AMD Alveo MA35D Media Accelerator Introduced
The AMD Alveo MA35D Multimedia Accelerator has been unveiled by AMD, featuring a specialized ASIC architecture and a video processing unit (VPU) that has been optimized for high-density and "ultra" multimedia streaming with minimal latency, ideal for live performances. According to AMD's testing, the Alveo MA35D is expected to provide notable advantages for a novel category of low-latency streaming applications, all while lowering infrastructure expenses.
AMD Alveo MA35D: Accelerator card that starts the AV1 era
Alveo MA35D's VPU is designed to "accelerate the entire video pipeline," AMD said. Minimizing data transfer between the CPU and accelerator is possible because the PCIe card is capable of handling all video processing tasks within the dedicated VPU. As a result, the total latency is greatly reduced and the channel capacity can be maximized, allowing each card to handle up to 32 1080p60 streams, 8 4Kp60 streams, or 4 8Kp30 streams.
The Alveo MA35D provides a channel density that is up to 4x greater and a latency that is up to 4x lower in 4K when compared to the previous generation (Alveo U30), AMD says, delivering 1.8x higher compression efficiency while getting the same VMAF score. VMAF is a commonly used full-reference objective video quality metric developed by Netflix.
AMD's new media platform supports the most popular video codecs (H.264 and H.265) while supporting next-generation AV1 codec to deliver up to 52% lower bitrate binary for remarkable bandwidth savings at the same perceived video quality.
The director of Alliance for Open Media, Matt Frost, believes that the Alveo MA35D expansion card is a significant milestone towards building a complete ecosystem that will support open-source high-definition video devices, products, and services with their rights intact.
As dictated by the latest technology trends, Alveo MA35D also provides an integrated AI processor designed to improve the quality of experiences with reduced bandwidth. The 'intelligent video pipeline' powered by AI, assesses content frame by frame to adapt encoder settings dynamically. This process enhances the perceived visual quality while reducing the bitrate.
Alveo MA35D was designed to help enterprises maximize the number of channels per server while minimizing power and bandwidth per stream, AMD said. A 1U rack server with 8 cards can deliver up to 256 1080p60 channels (32 1080p60 streams per card) at 1 watt per stream, delivering significant efficiency per server, rack, or data center.
Software Development Kit and Product Availability
Thanks to the support provided by the AMD Media Acceleration SDK, the developers can easily create applications for the platform using the widely used FFmpeg and GStreamer video frameworks.
The Alveo MA35D media accelerators are already being tested and production shipments are scheduled for the third quarter. To speed development, qualified customers have an early access program with comprehensive documentation and software tools to explore the architecture. The accelerator card is priced at $1,595.
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