dav1d 0.5.1 Boosts AV1 Video Decode For Older CPUs by 40~50%

[phoronix]

Phoronix: dav1d 0.5.1 Boosts AV1 Video Decode For Older CPUs by 40~50%

While marketed as a point release, the dav1d 0.5.1 "Asiatic Cheetah" release is quite significant for those needing to perform AV1 video decoding on older processors...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=dav1d-0.5.1-Released

[schmidtbag]

Now that's the kind of stuff I like to see for decoders. We have enough AV1 encoders out there that depend on modern instructions or APIs, but not enough stuff that can work on real basic systems. ARMv7 may be old but it isn't irrelevant. Of course, the speed improvement doesn't necessarily say much about whether it can play certain videos smoothly on such systems (not sure if it ever could or couldn't).

[Guest]

Now that's the kind of stuff I like to see for decoders. We have enough AV1 encoders out there that depend on modern instructions or APIs, but not enough stuff that can work on real basic systems. ARMv7 may be old but it isn't irrelevant. Of course, the speed improvement doesn't necessarily say much about whether it can play certain videos smoothly on such systems (not sure if it ever could or couldn't).

No sane person would do software encoding or decoding of video on typical ARM hardware. These chips have hardware support for video for a good reason. Optimizing for ARM is purely academic.

[schmidtbag]

No sane person would do software encoding or decoding of video on typical ARM hardware. These chips have hardware support for video for a good reason. Optimizing for ARM is purely academic.

Tell that to nearly every ARM Linux user out there with a modern kernel who isn't using a Broadcom or Nvidia chip...

[Serafean]

No sane person would do software encoding or decoding of video on typical ARM hardware. These chips have hardware support for video for a good reason. Optimizing for ARM is purely academic.

Well, anyone who keeps a smartphone more than 3 years might disagree with you.

[Toggleton]

No sane person would do software encoding or decoding of video on typical ARM hardware. These chips have hardware support for video for a good reason. Optimizing for ARM is purely academic.

It is better if you can view a AV1 file on older Hardware, than to have no way to open it. Hardware decoder need Kernel support so you will end up with a lot user who will rely on Software decoding until it is in the Mainline Kernel.
No sane person would throw out still good Hardware to get a new one with Hardware decoder for the new Codec. So you will have a lot of User that will rely on SW decoder And we have no AV1 Hardware decoder ready to buy yet(they are planed 2020)

Hardware decoder are mostly to improve Battery life. If your Device is always plugged in, it does not matter that much (As long as the CPU is fast enough for SW encoding)

Well i use my Odroid N2(arm64) as my main device at the moment. I can decode AV1 without problems 1080p30fps (could be more now i have not checked for the improvements of dav1d 0.5)

And for Encoding https://github.com/xiph/rav1e/issues/1754 rav1e does merge the Arm64 assembly from dav1d. It will take a lot of time to encode with it but why not use a Raspberry Pi like device that you have lying around in your closet. (maybe arm32 too)

[boxie]

And for Encoding https://github.com/xiph/rav1e/issues/1754 rav1e does merge the Arm64 assembly from dav1d. It will take a lot of time to encode with it but why not use a Raspberry Pi like device that you have lying around in your closet. (maybe arm32 too)

well, video encoding is immensely parallel... is it time to break out the Beowulf cluster?

[microcode]

No sane person would do software encoding or decoding of video on typical ARM hardware. These chips have hardware support for video for a good reason. Optimizing for ARM is purely academic.

Note how we routinely decode VP9 in software on phones.

[andreano]

Oh my, this release is meant for me! Not only have I a 7 year old AMD desktop CPU that doesn't even support SSSSE3, I also have a RPi4 running Raspbian, you know, with armv7 userland. Not sure which one is fastest.

I've tried Dav1d on Aarch64 (Pico-Pi iMX8M), and it beat my (almost as old) x86-64 laptop:
https://openbenchmarking.org/result/...SK-AMDE1120009

[Orphis]

No sane person would do software encoding or decoding of video on typical ARM hardware. These chips have hardware support for video for a good reason. Optimizing for ARM is purely academic.

There are legitimate uses of software AV1. It's not only used for 4k content, but also low bitrate streams. If you try doing anything real-time but you are network-bound, why not use more CPU to alleviate that issue? It's all a tradeoff and perfectly valid sometimes.