Last week, amd began to provide its rDNA 3 (gx11) architecture patch for the llvm project, and revealed some features of the Navi 3x GPU series to come later this year The work is still active, but the engineer has included VCN 4.0 / video core next IP block in it to let us know some information related to video codec.
Unfortunately, although the efficiency is higher than the previous AVC, amd Contains Intel enabled AV1 encoding.
In addition, the name of VCN 4.0 has changed since the last update - previously video core next, now video codec next.
It is unclear why amd software engineers did this or whether it was just a "clerical error" in the release notes.
For reference, [Phoronix]( https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=AMDGPU -Michael larabel of vcn-4.0-patches mentioned that the VCN 4.0 patch contained more than 12000 lines of new code.
It should be noted that most patch updates are filled with register header files. However, given that vcn4 is still in its early stage, it is too early to draw a conclusion on any future answer.
Specifically, the soc21 (Navi 31) GPU code records the decoding capabilities of AVC, hevc, AVC, hevc, JPEG, VP9 and AV1, but there is no sign of supporting AV1 coding at present.
If rDNA 3 GPU is absent from this function, the majority of users may be very disappointed. After all Intel Xe HPG product line has provided support for AV1 coding and transcoding.
It is believed that with the unique promotion of Intel arc alchemist, this open source standard will soon become popular. As for AMD rDNA 3, it will not come until the fourth quarter of 2022.
At that time, AMD radeon RX 7000 Series graphics cards will face off with NVIDIA geforce RTX 40 series. I hope that the code support of vcn4 will be further supplemented at that time.