AMD has introduced its latest media accelerator, the Alveo MA35D, featuring two 5 nm video processing units (VPUs) that support the AV1 compression standard.
Designed specifically for live interactive streaming at scale, this innovative accelerator is set to power a new generation of low-latency, high-volume interactive streaming applications. With more than 70% of the global video market dominated by live content, these new applications include online auctions, social streaming, watch parties, and live shopping.
The Alveo MA35D boasts high channel density, enabling up to 32x 1080p60 streams per card. It delivers superior power efficiency and ultra-low-latency performance, which are critical for reducing infrastructure costs associated with the delivery of compute-intensive content. Compared to the previous Alveo U30 media accelerator, the Alveo MA35D provides up to 4x higher channel density, 4x lower maximum latency in 4K, and 1.8x greater compression efficiency to achieve the same VMAF score, a commonly used video quality metric.
"We worked closely with our customers and partners to understand not just their technical requirements, but their infrastructure challenges in deploying high-volume, interactive streaming services profitably," said Dan Gibbons, general manager of AECG Data Center Group, AMD. "We developed the Alveo MA35D with an ASIC architecture tailored to meet the bespoke needs of these providers to reduce both capital and operating expenses for delivering immersive experiences to their users and content creators at scale."
Purpose-Built Video Processing Unit
The Alveo MA35D utilizes a purpose-built VPU to accelerate the entire video pipeline. By performing all video processing functions on the VPU, data movement between the CPU and accelerator is minimized, reducing overall latency and maximizing channel density with up to 32x 1080p60, 8x 4Kp60, or 4x 8Kp30 streams per card. The platform provides ultra-low latency support for the mainstream H.264 and H.265 codecs and features next-generation AV1 transcoder engines delivering up to a 52% reduction in bitrate for bandwidth savings versus a comparable software implementation.
"AMD's announcement of the new Alveo MA35D add-in card is an exciting advancement of video acceleration for data centers and is an important step in building out a fully-fledged ecosystem to support royalty-free, high-definition video devices, products, and services," said Matt Frost, Alliance for Open Media Chair. "Live streaming providers are looking for higher density, lower power, lower latency AV1 solutions and by addressing these, Alliance members such as AMD are helping facilitate AV1 deployment and overall adoption."
AI-Enabled, Intelligent Video Pipeline
The accelerator features an integrated AI processor and dedicated video quality engines designed to improve the quality of experience at reduced bandwidth. The AI processor evaluates content, frame-by-frame, and dynamically adjusts encoder settings to improve perceived visual quality while minimizing bitrate. Optimization techniques include region-of-interest (ROI) encoding for text and face resolution, artifact detection to correct scenes with high levels of motion and complexity, and content-aware encoding for predictive insights for bitrate optimization.
Cost-Effectively Scale Interactive Media
Scaling high-volume streaming services requires maximizing the number of channels per server while minimizing power and bandwidth-per-stream. By delivering up to 32x 1080p60 streams per card at 1 watt per stream, a 1U rack server equipped with 8 cards delivers up to 256 channels to maximize the number of streams per server, rack or data center.
Software Dev Kit and Product Availability
The platform is accessible with the AMD Media Acceleration software development kit (SDK), supporting the widely used FFmpeg and Gstreamer video frameworks for ease of development.
Alveo MA35D media accelerators are sampling now with production shipments expected in Q3. To accelerate development, an Early Access Program is available to qualified customers with comprehensive documentation and software tools for architectural exploration.
For more information, visit the product page.
