On January 26, Volcano Engine Multimedia Laboratory announced that the BVC2 decoder using heterogeneous platform (CPU+GPU) has realized the REAL-TIME decoding of H.266 4K single thread in mobile terminal, and the decoding speed can reach more than 30FPS. According to public information, BVC2 has become the industry’s first decoder to implement H.266 4K single-threaded real-time decoding on mobile.
H.266 is the latest generation of video coding standards, identified by the Joint Video Expert Group (JVET) in July 2020. Compared with the previous generation OF H.265 standard, H.266 standard can save 50% bit rate at the same subjective quality. Although H.266 can greatly save the cost of bandwidth, because the computational complexity of the decoder is 1.5-2 times that of h.265, the demand for computing resources also increases exponentially, making the application of H.266 in mobile terminals challenging.
Volcano Engine Multimedia Lab found that the new mobile GPU has relatively strong computing power resources, so they considered cooperating with CPU and GPU decoding in the BVC2 decoder. Further research shows that the heterogeneous platform decoding scheme composed of CPU and GPU not only has flexibility of soft decoding and speed of hard decoding, but also has power consumption advantage. In addition, by combining GPU decoding with GPU AI post-processing algorithm, the presentation delay of the whole playback system can be further optimized.
Therefore, volcano Engine Multimedia Lab optimized the communication between CPU and GPU and GPU heavy resource allocation during decoding on BVC2 decoder. Meanwhile, according to the characteristics of different decoding algorithms, the GPU Kernel Kernel is optimized to make full use of the number of GPU threads and the load balancing between GPU threads.
Test results of BVC2 decoder versus VTM11.0 standard decoder on iPhone 13 (T-1 is single thread)
The single-thread test results on iPhone 13 devices show that compared with VTM11.0 standard decoder, THE BVC2 decoder has nearly 15 times the speed of classB 1080P video, and the decoding speed of classA1 and classA2 4K video is stable up to 30FPS. Achieve single-thread real-time decoding 4K.
It is reported that the volcano engine multimedia laboratory is committed to research and explore the frontier technology in the field of multimedia. In the past six months, the lab has continuously implemented a number of leading technologies, including the development of the video codec BVC1S for screen content, the first support for H.266 standard 8K decoding on mobile platforms, and the implementation of the industry’s first H.266 end cloud integrated video solution.
Looking forward to the future, volcanic engine, said an official with the media lab they will keep digging on the mobile platforms, existing work force (GPU, DSP coprocessor, etc.), seek the breakthrough of the decoding performance, compatibility with more platforms, and through external cloud on-demand video products, let more mobile terminal equipment as soon as possible using h. 266.