Microsoft has announced the release of D3D12 GPU video acceleration in Windows Subsystem for Linux. Hardware acceleration for video decoding and encoding brings several performance and efficiency benefits by offloading video processing from CPU to GPU. As a result, users get increased performance, lower energy consumption, and a higher image resolution.
Hardware-accelerated video processing in Windows Subsystem for Linux is available in any application that uses the VAAPI and Mesa 3D D3D12 backend (Gstreamer and FFmpeg, for example). It requires a Windows Subsystem for Linux version 1.1.0, a Linux distro like Ubuntu 22.04.1 LTS, enabled systemd, and a set of compatible hardware. According to the release post, users need the following PC components to use hardware-accelerated video in WSL:
| Vendor | CPU | GPU | Driver |
|---|---|---|---|
| AMD | Ryzen 4000 or newer | Radeon RX 5000 and newer | 23.3.1 (coming soon) |
| Intel | Iris Xe (DG1) Intel Arc (Alchemist) | 11th Gen Intel Core (Tiger and Rocket Lake) 12th Gen Intel Core (Alder Lake) 13th Gen Intel Core (Raptor Lake) | 31.0.101.4032 |
| NVIDIA | - | GeForce GTX 10 Series GeForce RTX 20 Series Quadro RTX NVIDIA RTX | 526.47 |
If you want to see D3D12 GPU video acceleration in Windows Subsystem for Linux in action, check out the official announcement blog post, where Microsoft lists various use-case scenarios and commands to perform them.