At IBC 2014, which took place from 12 to 16 September in Amsterdam, Artesyn Embedded Technologies announced the SharpStreamer add-on acceleration card that enables content owners, broadcasters and service provider networks to speed the deployment of high density video transcoding and multiscreen delivery. Using the standard PCI Express form factor, Artesyn’s SharpStreamer offers quick and scalable integration with standard server architectures to meet the demands of service providers and operators who want to use existing servers and cloud infrastructure to support new video transcoding and adaptive bitrate delivery platforms.
SharpStreamer acceleration is easily deployable and does not constrain broadcasters and operators to dedicated equipment in order to monetise OTT streaming content. It also enables networks to scale as subscriber numbers increase, by adding more cards and density from small to large servers as needed. Compared to software-only solutions, the SharpStreamer add-on card requires a fraction of the server and operational cost to enable video processing services. This latest addition to Artesyn’s add-on video acceleration card portfolio is focused on the high-density and low power demands of video streaming applications such as over-the-top (OTT) streaming servers, mobile network optimization, content delivery networks (CDN), and broadcast secondary distribution.
As with other add-on acceleration cards in the Artesyn portfolio, SharpStreamer is designed for compatibility with servers from Dell and other vendors. Artesyn is targeting the highest H.264/AVC and H.265/HEVC transcoding density in the smallest footprint. An Artesyn SharpStreamer card is capable of up to 48 streams of 1080p H.264 transcodes, or 4 streams of 1080p H.265/HEVC transcodes. It uses four Intel Core i7-4650U Processors at 1.7 GHz with Intel HD graphics 5000 Graphics supported by 8 GB memory per processor subsystem in a three-quarter length PCI Express card footprint. The SharpStreamer is equipped with a software development kit comprised of the Intel® Media SDK with Intel HD Graphics’ hardware acceleration, monitoring and processor subsystem operating system and management tools for easy integration with server host processing environments.
