR as requirement
>>>         for good performance, but opengl/vulkan IMO a bit different
>>>         because they send often big amount of tiny objects
>>>         (vertices) via bus for each frame. But may be default 256 Mb
>>>         in size bar feels a bit small for sending like 1 second of
>>>         25 4k frames (300 mb/s)?
>>>
>>
>>
>>     Nothing would be better than that A380 does work with older PCIe
>>     3.0 motherboards and CPUs and without too much decrease in
>>     performance.
>
>     Then I got the following reply to my support request from ASRock
>     TSD regarding
>     https://www.asrock.com/Graphics-Card/Intel/Intel%20Arc%20A380%20Challenger%20ITX%206GB%20OC/index.asp
>
>         Skylake platform does not match the system minimum requirements.
>         Please refer to the below link for further information.
>         https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000091128/graphics.html
>
> well, if you can get card for brief (two weeks?) testing and return if 
> it really does not work - it will be better than leaning on official 
> answer, IMO.
>
> after all, Intel, like any company tries to sell you a bridge .....

Yes, they always want to sell new hardware and do not want to support 
older boxes longer than required.
So I may give it try on the new year. The point is to get av1 encoding 
to faster with gpu hwaccel, even if it seems to be limited to about 75% 
speed:

Today I also got confirmed from MSI technical support:

    BIOS of Z170-A Pro MB doesn’t have Resizable (Re-Size) BAR support,
    the mainboard doesn’t support Intel Arc A380 GPU.
    For the MB that support Resizable BAR(Re-Size BAR), please find the
    Intel/AMD chipse
    https://www.msi.com/news/detail/MSIIsReadyToSupportResizableBARReSizeBARForNVIDIAGeForceRTX30SeriesGPUs121336



>
>
>
>
>>
>>
>>     I've also extracted from the following two articles:
>>
>>         Intel Arc Desktop Graphics Card Gets Requirement List:
>>         Resizable BAR Enabled & Support on 10th Gen and Above CPUs
>>
>>         https://wccftech.com/intel-arc-desktop-graphics-card-gets-requirement-list-resizable-bar-enabled-support-on-10th-gen-and-above-cpus/
>>         /We are supporting Intel platforms with resizable BAR and
>>         will add support for AMD platforms with Smart Access Memory
>>         as Intel Arc graphics cards become available for sale as
>>         components. Motherboard requirement:/
>>
>>           * Full-size PCIe 3.0 (or newer) x16 slot
>>           * Resizeable BAR
>>
>>
>>         Arc A770 Loses Up to 24 Percent Performance Without Resizable
>>         Bar | Tom's Hardware
>>
>>         https://www.tomshardware.com/news/arc-a770-loses-25-percent-performance-without-resizable-bar
>>
>>           * Arc isn't for older systems.
>>           * Intel has revitalized the midrange graphics card market
>>             with the company's latest Arc A770, which will make its
>>             way into the list of best graphics cards. Starting at
>>             $329, the Arc Alchemist graphics card brings GeForce RTX
>>             3060-like performance to the table with Resizable BAR
>>             (ReBAR) enabled, of course. But, without ReBAR or similar
>>             technology like Smart Access Memory (SAM), it's another
>>             story.
>>
>>           * With Arc, Intel recommends potential consumers make sure
>>             their systems support ReBAR or SAM.
>>
>>           * In addition to testing ReBAR, TechPowerUp also evaluated
>>             whether the speed of the expansion slot impacts the Arc
>>             A770's performance. As a reminder, the Arc A770 comes
>>             with a conventional PCIe 4.0 x16 interface. However, the
>>             tests revealed that PCIe 3.0 is still plenty for the Arc
>>             A770 as long as ReBAR is enabled. Furthermore,
>>             TechPowerUp only recorded a performance difference of up
>>             to 2% between PCIe 3.0 and PCIe 4.0, so ReBAR support is
>>             more important than the expansion slot. Regarding ReBAR,
>>             only Intel 10th Generation Comet Lake
>>             <https://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-comet-lake-s-cores-53-ghz-high-power-better-pricing>,
>>             11th Generation Rocket Lake
>>             <https://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-11th-gen-rocket-lake-s-specifications-pricing>,
>>             and 12th Generation Alder Lake
>>             <https://www.tomshardware.com/features/intel-shares-alder-lake-pricing-specs-and-gaming-performance>
>>             processors support that feature. As for AMD, SAM support
>>             is only present on Ryzen 3000
>>             <https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-third-gen-ryzen-7nm-launch-intel-cpu,39449.html>
>>             Zen 2 chips and newer. So while Arc's performance looks
>>             attractive and priced fairly, its requirements
>>             effectively lock out users with older systems. Arc also
>>             demands Windows 10 20H2 or Windows 11
>>             <https://www.tomshardware.com/tag/windows-11> as the
>>             operating system, so Windows 7 users, who are reluctant
>>             to upgrade, are also out of the picture.
>>
>>
>>
>>>
>>>     https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-1165048.html?sid=1b9518b86afdcd1fa5e7710f16cd6893
>>>
>>>     not exactly about av1 in ffmpeg 6.1 but lists some components
>>>     you need for vaapi/qsv encoder on Arc 380 - also from dmesg
>>>     resizeable bar support is not essential ?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>         gpus today use their own memory paging system, so may be
>>>         this add additional restriction on how fast you can push
>>>         frames to them. ....
>>>
>>>         Also, windows and Linux drivers might differ ( I bet most
>>>         reviews are from windows land).
>>>
>>>         May be someone will post linux review of this particular
>>>         aspect of Arc graphics, either video or text ...
>>>
>>>         If this Suse Studio service still works may be you can
>>>         compose your own live image with all components required to
>>>         test that and walk to some offline place where you can
>>>         testdrive new card .... { If weather feels favourable enough
>>>         - we have around -14 C airtemp so I and my dog prefer short
>>>         dashes around and back to warm place shortly}
>>>
>>>
>>>             My existing Skylake WS 2) above has PCie 3.0 only.
>>>
>>>             PCIe 4.0
>>>             https://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCI_Express
>>>             https://www.techreviewer.com/learn-about-tech/what-is-pcie-40/
>>>
>>>             Motherboards Support PCIe 4.0
>>>             https://www.makeuseof.com/best-budget-pcie-4-motherboards/
>>>             https://www.techreviewer.com/tech-answers/which-motherboards-support-pcie-40/
>>>
>>>             Maybe also information of interest for WS building will
>>>             be clarified within a week, when Intel release their new
>>>             "Meteor Lake, Core Ultra mobile processors(?)
>>>             https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteor_Lake
>>>
>>>>
>>>>             References:
>>>>             AV1 Encoding on a Budget: The Intel Arc A380 Approach
>>>>             https://medium.com/@contact_45426/av1-encoding-on-a-budget-the-intel-arc-a380-approach-d72367f2f349
>>>>             https://history-computer.com/intel-arc-a380-full-review-of-intels-entry-level-gpu/
>>>>
>>>>             AV1 fixed-function hardware encoder is included in
>>>>             Alchemist GPUs as part of the Intel Quick Sync Video core.
>>>>             https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Arc#Alchemist
>>>>             https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AV1#Hardware
>>>>             https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Quick_Sync_Video#Hardware_decoding_and_encoding
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
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>>>             Cin at lists.cinelerra-gg.org
>>>             https://lists.cinelerra-gg.org/mailman/listinfo/cin
>>>
>>
>
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