Amsterdam - Nvidia has introduced Nvidia GPUDirect for Video, a technology that enables industry-standard video I/O devices to communicate directly with Nvidia professional Quadro and Tesla graphics processing units (GPUs) at ultra-low latency.
Nvidia GPUDirect for Video technology is a deterministic way to get video to the GPU for processing, enabling leading video I/O board manufacturers to take advantage of the programmability of the GPU. With GPUDirect for Video, the video I/O card is synchronized with the GPUs, eliminating CPU overhead and, most importantly, reducing latency.
Historically, broadcasters and video production professionals had to contend with delays of as many as 10 frames, an amount visible to the eye, when transferring video from a video I/O device to a GPU, because the two devices could not communicate directly with one another to ensure synchronization. It required application developers to manage complex buffering schemes, leading to unnecessary CPU overhead and increased latency. Most importantly, these delays in aggregate significantly raised the cost and complexity of larger broadcast productions.
Nvidia GPUDirect for Video technology will further advance the growing adoption of GPUs in film, live broadcast, and video production. Companies such as 3Ality Digital, Adobe, AJA, Autodesk, Avid, Binocle, Blackmagic Design, Brainstorm, Chyron, DVS, GenArts, MainConcept, RT Software, Quantel, Sony, The Foundry, Vizrt, plus a growing number of application developers are using GPU computing to accelerate their applications.
With the new Nvidia GPUDirect for Video solution unveiled at IBC 2011, video I/O manufacturers, companies who make their own proprietary hardware, and companies making video switchers can take advantage of these sub-frame, low-latency transfers in their own SDKs and commercial solutions for no additional cost.
Nvidia GPUDirect for Video technology is available immediately, free of charge, directly from Nvidia for video I/O manufacturers, proprietary hardware providers, and video switcher manufacturers.
Video I/O hardware developers can request information and access to the SDK via e-mail (GPUDirectForVideo-registration@exchange.nvidia.com), or they can visit the Nvidia GPUDirect for Video registration page at
http://developer.nvidia.com/gpudirectforvideo.
Nvidia expects commercially available solutions from its partners will be on the market by late 2011. Nvidia GPUDirect for Video is supported on Windows 7 and Linux, and is designed to work with Nvidia Quadro 4000, Quadro 5000, and Quadro 6000 GPUs, and Nvidia Tesla C-Series GPUs.
Nvidia GPUDirect for Video technology is being demonstrated at IBC 2011 in the DVS booth (#7.E25) at the RAI.