The growing demand for custom silicon solutions is reshaping how companies address complex computational challenges, starting with video encoding and processing. Purpose-built silicon applications – designed for specific use cases – are at the forefront of this transformation. Nowhere is this trend more evident than in video encoding workflows, where NETINT is a sector leader. Leveraging insights from the PwC “State of the Semiconductor Industry” report and industry trends, this article explores why custom silicon solutions are essential for video processing and how NETINT drives innovation.
The Renaissance of Purpose-Built Silicon
Custom silicon, also known as application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs), kicked off the earliest digital video codec standards, starting with MPEG-2, have entered a new era of relevance. As industries like artificial intelligence (AI), video streaming, and XR/VR push the limits of what software running on x86 CPUs can do, the benefits of custom silicon have become clear:
- Performance Optimization: Tailored to specific tasks, custom silicon delivers higher performance than generic processors by directly addressing specialized workloads, as highlighted by the extensive use of these solutions in AI and video processing.
- Energy Efficiency: Purpose-built designs minimize energy consumption, reduce operational costs, and support sustainability goals – an essential feature for tasks like video encoding, in which advanced codecs like AV1 demand high computational resources.
- Cost Efficiency at Scale: The PwC report emphasizes that custom silicon reduces long-term operational expenses by optimizing hardware utilization and eliminating the inefficiencies of general-purpose processors.
The report underscores the growing importance of custom ICs, noting their increasing role in data center applications. Video processing has emerged as one of these technologies’ most widely deployed use cases, enabling remarkable gains in performance per watt, per dollar, and rack unit.
Video Encoding: A Critical Bottleneck
Video accounts for 60% of global internet traffic, according to Google’s estimates in the PwC report. The demands of streaming platforms to process vast volumes of video data efficiently create significant bottlenecks:
- High Power Consumption: The energy-intensive nature of general-purpose processors leads to unsustainable power usage, especially at the scale required by major video platforms.
- Limited Scalability: Traditional architectures struggle to handle surges in video demand, limiting their effectiveness during peak usage.
- Suboptimal Cost Structure: As outlined in the report, the per-stream costs of generic processors significantly exceed those of custom silicon, underscoring the need for specialized solutions.
Custom silicon solutions alleviate these challenges by delivering hardware optimized for encoding and decoding tasks. This optimization translates into reduced server requirements, lower energy consumption, and a scalable infrastructure that meets modern video streaming technical demands and operational cost targets.
NETINT’s Role as a Pioneer in Video Processing Silicon
NETINT Technologies has emerged as a leader in custom silicon for video processing. By leveraging hardware acceleration and efficiency-focused designs, NETINT’s video processing units (VPUs) redefine cost and energy dynamics in video encoding. The PwC report validates this leadership by highlighting the increasing deployment of purpose-built silicon across major industries. Key aspects of NETINT’s innovation include:
- ASIC-Powered Video Encoding: NETINT VPUs leverage two purpose-built silicon generations to achieve superior real-time encoding performance.
- Support for Advanced Codecs: NETINT’s integration of next-generation codecs like AV1 aligns with industry trends for lower-bitrate, high-quality video delivery.
- Energy Efficiency: ASICs used by NETINT reduce energy consumption significantly compared to traditional GPUs, directly addressing the carbon footprint challenges discussed in the PwC report.
- Cost-Effective Scalability: NETINT’s VPUs provide a scalable solution for hyperscalers and CDNs by enabling more streams per server at a lower cost than is available with any other technology. As an example, a single NETINT Quadra Video Server encodes 320 AV1, HEVC, or H.264 1080p30 live streams with broadcast quality.
Industry Validation and Use Cases
The PwC report cites examples of major companies embracing custom silicon to address video processing challenges. Google’s Video Coding Units (VCUs), for example, have drastically reduced server requirements for YouTube, achieving up to 33 times better efficiency than traditional CPU architectures. Similarly, Meta and Tencent have developed custom processors tailored for video encoding, reporting substantial cost and performance improvements.
NETINT’s solutions are aligned with these industry trends. Companies deploying NETINT’s ASICs have experienced:
- Increased Stream Density: The ability to host more concurrent streams per server, thereby enhancing operational efficiency. A whopping 80 4K live streams are supported on a 1RU server.
- Reduced Total Cost of Ownership (TCO): Hardware optimization lowers capital and operational costs. NETINT VPU adopters experience up to an 80% reduction in OPEX, energy consumption, and CAPEX.
- Enhanced Video Quality: Consistently high-definition streaming at optimized bitrates, ensuring superior end-user experiences.
Driving Innovation with AV1 and Beyond
The PwC report emphasizes the growing significance of advanced codecs like AV1, which can substantially improve compression efficiency. However, encoding AV1 remains computationally intensive in software using open-source encoders like SVT-AV1, making ASICs indispensable for real-time streaming applications.
NETINT’s VPUs stand out by providing robust support for AV1, addressing the challenges highlighted in the report. Key benefits include:
- Reduced Bandwidth Costs: By enabling high-quality video at lower data rates, NETINT’s AV1-capable ASICs directly address the bandwidth challenges streaming platforms face.
- Future-Proof Solutions: NETINT customers’ early adoption of AV1 positions our VPUs to lead in support for the next generation of streaming standards.
Competitive Advantage: Faster and more efficient AV1 encoding capabilities distinguish NETINT from competitors reliant on less advanced implementations.
The Environmental Impact of Custom Silicon
The transition to custom silicon architecture represents an advancement in addressing the environmental challenges the fast-growing video streaming industry poses. As global video consumption surges, with streaming services accounting for an estimated 80% of internet traffic, the environmental impact of video processing has become a critical concern.
Video streaming’s energy footprint stems from multiple sources: the computational power required for transcoding, the energy needed for data transmission, and the substantial cooling requirements for data centers. While flexible, traditional CPU/GPU-based video processing solutions are often inefficient from an energy perspective, consuming significant power and generating excess heat.
NETINT’s Video Processing Units (VPUs) approach this challenge through several key innovations:
Optimized Power Efficiency:
- The purpose-built silicon architecture of NETINT VPUs achieves up to a 90% power reduction compared to software-based encoding solutions.
- Dedicated hardware accelerators handle specific video processing tasks with minimal overhead, and the improved performance-per-watt ratio directly translates to reduced operational costs and carbon emissions.
Thermal Management Advantages:
- Optimized circuit design reduces heat generation during video processing. Lower thermal output means reduced dependency on energy-intensive cooling systems.
- More stable operating temperatures contribute to extended hardware lifespan, while compact form factors enable better airflow and thermal management in data centers. The technology aligns with the ITU-T L.1470 standard for ICT companies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The impact of these improvements extends beyond individual installations. As major streaming platforms and content providers adopt more efficient video processing solutions, the cumulative effect on energy consumption becomes substantial. This is particularly relevant as the industry faces pressure to address its environmental impact while managing exponential growth in video traffic.
The role of custom silicon in sustainable video processing will become even more crucial as new video formats (8K, HDR, VR) emerge, each requiring more processing power. NETINT’s approach demonstrates how purpose-built hardware can help decouple video processing capability from environmental impact, supporting technological advancement and sustainability goals. Providing a concrete path to reduced energy consumption helps organizations meet their environmental, social, and governance (ESG) commitments and maintain subscribers’ high-quality video delivery experience.
Looking Ahead: Opportunities for NETINT and Custom Silicon
As the PwC report outlines, the semiconductor industry will surpass $1 trillion in annual revenue by 2030, driven by custom silicon applications across diverse industries. For NETINT and its customers, this presents significant opportunities.
Custom silicon solutions are no longer optional in today’s data-intensive world; they are essential for meeting the demands of modern video processing and encoding. NETINT is leading the charge in this transformative industry by delivering high-performance, energy-efficient, and cost-effective ASICs. As streaming platforms continue to scale and evolve, NETINT’s innovative technologies will play a pivotal role in shaping the future of video encoding and processing.
Schedule a meeting to learn how NETINT VPUs can enhance live streaming with energy-efficient, scalable solutions.
