By Brian Galante
Weekly Tech Roundup
At IBC2023, Macnica will bring its message of how greater interoperability across two industry standards can open doors to new media workflows, strengthened through expanded integrations with proven and emerging technologies.
Andrew Starks, Director of Product Management for Macnica, says the timing is right as the thirst for stronger interoperability is reaching a new peak as IBC approaches. That includes increased interest in IPMX, a suite of standards developed for the ProAV industry that shares many of the same attributes as SMPTE ST 2110.
IPMX brings new opportunities for media and entertainment companies by providing greater freedom for technology choices, such as the ability to work with asynchronous devices. That alone unleashes a wider universe of media workflows at lower price points.
At Macnica’s IBC stand (2.A58), the IP transport specialist and open-standards evangelist will demonstrate a range of recently introduced solutions that enable new opportunities for SMPTE ST 2110 and IPMX adopters, and introduce new updates that increase throughput, enable connections to more end points, and drive seamless ST 2110 and IPMX acceleration.
“Those who walk onto the Macnica stand will walk away with a greater understanding of how multi-vendor, multi-platform and even multi-gig workflows seamlessly work together when powered through our core IP transport technologies,” said Starks. “Visitors will see our SMPTE 2110 and IPMX solutions interacting with HDMI and SDI sources, condensing entire broadcast and production facilities within our stand. We will also demonstrate the high performance of our M2S SDK for multi-platform streaming scenarios, and how our integration with the Intel N6000 100GbE SmartNIC brings new benefits for network capacity, redundancy and acceleration.”
New Technology Integrations
The M2S SDK is designed as a simple and unified interface for real-time video streams, and enables implementation of software-based or FPGA-accelerated ST 2110 and IPMX systems on general-purpose servers. This provides a great solution for broadcast systems that operate “All-IP” workflows whether deployed on-premises or in the cloud, further empowered by Macnica’s multi-gig workflow capabilities across IP networks.
The M2S SDK can be used with a variety of NIC cards, providing users with more flexibility to build products with optimal specifications. When used with Macnica’s upcoming 100 Smart NIC solution, developers have a bridge to IPMX with scalable hardware and software infrastructure options for 1Gb to 100 Gb networks. Macnica’s 100G Smart NIC solution marries the Intel N6000 SmartNIC network interface controller (NIC) card with Macnica’s FPGA IP Cores to enable high-performance, low-latency ST 2110 and IPMX flows for up to 32 video flows with very low CPU/GPU usage. Macnica will demonstrate how leveraging the Intel N6000 SmartNIC within its high-performance hardware will also support ST 2022-7 “hitless merge”, which enables network path redundancy across advanced media workflows.
Also new for IBC, Macnica will demonstrate how the M2S can interface with Unreal Engine, a high-performance engine best known as a tool in the gaming industry for real-time creation of graphics and special effects. The media and entertainment industry has increasingly adopted these technologies for live production and high-bandwidth video workflows, perhaps most notably for virtual set productions. This is among the latest examples of how Macnica is enabling connectivity to more technologies and end points across the media ecosystem.
“Macnica’s position at the center of open standards ecosystems gives us the perspective to communicate how weaving these standards and components together will create more opportunities to reduce costs, increase revenues, and drive broader interoperability and interaction,” said Starks. “Our message for IBC is that with IPMX standards ratification just around the corner with product development soon to follow, Macnica is an enabling force in the broadcast industry that will helps manufacturers and product developers bring IP media systems to a much broader market.”
Macnica will also show its flagship MPA1000 module, ME10 SoC solution, and IPMX Product Development Kit with open APIs as part of their standards-based technology demonstrations. IBC takes place September 15-18 at Amsterdam RAI.
