XILINX ALVEO MAKES VIDEO ZOOM

摘要

The increasing use of live-video streaming to support remote learning, social networking, surveillance, and work from home is driving Internet service providers to boost their networks' bandwidth and capacity. Xilinx is addressing this trend by introducing two real-time-server reference architectures based on its Alveo U30 and U50 accelerator cards. Both designs focus on live-video-transcoding efficiency rather than video-on-demand services, which distribute pre-encoded content. The Alveo U30 and U50 implement adaptive-bit-rate (ABR) transcoding technology the company acquired by purchasing NGCodec in 2019. The transcoders take live HEVC- or H.264-encoded video and apply decoding, scaling, and re-encoding in a so-called ABR ladder to produce output video at lower resolutions and a choice of frame rates. The new Alveo reference designs add to the Xilinx lineup of server-accelerator cards (see MPR 2/18/19, "Xilinx Delivers Server Acceleration"), extending the customer base from cloud-service providers (CSPs) to enterprises. Telemedicine, for example, is a growing enterprise application that allows physicians to videoconference with patients, avoiding physical office visits.