HONG KONG, CHINA--(Marketwired - Sep 23, 2014) - Artesyn Embedded Technologies announced the SharpStreamer™ add-on acceleration card that enables content owners, broadcasters and service provider networks to speed the deployment of high density video transcoding and multiscreen delivery. Using the standard PCI Express form factor, Artesyn's SharpStreamer offers quick and scalable integration with standard server architectures to meet the demands of service providers and operators who want to use existing servers and cloud infrastructure to support new video transcoding and adaptive bitrate delivery platforms.

Compared with dedicated appliances, SharpStreamer acceleration is more easily deployable and does not constrain broadcasters and operators to dedicated equipment in order to monetize OTT streaming content. It also enables networks to scale as subscriber numbers increase, by adding more cards and density from small to large servers as needed. Compared to software-only solutions, the SharpStreamer add-on card requires a fraction of the server and operational cost to enable video processing services. This latest addition to Artesyn's add-on video acceleration card portfolio is focused on the high-density and low power demands of video streaming applications such as over-the-top (OTT) streaming servers, mobile network optimization, content delivery networks (CDN), and broadcast secondary distribution.

Linsey Miller, director of marketing for server acceleration, Artesyn Embedded Technologies, said: "Our customers' desire for achieving video transcoding as a Virtual Network Function (VNF) on standard servers was the impetus behind this product. Broadcast OEMs and service providers can now use off-the-shelf hardware to solve problems that previously could only be solved by costly in-house design or an impossibly large footprint of servers. They can also focus resources on innovating their value-added software, and not hardware, gaining a critical competitive advantage. "

At IBC 2014, Artesyn's SharpStreamer card has been built into a demonstration system in booth 14.G17 and in the Intel Corporation booth (14.L20) in conjunction with technology partners Intel and Vantrix. The demonstration shows the capability of the SharpStreamer card to provide dense video processing for 4K UltraHD video as well as multiscreen adaptive bitrate (ABR) delivery to serve multiple end-devices using both H.264/AVC and H.265/HEVC codecs in broadcast and wireless service provider networks. To demonstrate the add-on card approach to reach high density on standard servers, Artesyn is demonstrating the SharpStreamer card in a Dell R620 1U server, capable of delivering 36 1080p streams with a single PCI Express card running the Vantrix OTT VOD and Live flexible, software-defined, virtualized media platform.