Hardware acceleration in Linux

Hardware acceleration refers to offloading certain tasks, typically graphical or computational, from the CPU to specialized hardware components like the GPU, video decoder/encoder, or other accelerators. This can greatly improve system performance and efficiency, especially for graphics rendering, video playback, and certain compute-heavy applications.

Types of Hardware Acceleration

1. GPU Acceleration (Graphics)

• Used for rendering GUIs, 3D applications or desktops like labwc, cosmic.

• APIs involved:

  • OpenGL / Vulkan
  • Mesa 3D (open-source graphics library)

2. Video Acceleration (Decode/Encode)

• Useful for smooth playback of high-definition video.

• Libraries/interfaces:

  • VA-API (Video Acceleration API) – Intel, AMD
  • VDPAU (Video Decode and Presentation API for Unix) – NVIDIA
  • NVDEC / NVENC – NVIDIA proprietary decoding/encoding
  • V4L2 (Video4Linux) – General video capture/encode API

3. Compute Acceleration

• Used in AI, ML, and general purpose GPU computing.

• Technologies:

  • OpenCL (open standard)
  • CUDA (NVIDIA-specific)

⚙️ How to Check If It’s Enabled

1. GPU Info

   glxinfo | grep "OpenGL renderer"

2. Video Acceleration Check

   vainfo      # For VA-API
   
   vdpauinfo   # For VDPAU

3. GPU workload check

   intel_gpu_top # For Intel Platforms
   
   nvidia-smi    # For Nvidia Platforms

4. General Acceleration

• Monitor CPU usage during video playback using htop or top.

• If CPU usuage is low, hardware acceleration is likely working.

🎥 Video hardware acceleration support in browsers

1. For Firefox

   • In URL type following:

     about:support # Then scroll down to find Media section to find Codecs supported with Hardware Decoding

2. For Chrome

   • In URL type following:

     chrome://gpu # Then scroll down to bottom to find `Video Acceleration Information`