AMD Radeon Navi 2 / VCN 3.0 Supports AV1 Video Decoding
In addition to Intel Xe / Tigerlake and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30 series supporting AV1 hardware decoding, it's now firmed up that the next-gen Navi 2 GPUs will also have AV1 decode.
As previously reported, the AMD next-gen GPUs feature VCN 3.0 for Video Core Next. The previous VCN 3.0 Linux/open-source patches didn't reveal AV1 capabilities but new patches out today confirm AV1 support with VCN3.
Patches add the new AV1 registers, among other patches out today. There is also the device IDs for "Sienna Cichlid" finally added of which there are six device IDs added.
AMD's RDNA 2 event is scheduled for 28 October where they will reveal more on these next-generation GPUs. Based on the timing of these latest patches though this AV1 support and other additions won't come until Linux 5.10, with that cycle kicking off in October but not releasing as stable until the end of the year or early 2021 depending upon how the rest of the 5.9 cycle plays out. At least for launch day support if not wanting to build your own open-source driver code, AMD should have new Radeon Software for Linux drivers that work on supported enterprise Linux distributions.
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