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1 BEYOND ANNOUNCES HD OctoFlex™, THE INDUSTRY'S FIRST 8 PROCESSOR PROFESSIONAL VIDEO WORKSTATION FOR WINDOWS XP Somerville, Mass. (April 10th, 2006) — 1 Beyond, Inc., a leading provider of digital video editing, compositing and storage systems today announced the 1 Beyond HD OctoFlex™™, the industry's first 8 processor professional video workstation capable of running Windows XP applications. The 1 Beyond HD OctoFlex™ is available immediately and will be shown for thefirst time at NAB 2006 at the 1 Beyond booth (number SL942).
The 1 Beyond HD OctoFlex™ is the only 8 processor workstation on the market to support the latest Windows XP professional applications that are widely used by editors and graphic artists. Other systems are only capable of running Windows Server 2003, which most professional video and graphics software will not support. Available immediately with prices starting at just $9,995, this powerful system is capable of handling the most power hungry applications such as uncompressed 2K and 4K film, multiple layers of complex uncompressed real-time effects and high resolution uncompressed HD projects. "The new breed of professional video software is all about power," explains Terry Cullen, 1 Beyond's Founder and CEO. "Whether it's extra power to run multiple video streams and effects in real-time, or power to reduce render times, or power to enable faster compression, or all three, the new 1 Beyond HD OctoFlex™ system can do it all, faster. It gives users unmatched processing speed, which in turn fosters their creativity, increases productivity and shortens their projects' turnaround time.". A recent customer test of the 1 Beyond HD OctoFlex™ with Matrox Axio LE card yielded 10 layers of uncompressed SD calculating 9 picture-in-picture windows and still had over 50% of the processor power left for additional layers, graphics and effects, all in real-time. Like all other members of the 1 Beyond Pro HD Flex™ line of systems, the 1 Beyond HD OctoFlex™ system is totally customizable to meet the exact workflow needs and budgets of users. Certified hardware includes BlueFish444, BlackMagic, Matrox Axio and others. Customers can chose different types of chassis (tower, rack, or double-wide), select from a wide range of editing and effects software, including Adobe Video Studio Suite, Alias Maya, Avid Xpress HD, Avid Softimage|XSI, Autodesk combustion and 3ds Max, Boris Blue, Canopus Edius, Sony Vegas, Eyeon Digital Fusion, and more. Storage options include up to 10 removable internal drives and external SCSI, SATA2, Intelligent SATA2, and Fibre Channel.
About 1 Beyond For further information,
please contact: ADDENDUM: What is a computer processor and what are the benefits of having 8? Is Windows XP correct when it indicates "8 processors" in "My Computer / Properties"? At the risk of further fueling this debate on proper terminology, this paper attempts to clarify, at least from the perspective of one 20+ year veteran of the computer and semiconductor industries, the significance of these new developments. What is a processor? There are two ways to define processor.
In the 60’s when the microprocessor was invented, there was no confusion or debate on this definition because they were one in the same. The geometrically increasing density of semiconductors led to Moore’s Law about increasing processor power. Many found it hard to believe that Moore’s Law would even continue for single (already extremely complex) processors, and very few had the vision that it not only would hold but lead to multiple processors on the same silicon chip. These beliefs led to the commonly held view that there is a correlation between one processor, one piece of silicon and hence one socket. It took more than two decades of geometrically increasing semiconductor density to allow the vision and first designs with 2 processing units on the same piece of silicon. Now with multiple processors on one piece of silicon that plug into one socket being common, and the industry assigning various marketing and branding terms to this phenomenon, there is considerable confusion. Consider the following explanation. To understand and see the benefit of multiple processors, you must examine the purpose. Compute bound tasks have lead to multithreaded software. This is software that is written with multiple parallel execution paths i.e. where more than one "line of code" can be calculated or executed simultaneously. Since the advent of multi-processors that can take advantage of it, multithreaded software is now commonplace. Now, the combined benefits for compute bound applications (like video processing) as well as true multi-tasking operating systems are well known. If a computer can execute multithreaded software with simultaneous execution of instructions in parallel, it is considered to have multiple processors, i.e. it can process multiple instructions simultaneously and independently. This is of course is different than earlier attempts called "time-slicing" i.e. switching between two threads but executing only one at a time. A computer must have simultaneous, independent processing of instructions to be considered a true multi-processor computer. Time-slicing does not improve processing time, multi-processing definitely does. To argue that one piece of silicon in one socket is the same no matter how many processing units are on the silicon, is to argue there is no benefit to multithreaded software running on Dual Core or Hyperthreaded (industry marketing terms) CPU designs. This is proven in endless benchmarks, not to be the case. There clearly are benefits to multiple processing units executing multithreaded software. Otherwise software companies would not go to the expense of developing this much more complex and costly software. Specifically, on the 1 Beyond HD OctoFlex, the reason when Windows XP boots up it says "8 processors" found, is because it has confirmed that there are in fact 8 processing units capable of computing simultaneously. These independent processors are available for any software designed to run up to 8 multithreads, which thankfully most compute intensive video SW is designed to do. Further, the reason that Windows XP shows 8 graphs in its processor performance monitoring tools, is to allow interrogation of how many processors are processing independent software threads, operating simultaneously and at what power levels. Do multiple processors make a difference? Of course they do. Are 2 faster than 1 or 4 faster than 2? The answer again is proven in endless benchmarks to be yes. At the current state-of-the-art, all benchmarking of 8 processors verses 4 indicates even further substantial improvements in performance. The good news is that whether you choose to call them processors or units or whatever marketing non-sense term, if you’re editing, compositing, compressing or all three, we all win big-time from the improved performance and productivity. Terry Cullen, CEO and Founder of 1 Beyond, Inc.
Figure 1. A screen shot of 1 Beyond HD OctoFlex running 10 layers of Video with Axio LE – Note: All 8 processors are being used (see graph lower left) with plenty of power left, more than 50% average of all 8 processors is still available for more layers and effects.
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