IDF 2015

At IDF in San Francisco last week, Intel provided us with lots of insights into Skylake, the microarchitecture behind the 6th generation Core series processors. Skylake marks the introduction of the Gen9 Intel HD Graphics technology. In advance of our full Skylake architecture analysis (coming soon), I wanted to get a head start and explain the media side (including Quick Sync and the image processing pipeline) of Skylake in a separate piece. Media Capabilities and Quick Sync in Intel HD Graphics - A Brief History Quick Sync has evolved through the last five years, starting with limited hardware acceleration and usage of the programmable EU array in Sandy Bridge. The second generation engine in Ivy Bridge moved to a hybrid hardware / software solution with rate...