Wednesday, August 11th 2021

Tokyo Olympics 8K Broadcast Was Powered by Intel Xeon Platinum 8380H Servers

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Uskompuf
 Discuss (53 Comments)
Intel has recently unveiled that their technology powered the 8K 60 FPS Tokyo Olympics broadcast which was available to select customers in Japan. The games were recorded in 8K at 60 FPS with 4:2:2 Chroma subsampling and 10-bit HDR which resulted in a bitrate of 48 Gbps. This uncompressed stream was then encoded on servers each featuring quad 28 core Xeon 8380H processors and 384 GB of ram into two HEVC distribution streams at 250 Mbps and 50-100 Mbps bitrates. These streams were then distributed to users over the internet where the 8K stream could be decoded and displayed on an 8K TV over HDMI 2.1. Intel used a workstation PC with an 18-core Xeon W-2295 and 64 GB of ram to decode and play the video stream on the TV. This 8K service was only made available to select NHK subscribers in Japan while most international broadcasts offered a maximum resolution of 4K.

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53 Comments on Tokyo Olympics 8K Broadcast Was Powered by Intel Xeon Platinum 8380H Servers

#26
defaultluser
Tsukiyomi91guess it's the many reasons why they chose that particular processor and a particular piece of software that's tuned to take advantage of the processor to encode the recordings efficiently.
No, The most speedup they saw with their paid-for x265 promotion at 4k is 15% (and the medium quality level more likely to be used in real-time drops that down to under 10%!)

networkbuilders.intel.com/docs/accelerating-x265-the-hevc-encoder-with-intel-advanced-vector-extensions-512.pdf

see: Figure 2 . Improvements in fps over Intel® AVX2 (%)

You had to go fishing to find any major improvements when they added AVX2 to x265 for the same reason (because most of the code path is not vectorizable), so this is just a paid advertisement from Intel. You might get it into 20% improvement when you jump that source size up to 8k, but we are still not talking anything really improved over Zen 3's beefy AVX2 units (which you get twice as many of per socket).

Also, enjoy that frequency drop impacting everything else your beefy server is doing; frrom Intel's same paper:
• For server SKUs (like the Intel Xeon Platinum 8180 processor on which we tested), the frequency dip is higher and increases with more cores being active. Therefore, Intel AVX-512 should only be enabled when the amount of computation per pixel is high, because only then is the clock-cycle benefit able to balance out the frequency penalty and result in performance gains for the encoder. Specifically, we recommend enabling Intel AVX-512 only when encoding 4K content using the slower or veryslow preset in the main10 profile. We do not recommend enabling Intel AVX-512 kernels for other settings (resolutions, profiles, or presets), because unexpected inversions with respect to using the Intel AVX2 kernels may result.
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#27
Chrispy_
Vya DomusYep, this is done just to make the whole 8K thing feasible. For a full RGB 8K60 signal you would need to encode 8 GB/s worth of data, there is no way to do that in real time, especially on a CPU.
Hah, the industry is so busy trying to shove 8K up their own ass that nobody's realised that consumers just want ultrawide diplays so that they can watch cinematic content without black bars.

I'd happily go back to a 1080p TV if was ultrawide - 2560x1080p is better than having 25% of my entire screen wasted with black bars and that lower resolution would make 120Hz easier too, useful for 24Hz content like movies as it maps perfectly without the juddery 3:2 framrate pulldown.

Sadly, nobody makes a 2560x1080p television in the ~75" range I'd be interested in - definite gap in the market there...
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#28
trparky
What gets me about all of this is that we're talking about 8K already and we can't even do 1080p without compressing the crap out of it due to lack of bandwidth to people's homes. Most HDTV streams are compressed to what? Six, maybe seven Mbps per stream which if you ask me it looks like shit once you get any serious amount of motion on the screen.

Can we please get 1080p right before we talk about 8K?
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#29
Cheese_On_tsaot
Chrispy_Hah, the industry is so busy trying to shove 8K up their own ass that nobody's realised that consumers just want ultrawide diplays so that they can watch cinematic content without black bars.

I'd happily go back to a 1080p TV if was ultrawide - 2560x1080p is better than having 25% of my entire screen wasted with black bars and that lower resolution would make 120Hz easier too, useful for 24Hz content like movies as it maps perfectly without the juddery 3:2 framrate pulldown.

Sadly, nobody makes a 2560x1080p television in the ~75" range I'd be interested in - definite gap in the market there...
I think most people beyond the buzz words just want image quality, so they go QHD and the few percent go UHD, in pursuit of image quality we argue IPS vs VA vs OLED vs TN vs Calculator vs what shoes we are wearing.
trparkyWhat gets me about all of this is that we're talking about 8K already and we can't even do 1080p without compressing the crap out of it due to lack of bandwidth to people's homes. Most HDTV streams are compressed to what? Six, maybe seven Mbps per stream which if you ask me, looks like shit once you get any serious amount of motion on the screen.

Can we please get 1080p right before we talk about 8K?
Spot on.
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#30
Chrispy_
Cheese_On_tsaotI think most people beyond the buzz words just want image quality, so they go QHD and the few percent go UHD
I wasn't aware of any QHD televisions. I'd buy one in a heartbeat because 1080p can be a bit on the fuzzy side at 65" and 4K is too many pixels for my GPU/bandwidth/eyesight at 100% scaling
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#31
cvaldes
Chrispy_Sadly, nobody makes a 2560x1080p television in the ~75" range I'd be interested in - definite gap in the market there...
My guess is that something like this exists in Asia. If I recall correctly, I've seen this type of ultrawide television in some airport terminals.

Here in the USA 21:9 television sets existed in the mid-2010s like this discontinued model:

www.amazon.com/VIZIO-XVT-21-Cinemawide-58-inch/dp/B008ESGRX4

but the 21:9 form factor disappeared with the failure of 3D TV broadcast.

Much more than movies, live sports broadcasts are a more important factor in determining what technology makes it into consumer electronics. The world has basically settled on the 16:9 aspect ratio for sports.
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#32
Chrispy_
cvaldesMuch more than movies, live sports broadcasts are a more important factor in determining what technology makes it into consumer electronics. The world has basically settled on the 16:9 aspect ratio for sports.
Yeah, agreed, though it wouldn't take much effort to broadcast sports at 21:9 with a 16:9 coverage in the center for 16:9 displays and add rosters/adverts in the edges. Sports and sponsorship adverts are inseperable, and if sidebar adverts reduce game coverage interruptions from full-screen ad breaks then that's a win for everyone too.

I used to say that TVs should be in 16:9 no matter what because that was the common broadcast ratio, but the thing is that broadcast TV is dying off and most of the streaming services use the original 2.35:1 aspect ratios now, making the black bars far more common, if not the norm.
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#33
defaultluser
Chrispy_Yeah, agreed, though it wouldn't take much effort to broadcast sports at 21:9 with a 16:9 coverage in the center for 16:9 displays and add rosters/adverts in the edges. Sports and sponsorship adverts are inseperable, and if sidebar adverts reduce game coverage interruptions from full-screen ad breaks then that's a win for everyone too.

I used to say that TVs should be in 16:9 no matter what because that was the common broadcast ratio, but the thing is that broadcast TV is dying off and most of the streaming services use the original 2.35:1 aspect ratios now, making the black bars far more common, if not the norm.
No, these things are al;ready taking up 3/4 of the screen at the Olympics. Thy are not satisfied with a bottom / side bar for uninterrupted live advertisements.

And most made-for-Streaming movies just play at 16:9.

I don't really see the use case for doubling your TV's width, aside from side-by-side dual feeds (for the truly bored multitasker)
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#34
Tardian
Chrispy_Is it just me or does anything think that 8K with 4:2:2 Chroma subsampling is total garbage and inferior to 4K at 4:4:4

Get the image quality right first, increase resolution only if you can do so without degrading the image.
Almost all video material is filmed at 4:2:2. A friend is the head of the Film & Television facility at a local university. He told me that fact. Apparently, the difference between 4:4:4 and 4:2:2 is small in quality and can only really be seen on professional reference-quality OLED monitors. However, the extra data for 4:4:4 is considerable.
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#35
catulitechup
tokyo olympics use intel for streaming this will be..................................Epyc

:)
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#36
Steevo
AMD Epyc already did 8K 79 FPS 10 bit encoding, as can most professional GPUs made in the last few years, except the Intel ones, they just don’t exist.
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#37
TumbleGeorge
Chrispy_consumers just want ultrawide diplays
Yes after your advertisement of ultrawide $hit every consumer of world want to eat it. This wish exist from times before realisation of very first ultrawide display when peoples didn't known any pieces of information for it.
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#38
Tardian
I want an 8K 3:2 monitor for my photographs.
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#39
Tsukiyomi91
21:9 and 32:9 aspect ratio displays needs to be more mainstream coz I'm tired of looking at 16:9 and the "no one wants it" 5:4 displays.
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#40
TumbleGeorge
Tsukiyomi9121:9 and 32:9 aspect ratio displays needs to be more mainstream coz I'm tired of looking at 16:9 and the "no one wants it" 5:4 displays.
If your tired to watch monitors, get up, go outside of your home and watch real time environment only from your eyes. This is best ever created option.
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#41
Palindrome
trparkyWhat gets me about all of this is that we're talking about 8K already and we can't even do 1080p without compressing the crap out of it due to lack of bandwidth to people's homes. Most HDTV streams are compressed to what? Six, maybe seven Mbps per stream which if you ask me it looks like shit once you get any serious amount of motion on the screen.

Can we please get 1080p right before we talk about 8K?
Exactly my thoughts. At the same time though, I see this as a bit of a Formula 1 scenario: Technology completely over the top and unnecessary, to the point that it's just a showcase of what is possible when you throw loads of money and computational power at the issue. Whether it makes any sense is secondary.
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#42
Tardian
PalindromeExactly my thoughts. At the same time though, I see this as a bit of a Formula 1 scenario: Technology completely over the top and unnecessary, to the point that it's just a showcase of what is possible when you throw loads of money and computational power at the issue. Whether it makes any sense is secondary.
This is why you need a fibre optic broadband internet connection to your home.

In Australia (a third-world country for internet speeds), download speeds can reach 100 Mbps and upload speeds can reach 40 Mbps if you’re on the fastest fibre broadband plan. Yes, we spell fiber differently.
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#43
TumbleGeorge
In my country has relatively cheap 10G internet but this is off topic. Why discuss internet speed? Is so much misery speed is your countries should be not enough to stream 8K with lite compression without quality losses?
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#44
ThrashZone
Hi,
Have to confess I did not watch any of the this years competitions so it could of ran on a potato and I wouldn't care.
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#45
trparky
TardianThis is why you need a fibre optic broadband internet connection to your home.
Good luck with that in the United States, some of us will probably never see fiber to our doorstep. I'm lucky I have fiber to the box at the end of my street and from there it's rotting copper lines where (thanks to how I live so close to it) I get 100 Mbps. Whether AT&T gets off their lazy asses and deploys FTTH in my area is anyone's guess.
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#46
Chrispy_
TumbleGeorgeYes after your advertisement of ultrawide $hit every consumer of world want to eat it. This wish exist from times before realisation of very first ultrawide display when peoples didn't known any pieces of information for it.
I'm not advocating the complete switchover from 16:9 to ultrawide for all users in all scenarios; I just want the choice of ultrawide in the market for those people who are interested.

For gaming and web browsing I'd much rather have 16:9 displays. I'm just annoyed that I can't even find a single ultrawide television for sale.
Posted on Reply
#47
TumbleGeorge
Chrispy_I'm not advocating the complete switchover from 16:9 to ultrawide for all users in all scenarios; I just want the choice of ultrawide in the market for those people who are interested.

For gaming and web browsing I'd much rather have 16:9 displays. I'm just annoyed that I can't even find a single ultrawide television for sale.
Is there television broadcastings which emit 16:9 or more wide?
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#48
Chrispy_
TumbleGeorgeIs there television broadcastings which emit 16:9 or more wide?
Yeah, that was the point of my original post. All the content I'm now watching on TV is filmed at 2.35:1, and that's shown on Netflix/Prime/Disney. I'm even seeing black bars on a 16:9 TV when watching live TV through iPlayer/ITV Hub/4OD etc.

The only media content that is still 16:9 is stuff like news, chat shows, sports. TV series made in the last few years are often ultrawide, all films are ultrawide, even some popular youtube streams are now ultrawide!

I don't think it's unreasonable, as a consumer, to want to buy a device that matches the aspect ratio of the content I'm paying for.
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#49
Vayra86
trparkyWhat gets me about all of this is that we're talking about 8K already and we can't even do 1080p without compressing the crap out of it due to lack of bandwidth to people's homes. Most HDTV streams are compressed to what? Six, maybe seven Mbps per stream which if you ask me it looks like shit once you get any serious amount of motion on the screen.

Can we please get 1080p right before we talk about 8K?
Commercial BS is unstoppable. No. ;)
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#50
Tardian
Vya DomusYep, this is done just to make the whole 8K thing feasible. For a full RGB 8K60 signal you would need to encode 8 GB/s worth of data, there is no way to do that in real time, especially on a CPU.
8K at 4:2:2 can be downsampled to 4K at 4:4:4. So no not garbage. Better than what Hollywood distributes as feature films.
Chrispy_Yeah, that was the point of my original post. All the content I'm now watching on TV is filmed at 2.35:1, and that's shown on Netflix/Prime/Disney. I'm even seeing black bars on a 16:9 TV when watching live TV through iPlayer/ITV Hub/4OD etc.

The only media content that is still 16:9 is stuff like news, chat shows, sports. TV series made in the last few years are often ultrawide, all films are ultrawide, even some popular youtube streams are now ultrawide!

I don't think it's unreasonable, as a consumer, to want to buy a device that matches the aspect ratio of the content I'm paying for.
2.35:1 and wider is what projectors are designed to produce. For best quality use an anamorphic projector lens.

www.panamorph.com/
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