I recently learned that the i7/i5/i3-7th gen CPUs aren't supported on Linux using the iHD driver. This is unfortunate.
There are two drivers to use QuickSync on Linux. iHD (closed source) and i9n5 (open source). i9n5 works on a wide array of platforms, iHD is more limited (7th gen not supported).
iHD offers a lot more throughput, which is ideal for my embedded product that encodes 4K video. I'd really like to use the powerful GPU that the 7th gen has.
Kabylake support in Intel Media products
"Media Server Studio is not moving support forward to Kabylake architecture (7th Generation Core, Intel® Xeon® E3-1200 v6)."
I urge you to reconsider!
PS: I have ran the iHD on 7th gen, and it works, but there is encoding artifacts. See video here. Just fix the artifacts, and I will be good