In a stunning twist, Intel’s future 14th Era Meteor Lake CPU structure will reportedly break up video playback and encode performance from the built-in graphics into a brand new space often called an SMU or Standalone Media Unit on the CPU, as reported by Phoronix. It’s a vital change by Intel, which can permit media performance for use always, even when the built-in graphics chip is disabled.
In a real-world situation, as soon as Meteor Lake launches, customers constructing gaming PCs or content material creation machines on the longer term platform can have entry to all of Intel’s high-quality video decoding engines and Intel QuickSync expertise, even when built-in GPU is disabled in favor of a discrete graphics card, which frees up reminiscence sources and energy sources — shifting them in direction of the CPU completely. The state of affairs will get even higher if older discrete GPUs are put in that lack trendy {hardware} acceleration codecs, equivalent to AV1 or H265 encoding.
One other perk of this transition is said to Intel’s F-series processors, which lack built-in graphics altogether. Consequently, F-series Meteor Lake processors ought to theoretically acquire entry to all of Intel’s media options – together with QuickSync, even with the iGP disabled at a silicon stage. As well as, Intel server CPUs and potential HEDT chips might additionally profit from this transformation since Intel disables the built-in graphics chip from these CPU lineups altogether.
Phoronix noticed this transformation primarily based on new Linux enablement work for Meteor Lake, which incorporates patch notes detailing the SMU modifications. These modifications embrace additional architectural modifications to the graphics unit and transitioning to Intel’s Arc Alchemist GPU structure. Consequently, we should always anticipate extra superior options equivalent to AV1 encoding to make their option to consumer-based Meteor Lake chips.
Sadly, we can’t see these new modifications for some time since Meteor Lake remains to be not less than a 12 months or two away from launch, with Intel busy making ready its upcoming thirteenth Gen Raptor Lake lineup. However, because of early Linux growth work on Meteor Lake, we see thrilling {hardware} modifications on future CPU architectures earlier than launch.
https://www.tomshardware.com/information/meteor-lake-plays-videos-without-gpu