What Are the Minimum System Requirements to Build libaom?

Building libaom, the open-source reference software codec library for encoding and decoding AV1 video streams, requires a specific set of hardware capabilities and software dependencies. While the library can be compiled on most modern operating systems, ensuring your environment meets the minimum hardware specifications and has the correct toolchains installed is essential for a successful build. This guide outlines the essential hardware, operating system compatibility, and software prerequisites needed to compile libaom from source.

Hardware Requirements

While libaom can technically be compiled on low-powered systems, the build process—and particularly the subsequent video encoding—is highly resource-intensive.

• Processor (CPU): A 64-bit Intel, AMD, or ARM processor. While dual-core processors can handle the compilation, a quad-core processor (or better) is highly recommended to speed up build times.
• Memory (RAM): A minimum of 2 GB RAM is required for compilation, though 4 GB or more is recommended to prevent out-of-memory errors when building with high levels of parallelism (e.g., using make -j).
• Storage: At least 1 GB of free disk space for the source code, build artifacts, and dependencies.

Supported Operating Systems

The libaom library is cross-platform and officially supports the following environments:

• Linux: Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, Arch Linux, and other major distributions.
• macOS: Version 10.11 (El Capitan) or later.
• Windows: Windows 10 or 11 (using Microsoft Visual Studio, MinGW, or MSYS2).

Toolchain and Software Dependencies

To successfully configure and compile libaom, your system must have several development tools pre-installed.

1. Build Tools

• CMake: Version 3.5 or higher is required to generate the build files.
• Compiler: A C/C++ compiler supporting the C99 standard.
• Linux/macOS: GCC 5+ or Clang 4+.
• Windows: Microsoft Visual Studio 2015 or newer.

2. Assemblers (Crucial for Performance)

Libaom relies heavily on assembly optimizations (AVX2, AVX512, NEON) to achieve viable encoding and decoding speeds. Without an assembler, the build will fallback to generic C code, which is significantly slower.

• YASM or NASM: Version 2.14 or higher is required for x86/x86_64 platforms.

3. Optional Dependencies

• Git: Required to clone the official AOMedia source repository.
• Doxygen: Optional, only required if you intend to generate the documentation from the source code.