Arkona and Manifold Technologies have unveiled Manifold Cloud, a software service-based tier-1 live production infrastructure, at NAB 2023.
Manifold Cloud offers an on-demand configurable pool of shared resources allocated within a private cloud environment, running on COTS FPGA accelerators. It is capable of handling live sports, entertainment and news productions and aims to provide scalability, resiliency, quick deployment and unified control.
The capacity and performance of Manifold Cloud scales linearly depending on how much compute is allocated and utilises COTS FPGA accelerators which takes advantage of the fast development cycles of chip and server manufacturers while at the same time lowering the capex investment required.
Features include:
COTS hardware – 100 per cent software solution utilising FPGA accelerators from multiple COTS vendors.
Scalability – Manifold Cloud scales with the total aggregated bandwidth of all the accelerators in a cluster. As of the current generation COTS FPGAs reaching 1.6 Tbps per RU Manifold Cloud can, for example, handle up to 512 x 3G multi-viewer sources in one RU and continues to scale linearly as more compute is added.
Service based architecture – Each service is dynamically allocated to one of the available hardware accelerators and operators, using a single-sign-on web UI, operators simply request the functionality needed which is then created in Manifold Cloud and presented to the user.
Resiliency – Manifold Cloud services are virtualised on top of the underlying compute hardware and are automatically restored in case of failure.
Integrate legacy systems – Manifold Cloud services can also run on top of arkona AT300 PACs which provide easy ingress/egress to legacy SDI systems while at the same time performing processing services such as multi-viewing or up/down/cross conversion. No need for dedicated SDI gateways that only perform SDI/IP conversion.
Unified control – Simple control through centralised web UI and RESTful API.
Quick deployment with Infrastructure as Code – Easily create Manifold Cloud clusters and create services specific to the demands of a particular production. Save and Load complete cluster configurations to set up complete core infrastructure chains in minutes.
Secure – Rigid security and authentication based on proven IT standards.
Arkona Technologies and Manifold Technologies are represented in Australia, New Zealand and Indonesia by Magna Systems & Engineering.