NAB Show: Liqid Delivers Maximum GPU Flexibility and Fast Storage for M&E

Liqid, Inc. is bringing its adaptive GPU platform and the world’s fastest NVMe storage (1) to M&E professionals at 2022 NAB Show.

Its software-defined approach to resource management accelerates time-to-results for challenging workflows across the production pipeline, while maximizing resource utilization for a more efficient infrastructure footprint. For content creators, video editors, producers, streaming platform providers, and others working in the M&E space, solutions based on Liqid Matrix software enable users to deploy previously impossible amounts of GPU and NVMe storage in minutes, vs. having to physically alter hardware configurations. Firm’s software-defined solutions also enable these and other accelerator resources to be portioned out via Matrix in exact amounts via a simple pane-of-glass GUI, increasing utilization and system performance while reducing overall costs for the most efficient content production vs. demanding deadlines.

“Whether you’re a mega-studio or a small VFX shop, you’re facing some of the same hardware challenges you’ve been up vs. for the last 20 years. The most advanced GPU servers and disk-based storage solutions are limited by their form factor, trapped and underutilized,” said Nader Soudah, VP, global channel. “Liqid Matrix-based solutions remove those physical limitations with breakthrough software that delivers significant cost savings and time-to-value for producers, but just as importantly, give time back to creators and crews, whether they’re rendering dailies on set, building the next VFX marvel at a workstation, or working magic in an editing bay.”

Modern M&E projects are data-intensive, and capturing, rendering and producing content on traditional, disk-based storage systems and static GPU infrastructures wastes valuable time which consumes already tight budgets and threatens already tight deadlines. With the rate of data only continuing to grow, M&E pros need a new way to manage data that accelerates time to value.

Solutions based on Matrix software enable users to:
• Improve Composite and Tracking: Extend cache to more than 16TB, allowing compositors to work in real-time with native 8K (film) resolutions.
• Support Virtual Production: The company brings a powerful solution to Virtual Production by providing servers access to the exact number of GPU resources required for rendering and only for the amount of time they need.
• Enable Interactive Video Editing: Due to large capacity requirements editors get the best results by using Liqid SSDs as a new tier of memory that works as a midpoint between RAM and storage.
• Seamless Data Acquisition: With write speeds of 6.3GB/s and read speeds of 7GB/s firm’s SSDs capture at a high-speed making it for fast and high-resolution camera data as well as data transcoding/encoding.
• Enable Faster 3D Content Creation: The high throughput and low latency can accelerate any “load on the fly” situation as well as regular “save and load” operations.
• Accelerate Procession (Rendering/GPU): Vendor’s SSDs provide high throughput and low latency allowing GPUs to work at peak performance for image processing like encoding/decoding or image analysis.
• Improve Pipeline/Project Management: With company’s high throughput and low latency devices you can host the metadata (database portion) on firm’s device and benefit from fast response times.
• Accelerate Day-to-Day Applications: Mystica, Nuke, AfterFX, Premiere, Resolve, and Fusion benefit from the ability to match granularly match high-performance accelerators to workloads via Matrix software.

A variety of solutions based on Matrix software are available to suit today’s requirements for data performance, while offering a way to grow infrastructure on demand, as required.

With Matrix-based solutions, users can architect a digital production system that delivers:
• Maximum GPU Flexibility: Quickly compose up to 16 GPUs to compute nodes via Matrix CDI software to meet exacting performance demands with the turnkey Liqid ThinkTank system. Move under-utilized GPUs to other compute nodes in real-time to satisfy shifting workload requirements, unlocking new levels of agility and efficiency.
• World’s Fastest Storage: The LQD4500 NVMe SSD, aka the HoneyBadger, outperforms legacy storage solutions by delivering up to 4 million IO/s of random performance, and over 24GB/s of throughput, and low transactional latency.

“In the age of high resolution media creation, studios, producers, 3D and video artists understand that content must be created faster than ever and distribution must be free of interruption for a seamless audience experience, whether it’s at a massive sports arena, a state-of-the-art IMAX or on the screen of a handheld device,” said David Bitton, global director, M&E, Hypertec Group, Inc., an IT solution and services provider and Liqid channel partner, with specialization in vertical markets such as M&E, finance, and service provider.

“As consumer habits change, this is only more urgently relevant, which is why software-defined solutions like those provided by Liqid are becoming essential to today’s production facilities, accelerating creative tools for artists while improving performance of everything from video editing on multiple 4K streams, rendering dailies to streaming content,” he added.

How the University of Illinois at Chicago built the Liqid Matrix CDI platform into the core of its state-of-the-art visual computing lab?

(1) Source: StorageNewsletter, Fastest SSDs, at More Than 7GB/s Read Transfer Rate, April 2022