The UVD is based on an ATI
Xilleon video processor, which is incorporated onto the same die as the
GPU and is part of the
ATI Avivo HD for hardware video decoding, along with the Advanced Video Processor (AVP). UVD, as stated by AMD, handles decoding of H.264/AVC, and VC-1 video codecs entirely in hardware. The UVD technology is based on the
Cadence Tensilica Xtensa processor, which was originally licensed by ATI Technologies Inc. in 2004.
UVD/UVD+ In early versions of UVD,
video post-processing is passed to the pixel shaders and OpenCL kernels. MPEG-2 decoding is not performed within UVD, but in the shader processors. The decoder meets the performance and profile requirements of
Blu-ray and
HD DVD, decoding H.264 bitstreams up to a
bitrate of 40 Mbit/s. It has
context-adaptive binary arithmetic coding (CABAC) support for H.264/AVC. Unlike video acceleration blocks in previous generation GPUs, which demanded considerable host-CPU involvement, UVD offloads the entire video-decoder process for VC-1 and H.264 except for
video post-processing, which is offloaded to the shaders. MPEG-2 decode is also supported, but the bitstream/entropy decode is not performed for MPEG-2 video in hardware. Previously, neither ATI
Radeon R520 series'
ATI Avivo nor NVidia Geforce 7 series'
PureVideo assisted front-end bitstream/entropy decompression in VC-1 and H.264 - the host CPU performed this work. UVD handles
VLC/
CAVLC/
CABAC,
frequency transform, pixel prediction and
inloop deblocking, but passes the post processing to the shaders. Post-processing includes
denoising, de-interlacing, and scaling/resizing. AMD has also stated that the UVD component being incorporated into the GPU core only occupies 4.7 mm² in area on
65 nm fabrication process node. A variation on UVD, called UVD+, was introduced with the
Radeon HD 3000 series. UVD+ support
HDCP for higher resolution video streams. But UVD+ was also being marketed as simply UVD.
UVD 2 The UVD saw a refresh with the release of the
Radeon HD 4000 series products. The UVD 2 features full bitstream decoding of H.264/MPEG-4 AVC, VC-1, as well as iDCT level acceleration of MPEG2 video streams. Performance improvements allow dual video stream decoding and
Picture-in-Picture mode. This makes UVD2 full
BD-Live compliant. The UVD 2.2 features a re-designed local memory interface and enhances the compatibility with MPEG2/H.264/VC-1 videos. However, it was marketed under the same alias as "UVD 2 Enhanced" as the "special core-logic, available in RV770 and RV730 series of GPUs, for hardware decoding of MPEG2, H.264 and VC-1 video with dual-stream decoding". The nature of UVD 2.2 being an incremental update to the UVD 2 can be accounted for this move.
UVD 3 UVD 3 adds support for additional hardware MPEG2 decoding (entropy decode),
DivX and
Xvid via
MPEG-4 Part 2 decoding (entropy decode, inverse transform, motion compensation) and
Blu-ray 3D via
MVC (entropy decode, inverse transform, motion compensation, in-loop deblocking). along with 120 Hz stereo 3D support, and is optimized to utilize less CPU processing power. UVD 3 also adds support for Blu-ray 3D stereoscopic displays.
UVD 4 UVD 4 includes improved frame interpolation with H.264 decoder. UVD 4.2 was introduced with the AMD Radeon Rx 200 series and Kaveri APU.
UVD 5 UVD 5 was introduced with the AMD Radeon R9 285. New to UVD is full support for 4K H.264 video, up to level 5.2 (4Kp60).
UVD 6 The UVD 6.0 decoder and
Video Coding Engine 3.0 encoder were reported to be first used in GPUs based on GCN 3, including Radeon R9 Fury series, followed by
AMD Radeon Rx 300 Series (Pirate Islands GPU family) and
AMD Radeon Rx 400 Series (Arctic Islands GPU family). But there is still no fixed function VP9 hardware decoding.
UVD 7.2 AMD's Vega20 GPU, present in the Instinct Mi50, Instinct Mi60 and Radeon VII cards, include VCE 4.1 and two UVD 7.2 instances.
VCN 1 Starting with the integrated graphics of the Raven Ridge APU (Ryzen 2200/2400G), the former UVD and VCE have been replaced by the new "
Video Core Next" (VCN). VCN 1.0 adds full hardware decoding for the VP9 codec.
Format support ==Availability==