NVIDIA Contributing Tegra NVDEC Support To Linux 5.16

[yoshi314]

Where is the big open source thing, nvidia announced back then?

it's already here, i think.

[Gonk]

It sucks that Nvidia is the only GPU maker that still makes somewhat modern low wattage (fanless) cards. I just want a video decode accelerator that supports all the modern codecs and VA-API. It seems AMD and Intel consider CPUs with integrated graphics as the solution to that market segment.

[SteamPunker]

That's incorrect. They still back VDPAU, but are offering VA-API for those that want it, as it's preferred by many developers. Their current approach is NVDEC/NVENC, which was developed as a multi-platform approach with GPU shaders helping out, but after introducing it as CUVID and then forcing it on the software ecosystem by killing off VDPAU development, the software devs who did the media players and such refused to implement it, because they had already done VDPAU, so Nvidia finally relented and resurrected VDPAU, while simultaneously trying to push NVDEC/NVENC as an eventual replacement.

Your argument doesn't negate my point. Quite on the contrary: the fact alone that NVIDIA is finally officially offering VA-API now, plus the fact that they only reluctantly resurrected VDPAU under pressure from some developers makes it clear that they've thrown their towel into the ring: VA-API won and NVIDIA has finally effectively admitted it. VDPAU is now a legacy standard at best. And I can't blame the developers for balking at CUVID or NVDEC/NVENC or whatever, because they have burned themselves on an NVIDIA-specific API before. Of course they're not going to waste any more efforts on supporting yet another proprietary standard.

[birdie]

Your argument doesn't negate my point. Quite on the contrary: the fact alone that NVIDIA is finally officially offering VA-API now, plus the fact that they only reluctantly resurrected VDPAU under pressure from some developers makes it clear that they've thrown their towel into the ring: VA-API won and NVIDIA has finally effectively admitted it. VDPAU is now a legacy standard at best. And I can't blame the developers for balking at CUVID or NVDEC/NVENC or whatever, because they have burned themselves on an NVIDIA-specific API before. Of course they're not going to waste any more efforts on supporting yet another proprietary standard.

Let's be honest here: VDPAU was released many years before VA-API, in 2009 to be exact, and it worked great however aside from Adobe Flash and mplayer, no one wanted to support it despite it being fully open and under a proper license. Then VA-API emerged but it's still barely supported by anything outside of mpv (maybe VLC - no idea, never used it). Firefox only supports VAAPI video acceleration under Wayland, i.e. to be honest, it's not what I'd call "support" considering absolute most Linux users still use X.org.

You can't blame NVIDIA that Linux has nothing which resembles DXVA. DXVA is a breeze to use, supported by probably most Windows applications out of the box and it just works no matter if you run Windows 8 or Windows 11.

Open Source fans too often slander NVIDIA instead of getting to the root cause and that is Linux itself where everything is ever transitionary and never complete. X.org had implementation issues? F it, let's create something new which is twenty times worse and even less complete but on paper it's great. Only people want to use their operating systems, not vice versa.

[Gonk]

Firefox only supports VAAPI video acceleration under Wayland, i.e. to be honest, it's not what I'd call "support" considering absolute most Linux users still use X.org.

Does Mozilla.org properly document this anywhere? I'm following a number of video acceleration bugs on their bugzilla and they are full of contradicting reports of what it works on and what knobs need to be tweaked to get it working.

[birdie]

Does Mozilla.org properly document this anywhere? I'm following a number of video acceleration bugs on their bugzilla and they are full of contradicting reports of what it works on and what knobs need to be tweaked to get it working.

Not to my best knowledge, it's all kinda experimental.

[TheLexMachine]

Video acceleration has always been experimental with Mozilla. It comes down to the fact that things simply aren't standardized on Linux and different distros use different desktops with different hardware support for different GPU hardware that uses brand-specific APIs and processes for hardware accelerated video in different driver versions. Add to that, the fustercluck that is FFMPEG implementation, with different distros using different versions of it and some distros using older versions/forks that don't support the newest features or fixed issues and you get nothing but a big mess. As much as I love Linux, Windows just works at this point and I have no difficulties, whereas I have to hope and pray for repo updates and patches on Linux, with many maintainers being unresponsive or argumentative to moving things along in a progressive way.

[torsionbar28]

It sucks that Nvidia is the only GPU maker that still makes somewhat modern low wattage (fanless) cards. I just want a video decode accelerator that supports all the modern codecs and VA-API. It seems AMD and Intel consider CPUs with integrated graphics as the solution to that market segment.

Modern AMD APU's do perform as well or better than a low-watt fanless AIC. They also cost less than buying discrete components so it's a better value for consumers. Not to mention the consumer preference shift to laptops, which leaves business desktops and gaming desktops - but business desktops get replaced every few years they don't get upgraded, and gaming desktops use big powerful cards not low-watt fanless.

The only market left for low-watt AIC's is retrofitting older PC's, and other tiny niche use cases. Not really a mass-market kind of thing any more.

[TheLexMachine]

Intel will be offering a low-end Xe GPU to fill the needs for any PC that requires a GPU upgrade for basic usage. Intel recognizes that it's a market segment that Nvidia and AMD have abandoned at this point and they also know that many PCs need a new basic GPU for Windows 11 and AV1, so they know there's a demand for it. The same GPU will be found in OEM PCs as well, as an upgrade option over the integrated GPU.

[wooptoo]

Intel will be offering a low-end Xe GPU to fill the needs for any PC that requires a GPU upgrade for basic usage. Intel recognizes that it's a market segment that Nvidia and AMD have abandoned at this point and they also know that many PCs need a new basic GPU for Windows 11 and AV1, so they know there's a demand for it. The same GPU will be found in OEM PCs as well, as an upgrade option over the integrated GPU.

Nvidia and AMD have largely abandoned the entry-level GPU segment because Intel has been eating away that market with both hands for quite a while. Slick move from Intel to come back and propose a discrete entry level GPU now. It's pretty exciting though I have to admit.