It was revealed that AMD sent a kernel update for Linux with AV1 codec records. This seems to confirm that the next RDNA 2 architecture present in Big Navi, will support AV1 decoding in the new Radeon series. Both Navi 21 (Sienna Cichlid), and Navi 22 (Navy Flounder), will have the Video Core Next 3.0 implementation.
AV1 decoding support seems to be becoming a standard. Intel’s Tiger Lake series (with Xe-LP architecture) already supports this decoding, as well as the recently announced NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30 series, which will have full AV1 acceleration through a built-in hardware decoder.
On the other hand, Microsoft is adding the AV 1 video extension, which should increase its performance in Windows 10 at a higher resolution. Besides, Google also updated Chrome on Windows 10 to support AV 1 hardware decoding.
But what is AV1?
AV1 is a new, open, free video encoding format with up to 50% more bitrate efficiency than H264. Designed to be a successor to Google’s VP9 and a competitor to H265 (HEVC), AV1 should be 30% more efficient than VP9 and HEVC.
In addition, for Big Navi, also known as Navi 21, we can see the addition of its first IDs to the kernel. However, it is still not clear if there are differences between Sienna Cichlid and Navi 21 (known as Radeon RX 6000).
The first thing we saw were variables that refer to HBm2 technology, but since then we have not had any news on this subject. The Radeon RX 6000 series is expected to fully utilize GDDR6 memory technology.