AV1 hardware decoder implementations

[benwaggoner]

As we're on the verge of lots of devices with hardware AV1 decode, I think it's time for a sticky about this in particular.

As Chrome and Firefox explicitly block HEVC decode even if the OS supports it, PC browsers are where AV1 is going to have the biggest improvement delta. Most other platforms (including Edge and Safari) have HEVC today, where the quality @ perf of HEVC and AV1 are pretty equivalent given relative maturity of encoders. While SW encoders do work, performance is going to be a limitation for 4K and 10-bit (which HDR requires). And the lack of HW DRM provides lots of limitations on premium content availability.

The Intel 11th gen Ice Lake CPUs are the first shipping PC implementation. Here's the best analysis of AV1 decode with Ice Lake I've seen: https://www.pcworld.com/article/3576...yzen-4000.html.

I've not seen a test of DRM on Ice Lake, but I imagine it should work, and if it doesn't, a software bug fix is probably sufficient.

tl;dr works great, and as expected.