Hardware Acceleration Arrives in OpenBSD, Ending Long Wait
OpenBSD, a Unix-like operating system and a successor of the BSD system, has long lacked support for hardware acceleration. While this omission has little impact on server users, it significantly affects the user experience for desktop users.
Browsers and other software relying on Chromium or WebView rendering require hardware acceleration to enhance performance. Watching videos without hardware acceleration means relying solely on the CPU for software decoding, which not only hampers performance but also reduces battery life.
Now, OpenBSD finally brings hardware acceleration support. In the latest major update, the project team has introduced video acceleration (VA-API) to OpenBSD. This functionality allows the GPU to handle hardware encoding and decoding, eliminating the need for CPU-based software decoding.
Libva, an implementation of VA-API, is an open-source library and API specification used to access GPU hardware acceleration features. It consists of a main library and specific driver backends for each supported hardware.
OpenBSD has now integrated the libva 2.22.0 open-source library. Libva, along with the Intel user-space driver from the ports tree, has been incorporated into Xenocara. AMD graphics cards require Mesa support, so it is included in the base system.
Following this update, OpenBSD desktop users should experience a noticeable performance improvement when watching videos using browsers such as Chrome or Firefox. However, ensure that the browser’s hardware acceleration feature is enabled.
- For Chrome: Navigate to Chrome settings, System, and enable the “Use graphics acceleration when available” option to use hardware acceleration. Restart the browser to activate hardware acceleration.
- For Firefox: Go to Firefox settings, General, Performance, and check the box for “Use recommended performance settings.” After enabling this option, restart the browser to apply hardware acceleration.
