Intel Arctic Sound-M GPU's offering 30% Less Bitrate with support of AV1 video Encoding

Nivedita Bangari

Apr 29

Intel has continued to promote the new AV1 video encoding that the current graphics processors support with the announcement of the new ARC Alchemist/DG2 graphic processor family (ACM). The AV1 video encoding is not supported by AMD or NVIDIA consumer GPUs, but it is still in its early stages. However, many modern graphics cards, except for the AMD Navi 24 GPU generation, can decode an AV1 stream.

Onboard the Arctic Sound-M is Intel's newest DG2 GPU, the ACM-G11, which has 128 Execution Units. The new chip has a PCIe Gen4 x 16 interface and is a single-slot processor with passive capability. Power is controlled by a single eight-pin EPS power connector.

Intel unveiled its Arctic Sound-M at this year's Investor Meeting

This year at Intel's Investor Meeting, the firm unveiled the new Arctic Sound-M, touting its video transcoding capabilities and referring to it as the company's "Media Supercomputer." The business went on to say that the new chip would allow up to 30 1080p quality streams or eight 4K resolution streams. Netflix, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and others may all benefit from the possibilities of something like this for their game streaming servers.

The video above from Intel compares Intel's new AV1 encoding to the current AVC or H.264 display codecs. In the video, AV1 encoding enables lower bit rate requirements while maintaining video quality.

AC1 is 30 percent more efficient than the earlier AVC encoding in terms of cost savings. Another advantage of the AV1 codec is that it is an alternative to AVC/HEVC encoding and allows for royalty-free streams. Because of its ability to deploy AV1 encoding in data centers, Intel has gained a competitive advantage. Currently, Netflix is giving AV1 broadcasts to individuals who are compatible and have the necessary gear, according to the company.