Qualcomm working on AV1 support Snapdragon 8 Gen 2: Report

Qualcomm is jumping on the AV1 bandwagon. (Image Credit: Pixabay)

Samsung and MediaTek, two of Qualcomm’s mobile competitors have it, and so does the tech companies like Nvidia and Netflix.

AV1 is a new video codec that is being adopted by companies in the content-streaming and entertainment industries. According to a recent report, Qualcomm is also jumping on the AV1 bandwagon. The Alliance for Open Media developed AV1, a next-generation video codec featuring advanced compression techniques and a royalty-free model. Battery-efficient playback, like most video codecs, is dependent on hardware encoding support, which AV1 lacks. Fortunately, that may change soon, as Qualcomm is apparently aiming to include AV1 compatibility in future Snapdragon Chipsets.

According to reports, Qualcomm plans to include native AV1 decoding in its “upcoming flagship Snapdragon mobile processor.” The chip’s internal codename is SM8550, which corresponds to the model numbers of other Snapdragon 8-series chipsets like the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 (SM8450), the Snapdragon 888 (SM8350), and so on. Protocol further states that the chip would be available “at the end of this year at the earliest,” which fits Qualcomm’s regular release timetable for its high-end mobile chipsets.

Many Android devices can already play AV1 video with software decoding, but hardware-accelerated decoding significantly increases battery life and playback performance.

Netflix, YouTube, and other video platforms have begun using AV1 video wherever possible as it lowers bandwidth requirements for both the content provider and the end-user. Netflix started using AV1 video on the PlayStation 4 Pro and certain TVs in November, and Chrome introduced an AV1 decoder almost a year ago. Netflix adopted AV1 in its Android app in February 2020 to cut cellular data usage for some shows and movies.