Parallel performance and energy efficiency of modern video encoders on multithreaded architectures

Abstract

In this paper we evaluate four mainstream video encoders: H.264/MPEG-4 Advanced Video Coding, Google's VP8, High Efficiency Video Coding, and Google's VP9, studying conventional figures-of-merit such as performance in terms of encoded frames per second, and encoding efficiency in both PSNR and bit-rate of the encoded video sequences. Additionally, two platforms equipped with a large number of cores, representative of current multicore architectures for high-end servers, and equipped with a wattmeter allow us to assess the quality of these video encoders in terms of parallel scalability and energy consumption, which is well-founded given the significant levels of thread concurrency and the impact of the power wall in todays' multicore processors.