Intel's Arc Sharp series of discrete graphics cards for the high-performance gaming and content creation markets is finally born!
This is not only the expectation of countless gamers, but also the fresh blood urgently needed by the entire industry, especially in the case of the entire industry being tortured by lack of cores and "mining" for two years, and it is even more necessary to have a new force to play the "catfish effect" and truly promote progress and promote change.
It is true that Intel is a "newbie" in the independent graphics card market, but with its strong technical strength, especially in the field of nuclear graphics, perennial accumulation, Intel independent graphics cards will quickly become a backbone force that cannot be ignored.
Although the Arc Ruixuan series has just been born, it has shown different general innovation capabilities, whether it is hardware architecture or technical characteristics, there are a large number of flash points, such as the new Xe core architecture, AI acceleration hardware and algorithms, XeSS super resolution technology, smooth synchronous display, Deep Link collaborative acceleration technology, AV1 video codec, Arc control center, etc., all of which are eye-catching.
Recently, Fast Technology had the honor to interview Tom Petersen, intel's academician in charge of graphics technology innovation, focusing on the innovation and significance of Deep Link and AV1.
Deep Link——
The so-called Deep Link, as it literally means, simply puts it, allowing Intel processors and Intel graphics cards (single/core graphics) to work together, make full use of their respective advantages, release their potential, and maximize efficiency in specific tasks and loads, both to connect (Link) and to go deep (Deep).
Deep Link technology has three main applications at this stage, one is dynamic power sharing, the second is super coding, and the third is super computing power, and this is just the beginning...
In the interview, Tom Petersen also emphasized that Deep Link is not a single technical feature, but a fusion of multiple technologies, and Intel will continue to develop more technologies and incorporate them into Deep Link's system.
He believes that the most exciting point of Deep Link is that it can enable Intel's different IPs to collaborate, so if there is a CPU function that can work with the GPU (and vice versa), it will explore the possibility of collaboration between the two and do its best to expand quickly.
Dynamic power sharing is Deep Link, Intel has explored a long time of technology, its coverage and effect can also be remarkable, in a word, can allow the processor, graphics card dynamically allocate power space, flexible to meet different load needs, such as playing games to give the graphics card more power release space, get higher frequency, higher frame rate.
Tom Petersen explains that one of the benefits of dynamic power sharing is that it is implemented automatically and requires no user intervention. Each notebook equipped with a sharp discrete graphics card will provide support and always be turned on, and OEMs will also debug and set up according to their respective products and system conditions to achieve optimization.
However, the technology is still in its infancy and is only the first step, and most of its applications are related to media processing.
Intel will continue to innovate and improve based on this concept, such as the future also hopes to apply AI to the technology, through the real-time reasoning of AI, efficient judgment for processors and graphics cards to provide more power space, such as adding more parameters, collecting more system information, more reasonable real-time judgment of the current state, switching frequency is also higher, can reach 100 milliseconds level or even lower.
Deep Link technology has two places that make us very interested, one is in the game, can we achieve the division of labor such as the sole display responsible for 3D rendering and the nuclear display responsible for XeSS?
Tom Peterson said that in fact, this is one of the goals that Deep Link wants to achieve, hoping that in the future it can use the CPU SoC of all platforms and different discrete graphics IP to make it work closely together to provide more features.
Of course, it is not easy to achieve seamless collaboration between processors and graphics cards, in addition to Intel's work, it is also necessary to port the game platform and optimize the middleware, but Intel is very confident in this, and hopes that in the future, without any additional software adaptation, it can automatically use different IP to bring stronger performance.
Second, with the hybrid architecture of the 12th generation Core processor, is there a different synergy between the performance core, the energy efficiency core and the graphics card IP?
Tom Peterson pointed out that the synergy of the 12th-generation Core performance core and the energy efficiency core does not currently belong to the scope of Deep Link dynamic power sharing, but in some cases, it is also hoped that the performance core or energy efficiency core can be driven by the graphics card to perform specific workloads, and the power space saved will be saved to run the graphics load.
AV1——
Video encoding and decoding has always been an important part of GPU graphics cards, and the efficiency of Intel Quick Sync video transcoding technology has been widely praised.
On arc graphics cards, it not only supports MPEG-4, VP9, AVC, H.264, HEVC (H.265), but also supports AV1 hardware encoding and decoding for the first time.
AV1 video format is still in its infancy, many people may not be familiar with it, but its advantages are quite obvious, compared to the familiar H.264, H.265, coding efficiency is 50%, 20% higher, can bring higher picture quality with smaller files, less bandwidth.
The most critical thing is that the AV1 format is not like the H.26x series, it is completely open, no royalties, and has also been pushed by the open media alliance composed of many giants in the industry.
Tom Peterson further explained that for the AV1 video format, Arc Ruixuan graphics card has set up a special hardware engine to optimize the codec, and it is efficiently completed at the hardware level, which is not directly related to the driver and AI, of course, AI will also participate in some related processing work other than codec.
For the promotion and popularization of AV1, Tom Peterson admits that it is still at the forefront and there is still a lot of work, but it has huge advantages, Intel will continue to explore and innovate, the future hopes to fully integrate AV1 in standalone graphics cards, integrated graphics cards, and as the number of related devices reaches the level of millions, it is also expected that the ecosystem will fully follow up.
Tom Peterson also made an image analogy: when he first started doing USB, there were not many USB devices on the market. When I first started doing Wi-Fi, there weren't many Wi-Fi devices on the market.
AV1 is the same, it takes a certain amount of time for Google, Twitch, Amazon and other service providers to accept, but in the end it will benefit everyone, especially Intel will not charge a licensing fee, which is more conducive to the entire ecosystem to embrace AV1.
At present, Intel is cooperating with the software ecosystem to promote AV1, such as DaVinci, Adobe Premier, HandBrake and other video software have supported the AV1 codec of Sharp Graphics Cards, and this is just the beginning.