32-byte alignment no longer required for HEVC?

[AaronL]

The release notes for the 2016 R2 release of the Intel Media SDK include the following note:  "Removed limitation on 32 byte surface allocation alignment, currently support is aligned to AVC for 16 byte alignment limitation."  If so, does HEVC no longer need to be special-cased when it comes to alignment, and, instead, can the same logic be used for both HEVC and H.264?  The H.264 logic mainly distinguishes between progressive and interlaced content.

Of course, the bigger question is what Intel Graphics driver package is needed to take advantage of this, since this release note really pertains to a particular driver package, not the actual Intel Media SDK (I get into this in more detail in another post having to do with release notes).  And, even so, I'm not sure if anyone can really take advantage of this change in practice, since, in general, software needs to continue to work with Intel Graphics driver versions that don't have support for 16-byte alignment....

[Surbhi_M_Intel]

Hi Aaron, 

Yes this is the feature in API 1.19 of going back and supporting same model we had for h264. We are continuously making efforts to add parameters for hevc as we had for h264, so customer can upgrade their applications for hevc with less engineering effort, We are slowly getting there and appreciate any community feedback.  At the moment as you know driver supporting API 1.19 is not available on the Intel driver download website, last I discussed this with driver team plan is to host it by end of June/early July. So once we have the driver available to support this, one should be able to go back to 16byte alignment. 

Thanks,
Surbhi

[AaronL]

Actually, this has already been posted, and a driver that supports 1.19 is available, both directly from Intel and from Microsoft--there is another forum post that provides more detail about this.

So, to confirm, are you saying that any driver supporting 1.19 or later will support 16-byte alignment for HEVC for progressive video and 32-byte alignment for HEVC for interlaced video?

[Surbhi_M_Intel]

Aaron- I checked Intel website earlier today and didn't see on downloadcenter.intel.com, last I checked was 4463. 
Yes, your understanding is correct. 

[AaronL]

I'm pretty sure that 4463 supports 1.19.  I queried it two days ago to make sure.

[Surbhi_M_Intel]

Yeah you got it right, just verified. I was expecting to see it in release notes as well as 15.45 driver as well. 
Like you mentioned in your other post, there is lot of missing information in our release notes. I will discuss this with driver team to improve. Thanks for your continuing feedback, we definitely appreciate it and continue to improve the product. 

Thanks,
Surbhi