While I was at SIGGRAPH 2011 in Vancouver a few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to attend a private press meeting with AMD. I met with PR Manager John Swinimer, who introduced me to Alexis Mather, the Chief Technologist and Product Manager of AMD’s professional graphics division. They were very excited to talk about their latest developments with their FirePro professional workstation graphics lineup. I was expecting a vanilla discussion about their recent FirePro cards, but I received something much more special: AMD is entering brand new territory for the company.
Specifically, AMD is releasing the new FirePro SDI-Link cards—revealed on September 9th in Amsterdam, Netherlands—that offer video production studios real-time, GPU-accelerated post production and broadcast pipelines requiring Serial Digital Interface (SDI) input and output. In layman’s terms, these cards allow video from video cameras or servers to be processed and sent along very quickly, which is useful in settings such as video production and live TV broadcast studios.
SDI coaxial cable with BNC type connector.
The key element in the video transmission is the SDI interface. SDI is a family of video interfaces that production studios use to transmit uncompressed and unencrypted video data, and optionally can carry embedded audio and time code data as well. Typically, coaxial cables are employed, which can be up to 300 meters long—plenty long enough for most any TV studio. These cables then hook up to a workstation computer via PCI Express (PCIe) SDI cards and are then processed on specialized graphics cards (the GPUs).
During live broadcasts, studios require a solution that can take video from these SDI cables, run post-production such as flashy 3D motion graphics effects or interactive weather maps, and send it off for broadcasting… all with as little latency as possible. To do this, the GPU and SDI cards have to communicate with each other very quickly. This is where the new FirePro SDI-Link cards come into play.
Currently, there are five major developers of SDI cards: AJA, Bluefish444, Blackmagic Design, DELTACAST, and DVS. In a spark of brilliance, AMD has partnered directly with all five of the major SDI players. Through this alliance, AMD is able to design FirePro SDI-Link cards that are compatible with the SDI cards in order to accept and process the video. The FirePro SDI-Link branded cards are certified to be reliably paired with an SDI card.
An example SDI card by Blackmagic Design.
One of the main benefits from this setup is the flexibility that studios get with the FirePro SDI-Link cards. Because they are compatible with all of the main SDI card makers, studios can choose whichever product setup best fits their needs. Plus, AMD benefits from the name brand awareness that the SDI card makers have with studios. In comparison, existing setups are not nearly as flexible, usually locking studios into proprietary setups.
Another key feature that offers studios even more levels of flexibility is the FirePro’s support for the latest open computing standards, such as OpenCL 1.1 and OpenGL 4.2. AMD has an entire SDK toolkit available for developers to expand upon the card’s functionality. In essence, the FirePro cards are current and can be custom-tailored to whatever setup a studio requires to integrate into their production pipeline.
The technology buzzword that AMD uses to describe how the FirePro SDI-Link cards communicate rapidly with SDI cards is “DirectGMA”, or Direct Graphics Memory Access. In short, this is the solution the FirePro card uses to move data in and out of the GPU directly over the PCIe bus, minimizing latency and bottlenecks. By communicating directly with the SDI card, latency is dropped to the absolutely lowest amount, while the GPU itself is open to handle the intense 3D and visual effects the FirePro lineup is already known for.
During our meeting, Alexis showed me a live demonstration of their first FirePro SDI-Link card, the FirePro V7900 SDI. It was installed in a workstation PC, alongside a SDI card. There were three monitors hooked to the V7900 showing running video: one displayed the source video coming in, the second was the PC’s view, and the third is the reference monitor that shows the live output. Timecodes were displayed on each monitor, and the delay between the source input and reference output monitors was barely perceptible to even my keen eyes: only about 2 frames, which is a tiny fraction of a single second.
The AMD FirePro V7900 SDI itself is closely similar to the standard V7900 card. It features 1,280 stream processors and 2 GB of GDDR5 RAM. It also has four DisplayPort 1.2 connectors, which is a lot to pack into a single-slot card design—especially considering its energy efficient design that keeps it below 150W of power consumption. The V7900 SDI is poised to enter the market in October 2011, carrying with it a MSRP of $2,499 USD.
At the end of the day, this new development is important for two reasons. One, video production and broadcast studios now have more flexible options and the benefits of AMD’s powerful FirePro line of cards. And two, AMD continues to break new grounds by venturing forth into a new marketplace. Personally, I’m excited for AMD. While I will never have a personal use for their SDI-Link cards, I am delighted to know they’re expanding their horizons, and tackling it in a very intelligent way by partnering with existing market leaders.
The FirePro V7900 SDI is a single-slot card, and features four DisplayPort 1.2 connectors.
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