AMD Releases SDI Link
Semiconductor designer AMD just fulfilled the promise made at IBC by shipping its AMD FirePro SDI-Link, a platform for GPU acceleration for live/on-air broadcast graphics and real-time video production/post-production pipelines. AJA, Blackmagic Design, Bluefish444, Deltacast, DVS and Matrox are all partners in the launch.
"The objective is to make the technology address latency and make it cost effective and easy," says AMD Senior Production Manager, Professional Graphics Simon Vivera. "We make it easy for our partners to develop." AJA Video Systems President Nick Rashby, Blackmagic Design CEO Grant Petty, Bluefish444 Managing Director Craige Mott, Deltacast CEO Christian Dutilleux, DVS Senior Production Manager Jurgen Heger and Matrox Senior Director of Sales/Marketing Albert Cieri have all affirmed the significance of AMD FirePro SDI-Link for their customer bases. "AMD FirePro SDI-Link allows AJA customers to benefit from both GPU-based and SDI solutions using AMD FirePro professional graphics and AJA's video I/O products," said Rashby. According to Blackmagic Design's Petty, "By supporting AMD FirePro SDI-Link, our developers will see a revolution in performance combined with extremely low latency when building intense graphics based on video solutions using Blackmagic Design desktop video products and AMD graphic cards." He added, "This will be perfect for broadcasters working in areas such as weather, live news and 3D virtual sets, where high performance graphics and low processing latencies are critical." SDI-Link V7900, one of AMD's new flagship models of its workstation-class professional graphics cards along with the V5900, was launched several months ago without SDI-Link. In addition to being AMD's first professional graphics card to support SDI-Link, the AMD FirePro V7900 SDI card is the first AMD FirePro card designed to address real-time professional video/broadcast graphics' pipelines at the same time it continues to deliver GPU performance to the other offerings in the AMD FirePro professional graphics line-up. FirePro V7900 and V5900 have been demonstrated with partners VizRT, Ventuz and Main Concept.  FirePro 7900 is also the first to leverage AMD DirectGMA (Graphics Memory Addressing) technology for low-latency, high-throughput synchronized data transfer between the AMD FirePro professional graphics and third party devices over the PCIe bus. "SDI Link addresses complexity," adds Vivera. "We work with a gamut of I/O cards and SDI-Link is a compelling value add-on from the low to the high-end." With the SDI-Link upgrade, he explains, broadcasters can simply update existing gear, instead of replacing it.  AMD FirePro SDI-Link includes support for all the latest SDI signal formats including 3G SDI, as well as HDMI, AES-EBU digital audio, advanced SDI metadata, integrated RS-422 and GPIO transport control, as well as flexible support for 3D-stereographic 2K and 4K configurations. SDI-Link is also highly scalable for advanced, synchronized multi-stream applications and features extensive support for advanced APIs such as OpenCL 1.1, OpenGL 4.2 and DirectX 11, as well as a short development time for integrated solutions and maximum compatibility with existing advanced SDI-centric pipelines.
Bottom line: Stay tuned for how the six major partners in AMD's SDI-Link launch make good use of the technology.
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