Display Engine, Virtualization and Security Engines

Vega has a new display engine, and with it comes native DisplayPort 1.4 support with high bit rate 3 (32.4 Gb/s), multi-stream transport, and high dynamic range. HDMI 2.0 allows UHD resolution at 60 Hz with 12-bit HDR and a 4:2:0 encoding, while HDCP 2.2 and FreeSync is supported on all DisplayPort and HDMI outputs. As such, the total bandwidth for video transmission along with MST hub support enables Vega GPUs to support even more displays simultaneously relative to Polaris that brought native 4K/120Hz support with it (non-HDR). Add in HDR and Vega now looks like the only option from AMD for 4K/120 Hz and 5K/60Hz displays, although with display technology lagging in terms of implementation in monitors and TVs alike, it will not be a real bottleneck any time soon.

There is something else AMD did here with the display engine, and it is not covered in their slides. Vega has better implemented FreeSync technology support than any other architecture before, and it helps significantly enough, too. Only recently have we seen displays come with a FreeSync range where the maximum and minimum refresh rates have >2.5x a ratio of the two and yet AMD only supported FreeSync Low Framerate Compensation Technology (LFCT) for this 2.5x ratio. A lot of monitors, including the Samsung CF791 AMD is including as part of their Radeon Packs, have a 2x ratio here (48-100 Hz being the max for the CF791, for instance), and Vega brings 2x ratio support for the LFCT, now improving user experiences on the lower end, especially combined with Enhanced Sync as a software solution.


AMD is making a comeback into the server market with their EPYC offerings, so virtualization improvements for Vega were needed too. Vega is able to fully virtualize the GPU, providing up to 16 SR-IOV instances, which provide what looks like a dedicated, own, GPU to virtual machines. In the background, the actual physical GPU will dynamically schedule the workloads, with much higher performance than any tacked-on virtualization solution can provide. Virtualization support has also been added for the video engine, which can be made available to one, none, or all virtual machines, on a one-by-one basis.

Security has seen improvements, too, through the inclusion of AMD's Secure Processor, which we've seen on Ryzen and EPYC first. Besides secure, validated boot, it also offers a secure memory zone, which is used to store HDCP encryption keys or to protect 4K Blu-ray data, which is in-flight.