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Cable Technology Feature Article

April 16, 2014

Artesyn Embedded Technologies Debuts SharpCaster Accelerator Engine

By Jyothi Shanbhag, TMCnet Contributor


Operators looking out for a broadcast video accelerator that delivers the maximum density solution with no compromise in video quality, now have an option to consider Artesyn Embedded Technologies’ newly released SharpCaster video transcode acceleration engine.

This new platform helps users to easily and quickly roll out broadcast video applications on standard servers at very minimal cost.  Also, using a standard off-the-shelf PCI (News - Alert) Express form factor, the SharpCaster accelerator is easily deployable in off the shelf platforms, which can advance broadcast application development.

Additionally, the new SharpCaster accelerator gives required density and other features such as tiered motion estimation with large search ranges, all available mode decisions, and up to 80 Mbps Context-adaptive binary arithmetic coding (CABAC).

Artesyn's SharpCaster accelerator can be used with broadcast and streaming equipment such as encoders, transcoders, video on demand (VOD) playout servers, and video content delivery network (CDN) servers, said the company officials.

Lindsey Miller, director of marketing for server acceleration, Artesyn Embedded Technologies, said, "With the shift to IP and cloud deployment, there is a growing preference by operators for broadcast solutions based on standard servers, with no dedicated hardware.”

Miller said that Artesyn's SharpCaster video transcoder addresses the growing need for rapidly deployable transcoding engines that can support multiple formats and end points and it offers the channel density and feature capability to accommodate multiplatform -- both traditional and multiscreen -- large scale distribution at higher resolutions.

Because it is a half-length, full-height PCI Express card, Artesyn's SharpCaster accelerator is universally-deployable in a variety of 1U and 2U standard servers. With interfaces for both PCI Express and optional SDI input connectors, the Artesyn SharpCaster accelerator enables access to both baseband video and transport streams.

The company predicts that the customers adopting the new SharpCaster accelerator platform can achieve development savings of at least $500,000 and above that the time saving of nine months or more.




Edited by Maurice Nagle


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