Is GPU better than CPU for encoding? I thought performance ended up similar. Also, are you saying that K1 AWS can reencode 6 streams at once?
The performance of the GPU is orders of magnitude better you can do multiple 1080p streams in real time with high bandwidth easily.
The quality on the other hand even for the same bit rate is considerably worse than highly optimized CPU compilers as the GPU does do a lot of hacks along the way.
Re:Microsoft Readies Azure GPUs
by valarauca1 on Thursday August 11, 2016 @01:03PM
(#12269894)
GPU generally support more codec and faster encoding/decoding times then a CPU. But it really depends on what codec, what CPU, and what GPU.
K1 (AWS): 1 GPUs x 6 H.264 streams (max single stream 720p@30fps)
K2 (Azure K80): 1 GPUs x 6 H.264 streams max single stream 720p@30fps)
M6 (Don't know if it's used by anyone ;)): 1 GPU x 18 H.264 streams (max single stream 1080p@30fps)
M60 (Azure M60): 1 GPU x 18 H.264 streams (max single stream 1080p@30fps)
You can sacrifice encoder bandwidth (max streams) for higher resolutions or frame rates.