Author:
Neal Dixon, Performance Engineer, Intel
Supporting Engineers:
Sabarinath Mukundu Subramanian, Performance Engineer, HCL Technologies
Garrett Drown, Platform Power and Performance Architect, Intel
Driven largely by over-the-top distribution models and consumer-generated content on social media, the popularity and consumption of live streaming services and other IP-delivered video have soared. As 5G networks expand and bandwidth increases, subscribers expect higher resolutions and broadcast-quality content on every device. The Intel® Xeon® 6 system-on-chip (SoC) includes the industry’s first integrated media transcode accelerator to meet this demand.(1) In conjunction with the Intel® Media Transcode Accelerator, the Intel Xeon 6 SoC delivers up to 14x performance per watt gain for video transcoding(2) compared to previous generations, helping video service providers offer near real-time experiences for low-latency live streaming, high-quality broadcast, video-on-demand encoding, high-density Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), responsive cloud gaming, and other media-intensive services.
The Intel Xeon 6 SoC with built-in Intel Media Transcode Accelerator enables flexible usage models for efficient, low-latency encoding of high-quality video. It helps providers reduce costs with high stream density per server and low watts per channel compared to encoding on only CPU cores. Distributing video encoding across CPU cores and the SoC’s media accelerator optimizes performance and energy efficiency. An adaptive media transcoding engine can adjust to different network conditions, target devices, and applications, ensuring a seamless media experience while delivering efficient media transcode operations to balance distribution cost and media quality.
Comparative Analysis with AMD EPYC Processors
While the most sought-after benefit of video transcoding is reducing file sizes for efficient delivery, a dedicated transcoding server with specialized hardware offers additional power, cost, and rack space efficiencies over general-purpose CPUs. In a comparative analysis of the Intel Xeon 6 SoC 6553P-B with built-in Intel Media Transcode Accelerator against the 5th generation AMD EPYC 9365 CPU, Intel outperforms AMD across all performance metrics while using 78% less CPU power when running transcode workloads on FFmpeg, an open-source software suite for multimedia pipelines.
Figure 1: Intel Xeon 6 SoC 6553P-B outperforms AMD EPYC 9365, demonstrating 2x performance with 78% less CPU power.
Using only one active core, the Intel Xeon 6 SoC 6553P-B demonstrated performance gains over the 36-core AMD EPYC 9365 running with all cores active. With its hardware-based Intel Media Transcode Accelerator, Intel Xeon 6 SoC 6553P-B balances power and efficiency, delivering up to 2x better performance over the AMD EPYC 9365 and 9.4x performance per watt. Savings extend beyond performance and energy efficiency gains, with Intel Xeon 6 SoC 6553P-B offering up to 3.6x performance per dollar and up to 17x performance per dollar per watt over AMD EPYC 9365. As an additional benefit, only one core is required to manage the Intel Media Transcode Accelerator, freeing the remaining cores on the 36-core Intel Xeon 6 SoC for other workloads as needed.
The Right Choice for Optimizing Live Streaming
No longer the sole domain of social media and streaming platforms, media transcoding is a critical workflow element across all industries. The Intel Xeon 6 SoC with Intel Media Transcode Accelerator provides benefits in performance, efficiency, and cost savings for network and edge media transcode workloads by offering:
- Advanced integrated SoC platform for video: The Intel Xeon 6 SoC increases video performance and efficiency by using the Intel Media Transcode Accelerator to run software-based video encoders alongside the CPU cores, increasing throughput dramatically while consuming less power.
- Enhanced compute resources: High per-core performance and up to 72 processor cores, assisted by the built-in media accelerator and improvements to other accelerators and instruction sets.
- Memory subsystem innovations: Up to 8 channels of DDR5 memory at up to 6400 MT/s, shared between the media accelerator and the CPU cores.
- Increased I/O throughput with lower latency: Up to 200 Gbps integrated Intel® Ethernet, up to 32 lanes PCIe 5.0, and up to 16 lanes PCIe 4.0, for a total of 48 lanes.
- High-speed connectivity: Built-in Intel Ethernet and integrated Intel QuickAssist technology (Intel® QAT) accelerate data encryption.
- FFmpeg and GStreamer support: The platform supports up to 16x 1080p30 streams per SoC and up to 4x 4K50 streams per SoC. At the highest video quality setting, the HEVC encoder achieves quality comparable to that of x265 using the “slow” preset.
- Parallel video encoding: Shared system DDR memory between the media accelerator and the CPU cores avoids processing bottlenecks for PCIe bandwidth.
Learn more about Intel Xeon 6 SoC processors for networking and edge workloads.
Product and Performance Information
Configurations:
AMD EPYC 9365: 1-node, 1x AMD EPYC 9365 36-Core Processor, 300W TDP, SMT On, Boost On, Total Memory 768GB (12x64GB DDR5 6400 MT/s [6000 MT/s]), microcode 0xb00211a, 2x MT2910 Family, 2x Ethernet Controller X710 for 10GBASE-T, 1x 3.5T SAMSUNG MZWLJ3T8HBLS-00007, 1x 1.7T SAMSUNG MZQL21T9HCJR-00A07, CentOS Stream 9, 6.1.141-1.el9.elrepo.x86_64. FFmpeg v 6.1.1. 1080P HEVC Transcode, slow preset, multi-instance. 1kU price $4341 (source), measured CPU power under test 270W. Test by Intel as of August 2025. Your results may vary. Intel technologies may require enabled hardware, software, or service activation.(3)
Xeon Gen 6 SoC: 1-node, 1x INTEL(R) XEON(R) 6553P-B, 36 cores,1 core used w/2 Media Accelerator engines, 235W TDP HT On, Turbo On, Total Memory 128GB (4x32GB DDR5 6400 MT/s [6400 MT/s]), BIOS KVLDCRB1.IPC.0029.D22.2501151801, microcode 0x810001c3, 1x I210 Gigabit Network Connection, 1x 223.6G KINGSTON SA400S37240G, 1x 240M Disk, 1x 1.8T INTEL SSDPEDME020T4F, CentOS Stream 9, 6.6.0-gnr.bkc.6.6.15.6.20.x86_64, FFmpeg v 6.1.1, HEVC 1080P Transcode, MediaIP Driver Package Rel99. RCP $2402 (source). Measured CPU power under test 58W. Media IP compression level "0" is comparable quality to the Media SW H265 "slow" compression. Test by Intel as of January 2025. Your results may vary. Intel technologies may require enabled hardware, software, or service activation.(3)
Endnotes:
- Availability of accelerators varies depending on SKU. Visit the Intel® Product Specifications page for additional product details.
- See [7ND32] at intel.com/processorclaims: Intel® Xeon® 6. Results may vary.
- Performance varies by use, configuration, and other factors. Learn more at intel.com/performanceindex.
Notices and Disclaimer
Performance varies by use, configuration, and other factors. Learn more on the Performance Index site.
Performance results are based on testing as of dates shown in configurations and may not reflect all publicly available updates. See backup for configuration details. No product or component can be absolutely secure.
Your costs and results may vary.
Intel technologies may require enabled hardware, software, or service activation.
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