Attention

This version of the SDK has been superseded by the latest release of the SDK.

AMD Advanced Media Acceleration (AMA) Release Notes

Note

Version: 1.1.2


Overview

This section describes various requirements, limitations, known issues and their respective workarounds that are applicable to AMD AMA Video SDK.

Release Requirements

  1. The following firmware versions are required:

    ZSP Version = 2.0.4
SC Version = 9.7.39
eSecure Version = 1.0.0
PCIe FW Version = 2.1.0
PCIe CTRL Patch Version = 1.0.3
PCIe PHY Patch A Version = 1.0.0

  2. This documentation is applicable to 1.1.2 release.

  3. Ensure that chassis's BIOS is set to performance mode, e.g., sleep states, clock throttling, etc. are disabled.

New in This Release

  1. VP9 decode

  2. New -no_bll encoder parameter

  3. New crop 2D scaler parameter

  4. Production quality 2D GPU and ROI

  5. New telemetry flag: mautil examine -d all -r utilization

  6. Additional PCIe and memory info in mautil validate

Features in This Release

  1. Support for video transcode using either our supplied FFmpeg (n5.1.2), Gstreamer (v1.22), or custom Xilinx Media Acceleration (XMA) applications.

  2. Support for up to 4 x 4Kp60 8-bit or 10-bit video decode VP9, AV1, AVC or HEVC per device.

  3. Support for up to 160 Mbps encode throughput per device.

  4. Support for up to 2 x 4Kp60 8-bit or 10-bit video transcode of AVC or HEVC per device.

  5. Support for up to 4 x 4Kp60 8-bit or 10-bit video transcode of AV1 per device.

  6. Support for up to 1 x 8Kp30 8-bit or 10-bit video transcode of AV1 per device

  7. Support for integration with software-based video image filters using our hardware DMA support to/from device memory (FFmpeg or Gstreamer).

  8. Optional use of our supplied resource management daemon (xrmd) for automated accelerator selection and load balancing.

  9. Resource utilization reporting when using our supplied resource management daemon (xrmd).

  10. Utility applications enabling collection of power, voltage, temperature and memory for each device as well as aggregate values for the MA35D accelerator card.

  11. Support for virtualization using either Ubuntu 20.04 or 22.04 in KVM mode with a guest OS also running either Ubuntu 20.04 or 22.04.

  12. The 2D GPU and ML, engines with ROI model, support are fully available features, using FFmpeg.

  13. Face and text-based Machine Learning (ML) models for enhanced low bitrate video encoding for fine text and faces using the ML engine of the card, via FFmpeg plugin

  14. Dual core AV1 encoding enabling 4kp120 and 8Kp30.

  15. Low latency encoding support (lookahead depths of approximately 1-11 frames).

  16. fast preset for AVC, HEVC and AV1 (type 2) encoding for enhanced throughput and/or density.

  17. HDR10, HDR10+ and/or HLG metadata pass through transcode support.

  18. New Content Adaptive Bit Rate (cabr) rate control mode for enhanced visual quality and bitrate efficiency.

  19. Support for encoder levels >= 6.

  20. Support for new encoder features in our resource management toolchain.

  21. New latency_ms command-line parameter to, optionally, specify the encoder lookahead_depth in units of time instead of frames.

  22. Support for color space conversion, input rotation, and color subsampling using the 2D GPU engine of the card, via FFmpeg plugin

  23. Telemetry is available for all accelerators by using mautil examine -d all -r utilization

  24. The mautil validate subcommand supports all encoder codecs and performs PCIe and MMIO tests

Supported Kernels and Distributions

This release of AMD AMA Video SDK supports Ubuntu 22.04, 20.04, and Debian 12 with generic kernel 5.15.0, 5.19.0, 6.2.0 and 6.5.0. However, kernels 5.15.0, 6.2.0 and 6.5.0 are preferred.

Known Limitations

  1. PF and VF must support PCIe memory regions BAR0 of 8 MB, BAR2 of 64 MB and BAR4 of 512 MB sizes.

  2. PF and VF release versions must match.

  3. A device that has been assigned to a VM cannot share its resources with its host.

  4. Only a single VF may be assigned to a VM.

  5. For maximum server scalability, ensure that a single VF is assigned to a VM.

  6. Ensure that both the host and VMs are running the same SDK version.

  7. MA35D only supports progressive content, i.e., interlaced contents are not supported in either the decoder or encoder.

  8. For encoding, only resolutions that are divisible by 4 are supported, i.e., both height and width.

  9. For decoding, only resolutions that are divisible by 2 are supported, i.e., both height and width.

  10. This version of the SDK does not support splitting a video acceleration use case across multiple MA35D devices.

  11. With the current version of FFmpeg, n5.1.2, it is not recommended to transport AV1 over MPEG TS.

  12. XMA sample applications are not meant to be run at maximum density.

  13. Encode rates up to maximum of 400 Mbps are supported.

  14. 4Kp120 is only supported for AV1 (type 1) encoder, under ultra low latency mode, using both cores.

  15. VBR and CVBR rate control modes are not supported for lookahead depth between 0 and 4.

  16. Using an encoder lookahead_depth value of <11 may limit the number of b-frames or other encoder features such as rate control modes, aq modes and so forth. See Encoding Compatibility Matrix for details.

  17. When using the encoder fast preset, lookahead_depth must be > 0.

  18. Mixing 2-slice AV1 Type 1 encoding and 1-slice encoding is not supported on a single device

  19. Encoder does not support dynamic QP maps in either AV1 Type 2 encoding or with lookahead_depth = 0.

  20. 2D GPU only supports 8-bit video.

  21. The 2D GPU and ML engines are not supported in Gstreamer or through XMA interface.

  22. AV1 decoder does not support 8k resolution in portrait mode.

Known Issues

  1. A secondary bus reset (SBR) will cause the server to hang. A cold boot of the server will restore function. After installation of our driver package, our setup.sh script should be run prior to utilizing any of the features of the SDK. The setup.sh will disable secondary bus reset.

  2. AV1 decoding using the included ama_av1dec Gstreamer plugin requires the use of an IVF packaged AV1 raw video stream and a corresponding ivfparse plugin to be utilized to demux the AV1 video stream.

  3. If the kernel driver is not loaded, tools such as mautil may crash when invoked.

  4. An AV1 HLS stream may playback at slower than real time speeds. Recommend explicitly setting of fps playback frame rate when using ffplay or use ffplay from ffmpeg 5.1.2 or 6.0

  5. Recommend playback of raw video using more recent versions of ffplay (n5.1.2n6.0 or later) or more recent versions of media players such as VLC v3.0.17.4. Alternatively, muxing the raw video into an IVF container format is also permitted.

  6. Using Gstreamer, 1080p30 transcodes and or lower resolutions cannot run at full density with default lookahead depth.

  7. ROI Model currently doesn't support portrait mode in a specific resolution of 1080x1920.

  8. A strict HDR10+ compliance checker may report some warnings in encoded HDR10+ bitstreams generated by this release.

  9. Firmware downgrade to GA1.0 may not work on some desktop machines or low end servers. Warm boot the server to get to working state.

  10. AV1 decoder accepts streams up to 40 Mbps.

  11. Attempts to firmware updates before the 10-minute mark, of card uptime, with 9.7.35 satellite controller firmware will fail.

Upgrading from Previous Versions

  1. Remove any ma35 and amd-ama packages as per installation instructions.

  2. Remove any manually created Boost library soft links that may have been created, previously.

  3. Remove all entries from /etc/apt/sources.list.d/xilinx.list if this file exists.