One might argue that firmware upgrades involving EPROMs and EEPROMs were an early incarnation of a workflow aimed at expanding and amending an electronic device’s feature set—usually without the need to replace hardware components.

The benefits provided by this time-consuming technique pale in comparison to what can be achieved with field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). Lawo’s software-defined IP routing and processing platform was considered a sensation when it was announced about ten years ago. It was the first broadcast-grade unit whose functionality could be changed by uploading different virtual (software) processing modules to its processing blades, effectively turning such blades into an IP gateway, a multiviewer, a JPEG XS compressor, an up/down/cross or color space converter, etc.

Based on the convenience provided by IP, a cluster of such frames can serve as a giant pool of processing resources available to any operator on-premise or anywhere in the world. The multi-award-winning CBC/Radio-Canada facility in Montreal is the perfect example of how clever programming has enabled broadcasters to cut down on the number of processing units without impacting the overall efficiency and flexibility of their workflows.

In fact, Lawo’s .edge SDI–IP gateway with edge processing, which can compress and otherwise process signals before streaming the resulting essences to the IP network, the A__UHD Core audio DSP processing engine, and the Power Core software-defined DSP mixing engine and modular I/O device still rely on the FPGA approach.

Anticipating The Future

While practical for relatively small setups, their architecture will eventually hit a glass ceiling that has nothing to do with the software users upload to them: their hardware components may soon be unable to cope with ever higher processing-power requirements, especially in large setups.

Moreover, increasingly stringent environmental considerations risk becoming a roadblock for operations where minimal energy and space consumption is of the essence. Having all units run 24/7 is becoming difficult to justify, especially if some of them are only there to cope with those relatively rare occasions when the regular processing pool is used up to the hilt.

There is, as yet, no way to remotely switch backup devices on and off. While they are running, however, they consume the full amount of energy, irrespective of whether they are actually solicited. Add to that the challenge of explaining to your controlling department why purchasing hardware with an anticipated idle time in excess of 60% makes sense, and it becomes clear that there has to be a more efficient way.

Of course, new hardware can be designed to keep up with rising production requirements, but this risks becoming a costly affair for vendors and broadcasters alike: developing new hardware requires a lot of manpower that should ideally be working on new software; replacing hardware leads to obsolete devices that need to be disposed of (or sold); and choosing “mission-specific” hardware means that OB trucks and/or vans end up carrying round more hardware than is good for an outfit’s carbon footprint.

Shrink Your Infrastructure

This is why Lawo started contemplating a strategy that would allow operators to use a single hardware platform for anything to do with broadcast and AV productions: video, audio, ancillary services, etc. Only weeks before HOME Apps were officially introduced, the EBU published a white paper that embraced the same idea.

This was a clear indication that broadcasters themselves were already contemplating a usage model that abstracts processing functionality from the hardware it runs on. A second white paper, released in 2024, provided details about why hardware-agnostic processing was considered the future, and how this should ideally be implemented. The reason for advocating an app-based approach was that this would free vendors from the obligation to design both cutting-edge software and the hardware required to compute it.

The latter, it was felt, would slow down development cycles, raise R&D cost, and lead to hardware iterations with a rapidly shrinking lifespan amidst spectacular advances by IT hardware giants regarding IP bandwidth (800Gbps is already on the horizon), the CPU/GPU number-crunching heft and pricing, and ever more sophisticated features. Nor would it lead to a reduction in rack sizes, carbon footprint, energy consumption, or the number of hardware devices operators habitually purchased to cater to occasional usage peaks. In a highly competitive broadcast environment, this is no longer a sustainable option. Decoupling software functionality from the hardware is dubbed the “Second Wave” of the migration to IP.

A generic server platform able to run all processing tasks makes even more sense when the processing functionality resides in so-called software containers and is composed of modular microservices that provide flexible input/output capacity and various compression and transport flavors (ST2110, NDI, SRT, Dante, etc.) that can be mixed and matched.

A second benefit of Lawo’s container and microservice approach is that all HOME Apps have been developed from the ground up to be hardware- and platform-agnostic, without the slightest hint of lifting and shifting technology derived from an all but obsolete environment.

With HOME Apps, users can instantly start the processing they need for the task at hand, switch off apps they don’t need, and leverage the remaining compute capacity for additional tasks. Moreover, fewer IT servers can deliver all required processing compared to an architecture based on a proprietary hardware approach.

Reasons To Be Cheerful

A logical next step of this strategy is that operators can subscribe to the entire portfolio of existing and future apps for use on premise or anywhere in the world, at a highly competitive cost. This service can be charged to your operational expense account and also does away with the need to take out perpetual licenses for apps you only need sporadically.

Lawo’s Flex Subscription model does exactly what it promises: as long as there are unused credits in your virtual wallet, additional instances with differing configurations of apps that are already running (several multiviewers, say), or indeed more apps offering other processing features can be started instantly.

App-based processing, in other words, is an elegant way of providing all required functionality when and where it is needed, at the press of a button. The Flex Subscription model does away with up-front payments for processing capability that may come in handy only every so often. Instead, it allows operators to access currently available apps and all apps that will be released in the future—in any combination and almost any location. Users no longer pay for specific processing functionality but rather for access to a growing pool of applications. This is software-defined in its most refined form.

Idle time ceases to be an issue, because it has been “virtualized”: subscription credits can be used for any HOME App rather than specific titles, so there is no real idle time that eats away credits, which, by the way, do not burn down. Which apps you use is of no consequence to your budget—and the more apps are added to the HOME Apps pool, the merrier your CFO will be.

All of this is managed by an overarching platform that hides the complexity from users who need to achieve a given outcome fast, while also allowing experts to dive as deep as they need. HOME obviously also takes care of storing the settings of all apps for swift recall.

And Now The Twain Shall Meet

Running all apps on the same server platform furthermore means that the long-anticipated convergence of audio and video processing is becoming a reality. Just imagine being able to power your video and audio control rooms with the exact same compute hardware, for maximum agility. In any combination. Expanding or shrinking the feature set or substituting certain aspects, such as input and output formats, is encouraged by a stunningly granular, containerized architecture. Adding more instances when several production tasks need to run concurrently becomes possible without installing additional hardware.

Does such an approach necessarily require generic hardware servers in a datacenter? Not if you don’t like the idea. Operators are free to decide where the apps should run, provided they have seamless migration in their DNA. Run them in datacenters, in server farms anywhere in the world, on a GPU platform such as Nvidia’s Holoscan for Media, etc. The HOME Apps approach turns generic hardware specifications into a commodity that is just “there”.

In a way, decoupling software functionality from the computer hardware sets the processing apps free on a single, unified platform. The apps’ specific functionality seamlessly travels to whatever platform users find most convenient. Being platform-agnostic, finally, the apps always deliver their magic at full throttle.

Last but not least, the microservice nature of HOME Apps means that tweaks and more features can be implemented at short notice—in a matter of days—and become available to all subscribers, without the need to install a new version of an overarching suite, for this concept no longer exists on the granular HOME Apps platform.