Two real-time video appliances based on Xilinx‘s Alveo data centre accelerator cards target the computationally intense live broadcast applications, such as live gaming and Twitch audiences, as well as data centres. The video transcoding appliances are based on Xilinx’s Real-time Server architecture and reduce the bandwidth and matching costs for bit rates required by users or viewers.

As audiences for live broadcasts exceed those of conventional channels, the drive to deliver high quality, yet low cost video streaming has intensified. The video appliances will enable service providers to deliver sports and game streaming platforms, social and video conferencing, live distance learning, telemedicine and live broadcast video at the lowest bit rate per channel cost, says Xilinx with savings compared with software-based and fixed-architecture alternatives.

The Real-time Video Appliances are designed for edge and on-premise compute-intensive workloads, characterised by video channel density, high throughput and low latency. A pre-configured High Channel Density Video Appliance and Ultra-Low Bitrate Video Appliance both integrate the Alveo data centre accelerator cards.

The High Channel Density Video Appliance integrates up to eight Alveo U30 acceleration cards (launched at the same time as the Appliances).  The U30 card is is powered by the Zynq UltraScale+ MPSoC. The programmable SoC has integrated video codec and graphics engines for HD video. The low profile U30 card supports both the H.264 and HEVC (H.265) codecs. It is capable of streaming up to 16 1080p30 channels per card.

The second Appliance is the Ultra-Low Bitrate Optimised Video Appliance. This has up to eight Alveo U50 accelerator cards. The 75W, low profile card is built on Xilinx UltraScale+ architecture and includes 8GB HBM2, 100GbE networking and a PCI Express 4.0 interconnect. It is capable of streaming up to seven full-HD 1080p60 channels and eight full ABR ladders (all at x265 medium preset).

One of the advantages of both Appliances is that no FPGA experience is required to integrate them into video applications to achieve multiple video transcoding streams, said Aaron Behman, director of marketing at Xilinx’s data center group. They also offer configurability to meet video quality and bit rates that is not possible with asic-based options, added the company.

Both are built on the FFmpeg framework to allow for rapid replacement of existing software and general purpose GPU-based transcoder infrastructure and provide system developers with a common API. Software partners build applications to run above the standard FFmpeg layer. The HEVC codec is rebuilt from the ground up to control the codec and system integrators can adjust the control and other parameters to optimise video quality and bit rate, according to the application.  to suit the particular end application.  According to the company, both Appliances offer a reduction in cost, footprint, and power for H.264 at 1080p30 resolution by up to a factor of four.

Available in a 1RU rackmount form factor, both Appliances support complete Docker container and Kubernetes management capability.