Summer time is the perfect chance for people to hit the road with their families and see the sights. Roadtrips have been a North-American tradition for decades. They always sound like a good idea when you head out, but by the third day of “Are we there yet?” the parents usually want to strangle someone. There was a clear trend this year however: instead of seeing 100$ DVD players strapped in front of children’s faces, I saw lots of iPads in their place. I was also guilty of this. Playing video on a tablet is just so much easier than shuffling through DVD discs, the custom battery charger, carrying an extra gadget. And most importantly, the screen is a lot bigger. But this isn’t an ad for Apple. The same would have been true for any tablet. In fact, less expensive tablets will probably start showing up more frequently, attached to headrests in cars everywhere in lieu of cheap DVD players.
Fast-forward a few years, and what do you think we’ll see? Those same tablets will have pervasive 3G/4G connections. And those same kids will grow up a little. Within 1-2 years, I’m convinced we’ll see the proliferation of “backseat …
The title of this blog can be taken in two ways; firstly as a reflection of the undeniable uptake in video demand (Infonetics Research Newsletter) and secondly, an oblique reference to the fact that the ubiquitous X86 is no longer the best fit for today’s demanding video applications. Quite latterly the x86 is running hot, white hot in fact, due to the ever increasing demands made by real-time video transcoding.
How could this be?
Well let’s first consider that video, thus far, has largely been an on demand service, i.e. stored then streamed as required. This is unlike voice that not only has to be real-time but also low latency. Consequently the underlying supporting infrastructure equipment has to be different. Voice leverages the agile real-time benefits of the DSP, while video hitches a ride on the standard X86 server platforms already used by the internet.
However, this is rapidly changing as the proliferation of mobile video and video conferencing creates the need for real time video also. Given that a single 1080P video channel takes as much processing power as say 1000 channels of voice! At least two issues come to mind; processing speed and network bandwidth.…
