How do multiple encoders share hardware resources?

[Alex_S_]

I'm running two h264 hardware accelerated encoders in two separate processes. They both work fine, but now I want to know: how do they share single CPU in the system? And running two processes - is it good approach? Or should I rather run multiple sessions in single process?

Alex

[Jeffrey_M_Intel1]

Hi Alex,

Running multiple sessions in separate processes is a fine approach.  The Media SDK and driver stack are built to handle this case well.  When using the hardware implementation 1 master thread interacts with the driver regardless of whether your application uses multiple processes or threads. When using the hardware implementation CPU utilization should stay low, regardless of how many sessions you use.  As a side note, it has been my experience that the simplest implementation with 1 session per thread or process can also be faster than attempting sophisticated threading optimizations with multiple threads per session -- it can often be best to leave this kind of optimization to  Media SDK's internal scheduling.

Regards, Jeff

[OTorg]

And what about several separate processes + MFX_IMPL_SOFTWARE?

[Jeffrey_M_Intel1]

When running several processes with software you may want to consider joining sessions as this will help avoid thread oversubscription.   

[OTorg]

> When running several processes with software you may want to consider joining sessions as this will help avoid thread oversubscription.   

Please, explain us how to join sessions from different processes :)