HEVC is H.265, video codec, nothing to do with Miracast or the like
Xbox One (Durango) Technical hardware investigation
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Seems implausible. It's only just coming to AMD APUs.
It's also decode only.
That does make the last slide confusing though.
Silent_Buddha
Legend
Perhaps it was a custom IP block that MS had AMD do specially for the XBO SOC?
Yes, it implies that the XBO will be doing HEVC encoding. Considering how compute intensive h.265 is, I don't imagine the CPU would be very good at it, especially when playing games. Ditto for running a game while at the same time using GPU compute for h.265 assisted encoding.
So either there's some custom IP block that was put in there specifically for h.265 encoding, or the slide is wrong.
Regards,
SB
Betanumerical
Veteran
To me it sounds like they are planning on doing a software based decoder. Having a h265 encoder on die seems like it would be a pretty big waste of resources.
Based off this at least.
liquidboy
Regular
i'm assuming by "software based decoder" you are talking about "SHADER" decoding, as opposed to software decoder purely on CPU ...
GPU acceleration will provider faster video encoding than is possible on CPU alone ...
Betanumerical
Veteran
Unless shaders are suddenly not software then I am talking about software decoding specifically on the gpu as is the context of the image I posted. It doesn't have to be shader based btw it could quite easily be opencl.
That would ne a waste of shader Performance. What would you wanne stream if the shaders are encoding. So it only could be another Hardware thing. As even kaveri supports it it is possible ps4 and Xbox one Support it, too
Silent_Buddha
Legend
Except you can't use 6 jaguar cores for it.
The HEVC is for streaming from XBO to PC. Which means the HEVC stream has to be encoded on the XBO. While running games (which have 6 cores reserved). That means at most 2 cores will be available. But that has to be shared with the XBO host OS and any background applications also running (snapped apps, etc.).
I'm not sure 1.x (or less) Jaguar cores would be enough for real-time H.265 encoding.
As it has to be doable while running games, this also means that GPU shader processing for assisted H.265 encoding would be a huge no-no.
Even if the hardware exists, you still need a codec to make use of it. All hardware accelerated decode and encode on Windows PCs require a codec. So that job posting doesn't mean a CPU only codec, as a hardware accelerated one would have the same requirements.
But perhaps Microsoft has pulled off some magic and managed to make an extremely lightweight real-time H.265 encoder that uses almost no CPU or GPU power and isn't hardware accelerated. If so, I'd like in on that magic.
Regards,
SB
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Why not add it until 2 years later? And that'd have been pretty early going by Wikipedia's timeline for HEVC. It's possible, but seems unlikely to me.
I think the slide is wrong. The programmer image shows HEVC being implemented in software. Did MS put in a realtime HEVC encoder way ahead of the curve, but no decode functionality? I think the idea might be to record in h.264/AVC and transcode to HEVC prior to broadcast or something, where XB1 is concerned.
Silent_Buddha
Legend
This is what I would assume to be the case, as the other options seem implausible. Perhaps AMD includes h.264 in their definition of HEVC, which would be grossly inappropriate.
That said, it isn't impossible that Microsoft had some form of HEVC assisted accerlation block included. The first version of HEVC was finalized on Jan. 25, 2013, but work on it started much earlier than that (2010).
If the slide is correct, that's the least implausible explanation, as I just can't believe that a CPU only solution (using less than 2 Jaguar cores) would be able to provide real-time HEVC streaming from XBO to PC. Even providing a delayed transcoding (for TV streams) would be problematic with less than 2 Jaguar cores, IMO.
Regards,
SB
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Maybe it's the wrong way round? PC to XB1 for Windows 10 game streaming could use HEVC on the PC and decode on XB1. Although there's still no mention of hardware encode on PC either.
Silent_Buddha
Legend
Maybe it's the wrong way round? PC to XB1 for Windows 10 game streaming could use HEVC on the PC and decode on XB1. Although there's still no mention of hardware encode on PC either.
This also would make more sense. That would free up a lot more resources on the XBO as you presumably wouldn't be running a game on XBO while streaming to it from PC.
Regards,
SB
Betanumerical
Veteran
I'm not 100% convinced that even 8 jaguar cores could decode 1080p 60hz hevc. My understanding is that it stresses quadcore i7s just for the decoding.
liquidboy
Regular
... don't know why this is suprising to anyone, even the ps3/xb360 can do HEVC decoding ..
recently Multicoreware announced their UHDecode that works on xb360/ps3 ... don't know why anyone thinks it can't be done on ps4/xb1 ...
and the accompanying h265 encode
p.s. Multicoreware does alot of collaboration work with AMD around HSA, they're the ones implementing C++Amp for HSA for example..
recently Multicoreware announced their UHDecode that works on xb360/ps3 ... don't know why anyone thinks it can't be done on ps4/xb1 ...
and the accompanying h265 encode
p.s. Multicoreware does alot of collaboration work with AMD around HSA, they're the ones implementing C++Amp for HSA for example..
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So you think XB1 can trivially encode a game on the fly in HEVC without encoding hardware?
Or we will see a new Windows 10 Certified Xbox One with HVEC Encoder. X-D
liquidboy
Regular
sure why not , going off linkedin profiles of people suggesting they can ... BUT who knows maybe MS does have specialized HW, i dont know ..
We'll find out as soon as xb1 gets Win10 i guess , where all the HEVC investment is ..
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