AMD Releases Open-Source VCE 1.0 Support

AMD has gone back and managed to provide open-source Linux users with support for the VCE 1.0 video encode engine.

Last year AMD open-sourced their VCE video encode engine code for use by their open-source Linux graphics driver stack with the Radeon DRM kernel driver and RadeonSI Gallium3D and worked out a new OpenMAX state tracker. That open-source code drop only worked on the support for "VCE2" hardware found with the AMD GCN hardware and newer (Sea Islands, Kabini, etc). AMD's open-source Linux team has now gained permission for providing open-source VCE 1.0 support to offer video encode to older Radeon graphics processors.

Christian König at AMD has worked out VCE support for the 1.0 hardware, including Trinity and Richland APUs. Tahiti, Pitcairn, Verde, Oland, and Aruba are the hardware with VCE 1.0. This patch provides the kernel support though updated AMD GPU microcode is also needed.

This VCE 1.0 open-source enablement was done as part of a set of nine new VCE patches, including DPM support with VCE is now finally working for better power management.

These new AMD video encode patches should make it in for the Linux 4.2 kernel since it's already weeks too late for Linux 4.1.