A bunch of the official training videos for the Steam Frame leaked, and I couldn’t help but notice the iconic device this dongle is being plugged into. I didn’t buy a Steam Machine because I’ve already got a FW 16 with basically the same specs (and a desktop), it looks like that was a safe choice! Curious that they didn’t use a Steam Machine for demoing the dongle streaming, but oh well, at least I know my device should work just as well!
I wouldn’t read too much in to that. More likely the type of people who design and test the steam frame are also in to a repairable laptop and also have Framework. Was nice to see though.
Well, I’ve had a number of issues with the FW 16’s USB-A ports, such as power delivery and data reliability. So for me, it’s incredibly comforting to know that this should work, as it’s something I planned to do.
I am interested how they handle video output buffers. In case of FW16, the rendering would be done on dGPU, but if the dongle is connected to iGPU out, then they will have to place frames into the buffer, which might cause performance overhead.
Or better yet, dont they have a bespoke encoding pipeline for foviated compression, which i assume won’t run on hardware decoders?
Considering it’s a USB dongle that doesn’t rely on video output support, I believe they have a custom bespoke solution that bypasses the typical igpu dgpu handshake. Moreover, it supposedly only needs USB 2.0 data rates due to their optimizations.
If I had to guess, it borrows some tech from Steam’s remote-play game streaming service, which can utilize both hardware and software encoding depending on hardware support and user preferences. I believe the data route will be dGPU → CPU → dongle as opposed to using external displays which is (afaik) often dGPU → CPU → iGPU → display.
It’s certainly a very interesting choice. Of all the computers they could’ve used for that demonstration, they used a (relatively) small company instead of the giants like Dell, HP, Lenovo, etc.
But, maybe it isn’t too surprising. Both companies seem to have similar goals in their hardware. Pushing Linux instead of Windows, and the idea that YOU should own the hardware you purchased, not the company.
