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Intel Media Server Studio 2015 R5 on J1800

Rūdolfs_B_
Beginner
981 Views

Hi,

I put together a system based on Intel J1800 which according to Intel ARK supports quick sync (http://ark.intel.com/products/78866/Intel-Celeron-Processor-J1800-1M-Cache-up-to-2_58-GHz). However when going through the release notes I stumbled upon this:

Hardware
The following processor models are supported:
 5th Generation Intel Core™ Processors with Intel Iris™ Pro Graphics, Intel Iris Graphics or Intel HD Graphics 5000/6000+ Series.
 Intel® Xeon® Processor E3-128x v3 with Intel C226 Chipset:
Intel® Xeon® Processor E3-1284 v3
Intel® Xeon® Processor E3-1285 v3
Intel® Xeon® Processor E3-1285L v3
Intel® Xeon® Processor E3-1286 v3
Intel® Xeon® Processor E3-1286L v3
 4th Generation Intel Core™ Processors with Intel® Iris™ Pro Graphics, Intel Iris Graphics or Intel HD Graphics 4200+ Series (chipset compatibility is usually not an issue for Core™ processors.)

So I already assumed there was a 50/50 chance - either ARK is wrong or the notes are incomplete. I succeeded in installing the sdk on CentOS 7.1, building/installing/booting into the new kernel, the verification procedure also seemed fine - lsmod showed all the required entries, but trying vainfo or any of the samples i get:

libva error: /opt/intel/mediasdk/lib64/iHD_drv_video.so init failed

libva info: va_openDriver() returns 1

the samples additionally output:

Unrecognized device ID 0F31Unrecognized device ID 0F31Aborted

Since it is the device id of the video adapter seen in lspci -nn I assume that the media sdk does not recognize the device. So is it unsupported and Intel ARK is wrong and the release notes are right? Or is there some tweaking that must be done?

 

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12 Replies
Rūdolfs_B_
Beginner
981 Views

Ok, I didn't do the homework of searching the forum. I found a similar thread https://software.intel.com/en-us/forums/topic/542789 with the same issue on J1900. The question is - why is Intel ARK page for the J1800 then stating that Intel Quick Sync video is supported? This is kind of misleading.

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Surbhi_M_Intel
Employee
981 Views

Hi there, 

I am glad you found the answer to your initial question. 
To answer your second question - 
On windows to check Media SDK support, you can do so by checking quick sync technology support @ ark.intel.com. But same is not true for Linux OS, that's why we refer folks to check release notes for Media Server Studio to avoid any confusion.

Thanks,
Surbhi 

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Rūdolfs_B_
Beginner
981 Views

Hi Surbhi,

Thanks for the response. That means it is not that bad and I can still run my Intel Quick Sync based code on J1800, but only with Windows, correct? If the J1800 actually supports it, is there any chance that the media sdk for Linux will support J1800 in the future releases or should we stick with Windows and forget about Linux?

Best Regards,

Rudolfs Bundulis

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Dmitry_G_1
Beginner
981 Views

What is the reason behind this limitation? Are there some kind of driver differences/incompatibilities? Hardware is hardware, no matter the OS...

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Surbhi_M_Intel
Employee
981 Views

Hi Rudolfs, 

The listed configuration on the getting started guide means that particular systems have been tested and validated on, so we are guaranteeing that these configurations are definitely supported for Media Server Studio. Trying Media Server Studio on windows OS on your systems is definitely worth a try but doesn't guarantee.
Right now, Intel doesn't have any plans to support Celeron. Focus has been on Core and Xeon servers right now. 

Thanks,
Surbhi  

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Surbhi_M_Intel
Employee
981 Views

Hi Dmitry, 

The limitation is because of the driver distribution and the kernel changes required to use Media Server Studio on any HW. These changes are a part of the Linux installation. Currently we are supporting limited configuration mentioned in release notes. 

Thanks,
Surbhi

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Rūdolfs_B_
Beginner
981 Views

Hi Surbhi,

I finally was able to verify that our software stack works normally on J1800 with Windows Embedded 8, if in future Linux support is added for this platform it would be nice, but at least my initial doubts that J1800 will not work at all are cleared and Intel ARK information is correct:)

One more thing I wanted to ask, I did some test runs and evaluated that we could desire a bit better performance, so another follow up question arised - are there any significant H.264 encoding performance increases if we compare the J1800 (http://ark.intel.com/products/78866/Intel-Celeron-Processor-J1800-1M-Cache-up-to-2_58-GHz) / J1900 platforms to the newly released N3000 series models, for example N3050 (http://ark.intel.com/products/87257/Intel-Celeron-Processor-N3050-2M-Cache-up-to-2_16-GHz)? 

I understand that the most reliable and straightforward verification would be to perform tests on both, but I can't get my hands on all the possible hardware configurations. Judging from the Intel ARK and other sources in the internet the N3000 series Intel HD Graphics are of a newer generation, have more executions units but a reduced GPU frequency. I am not aware of the internals of Intel Quick Sync (basically I perceive it as an "on-die" black bock, maybe it's a DSP, maybe something than runs in the GPU, who knows) and its hard for me to judge how and if these characteristics impact H.264 encoding speeds, so I wanted to ask your opinion - should there be any significant performance increase between J1800 and N3050 only in terms of H.264 encoding?

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Surbhi_M_Intel
Employee
981 Views

Hi there,

Great! You could test and verify it on windows. Regarding support support for Linux, I will pass that feedback to the team. 

On a high level the difference btw J1800(formerly coder name as Baytrail) and N3050 (formerly codename as Braswell) processors, Braswell has higher number of EU's(upto 16) as compared to baytrail(upto 4) which is a big differentiating factor. This definitely improve the H264 hw accelerated encoding performance. The DirectX support is available on N3050 Celeron processor by which you can access d3d11 hw acceleration.  Also, the power consumption is low on N3050 as compared to J1800. I don't have number to quote here but there are many architectural changes like multi reference encoding support, trellis quantization ans so on. Check this link http://ark.intel.com/compare/78866,87257 to find out the difference between both processor. Also, you will definitely see quality improvements on N3050 as compared to J1800, but that would highly depend upon the features you are interested in. 
Is your company looking to change the hardware in near future? If you can tell us what kind of application you are thinking to develop using Media Server Studio, may be we can refer what hardware can provide the better performance?

Thanks,
Surbhi

 

 

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Rūdolfs_B_
Beginner
981 Views

Hi Surbhi,

thanks for the detailed explanation. I'll try to get my hands on a N3050 and check out what the actual improvements for my transcoding pipeline are.

Best Regards,

Rudolfs Bundulis

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Surbhi_M_Intel
Employee
981 Views

Okay, keep us informed about your findings.
I am closing this thread, if you have any other questions related to Media Server Studio, feel free to start a new thread!

Thanks,
Surbhi

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Dilip_Y_
Beginner
981 Views

Hi.

Does NUC Kit NUC5CPYH celeron N3050 supports hardware accelerated video encoding using Intel QSV on linux Ubuntu?

Thanks.

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Surbhi_M_Intel
Employee
981 Views

Hi Dilip, 

No, Celeron system supports QSV on linux Ubuntu at the moment. 

Thanks,
Surbhi

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