New Artesyn SharpStreamer™ Pro Add-On Acceleration Card Boosts Performance

New Intel® microarchitecture enables even higher density video processing for OTT video streaming, mobile network optimization, CDNs, and broadcast distribution in standard servers and cloud networks

Artesyn Embedded Technologies announced its next-generation SharpStreamer™ Pro add-on video acceleration card, which will enable content owners, broadcasters and service provider networks to lower the cost of handling OTT video and speed the deployment of high density video transcoding and multiscreen delivery. Through its support of Intel® Xeon® Processors based on the Intel® Skylake microarchitecture, the SharpStreamer Pro card offers a significant performance and functionality boost in a standard PCI Express form factor for compatibility with industry-standard servers.

The first generation Artesyn SharpStreamer PCIE-7207 card, launched at IBC 2014, is capable of up to 44 streams of 1080p H.264/AVC transcodes, or 4 streams of 1080p H.265/HEVC transcodes. This new SharpStreamer Pro will target 4K and HD HEVC encoding and transcoding requirements in demanding linear broadcast and high-density OTT multiscreen applications. The SharpStreamer Pro 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 infrastructures to support new video processing platforms. Both SharpStreamer add-in cards can also be used in the Artesyn 3U MaxCore™ platform, optimized for hosted cloud and high density deployments and offering a significant reduction in OpEx through power consumption savings.

Linsey Miller, vice president of marketing, Artesyn Embedded Technologies, said: “Our customers have been waiting to take advantage of the video market disruption enabled by Intel’s latest processors which means more dense and open platforms, and significant network cost reductions for operator deployments that scale. With the SharpStreamer Pro, service provider deployments are not hindered by limited deployment options and instead have no limits for how they can be deployed.”

Steve Price, general manager of Intel’s Communications Infrastructure Division, said, “With future Intel® Xeon® Processors on its next-generation SharpStreamer pro add-in card, Artesyn has been quick to position itself to address the infrastructure challenges created by the expansion in network video services.”

The SharpStreamer Pro is equipped with a software development kit comprised of the Intel® Media Server Studio with Intel® HD Graphics’ hardware acceleration, monitoring and processor subsystem operating system and management tools for easy integration with server host processing environments.