Re:Fedora 36: A brave new (DRM/KMS only) world
by froh on Monday April 25, 2022 @04:01AM
(#31151696)
Dedicated video decoding silicon is not part of the GPU?
Re:Fedora 36: A brave new (DRM/KMS only) world
by zeusk on Monday April 25, 2022 @04:08AM
(#31151729)
Video decoders are usually fixed function blocks, separate from the SMs (which I believe the parent is referring to by "GPU") but are still usually on the same physical silicon as the GPU (in case of SoCs, also shared with CPU).
They're exposed as an independent engine on the GPU/SoC and can operate with most of the chip power gated.
This has become a lot more important with smartphones than desktop systems. You now have often very different silicon for things like video decoding, graphics and scanout - and to achieve reasonable battery time you need common use cases like watching a video to not involve the GPU at all.