将HEVC /小时.265关闭数据中心?

的出现 HEVC (又名H.265页)带来了同等程度的宣传和承诺, but one company is questioning whether the use of HEVC in the near term will kill the data center.

QuickFire网络, which makes transcoding platforms for integration with third-party platforms, sees the uptick in mobile video demand—especially around H.265—as a potential "murderer of data centers" when it comes to required computational capacity.

“我们认为移动视频是杀手级应用,迈克·考沃德说, QuickFire首席执行官, "but we think it comes at the expensive cost of having to build more data centers. We see a 50 percent bandwidth reduction possible with H.265, but a 1,000 percent increase in the computational needs to achieve that bandwidth savings."

Coward used an infographic featuring the company's bold claiim (click thumbnail below to view the full infographic) to illustrate his point: Consumers will consume more videos, which drives engineers to suggest scaled-up computational requirements, which in turn puts chief technology and financial officers in the position of having to scramble to find data center space.

点击上图查看全尺寸信息图

“根据一些估计, 当前的数据中心容量被超卖,科沃德说。, "and there are even projections that we'll run out of current data center capacity in the U.S. 在接下来的一年."

虽然科沃德承认1,000 percent computational increase requirement is only for a few scenarios, 他指出了H.H。264被烤成硅，H.265还没有.

“当我们使用参考HEVC编码器时, we found that it took an average latency of 20-30 seconds for a single frame of video to be transcoded,科沃德说。. “虽然我们知道这将随着时间的推移而优化, and the broadcast world may delay the use of HEVC for a number of years, we think data centers will face a bottleneck much sooner, 也许在接下来的9个月内."

Coward's point is well taken: Having worked on MPEG-1, mpeg - 2, 以及MPEG-4电信级解决方案, I've seen firsthand that there was always a window of time between the standard being stabilized in software before it's committed to silicon.

That window could last a year or more—and QuickFire is betting it will take longer, so the company's approach is to provide a denser computational solution platform on which existing transcoding software solutions can ride.

呼叫T-Video转码平台V1100, Quickfire's single-RU box consists of multiple Ethernet connectors (3 x 1 GigE and 2 x 10 GigE SPF) and eleven quad-core Core i7 mobile CPUs.

“我们使用了11颗英特尔酷睿i7 3615QM cpu,科沃德说。, 每个都有一个集成的图形处理器单元. The combination of the quad-core CPU and the integrated GPU lets our platform dramatically decrease one of the big factors in data center cost: power consumption."

While we've not been able to yet verify the claim, QuickFire表示，它的盒子可以通过IP进行100次摄取, simultaneously outputting up to 100 1080p outputs.

"We can bring the power consumption down from 75 watts per transcode to 7 watts per transcode,他说.

Coward says that QuickFire has focused the T-video solution on being a platform solution.

"We're not selling the V1100 as a pre-packaged encoder,科沃德说。. “公司可以在盒子上安装自己的软件."

Coward agreed when I asked if the approach was more like that of 网络引擎, which would create a separate SKU per pre-packaged build for each of its customers. 以那种方式, the competition for QuickFire isn't around the Elementals or other purpose-built transcoders, 而更像是与戴尔的竞争, HP, 和其他刀片服务器制造商.

Vantrix is one company to take advantage of the QuickFire solution, as witnessed by a joint 新闻稿这些公司是在4月份的NAB展会上发布的.

Coward also said the power of the T-video solution is attracting file-based transcoding clients.

"We designed T-Video be a real-time IP-IP transcoder for format conversion and rate adaptation,他说, "but the density we achieved is so high that we're also winning customers for offline file-based transcoding."

鉴于基于文件的转码潜力, Coward says the V1100 has both shared storage and private storage, 后者专用于单个CPU.

"The V1100 has 4TB of shared storage and also has 480GB of private storage for each CPU,他说. "This private storage is intended for operating system, 应用程序, 草稿文件, 本地存储, while the shared storage is mainly for shared media content."

“所有的告诉, we can do around 9TB (480GB x 11 + 4 TB shared) in this 1U appliance, 全配固态硬盘,他补充道. "This brings the cost per stream to about one-fifth of Xeon-based approaches."

Quickfire Networks is showcasing its T-video V1100 this week at 2013年有线电视秀在华盛顿特区.