AMD releases new patch for RDNA 3 architecture GPU: VCN 4.x support
AMD added four new GFX11 GPU IDs to the LLVM project last week, and GFX11 represents the RDNA 3 architecture or Navi 3x series of GPUs. The appearance of the new ID in the changelog means that AMD’s software engineers are already working around the new architecture in order to be fully prepared when the new product is released.
Recently, AMD once again released a series of Linux patches for the RDNA 3 architecture GPU, including a lot of new code, including details involving the VCN 4.0 engine. Interestingly, this time VCN is no longer Video Core Next, but Video Codec Next. I don’t know if the developer made a mistake or AMD changed the name of VCN.
According to the information in the patch, AMD’s VCN 4.0 engine supports H.264/MPEG 4 AVC, H.265, VP9, AV1, and JPEG decoding, but only supports H.264 and H.265 encoding, not AV1 encoding and H. 266/VVC codec. H.266/VVC is a next-generation video format standard and may not be gradually applied until 2023 or 2024. It is not a big problem without support, but AV1, as the current generation video format, is expanding its scope of use.
In fact, the current complete VCN 3.x engine can also support the video formats listed in the VCN 4.0 engine, but the new generation engine is likely to be enhanced in terms of resolution or codec efficiency. Also, not all GPU features will be enabled before release, coupled with various legal and technical limitations involved in Linux, the VCN 4.0 engine may also support AV1 encoding, but not in Linux.
Competitor Intel has provided complete AV1 codec hardware acceleration on the Alchemist (DG2) discrete graphics card under the Intel Arc brand of Xe-HPG architecture released this year. AMD’s RDNA 3 architecture GPU will not arrive until the end of this year, and the lack of support at a later time may disappoint many users. Previously, Navi 24 based on the RDNA 2 architecture caused a huge debate because it did not support 4K H.264/H.265 encoding and AV1 decoding.
