Lawo A__UHD Core – Ultra-high Density IP DSP Engine
Posted on: Wednesday 19th of September 2018
The UHD Core is a network-based, software-defined audio DSP engine with huge processing density “elevating mc² 56 and mc² 96 consoles to the next dimension”. The IP network is used as “an extended backplane of the mixer core”, so that A_UHD Core can be arranged spatially freely in the network. Its processing density is sufficient for up to 1024 channels at a sampling rate of 48kHz. At 96kHz, there are still 512 channels, which should be sufficient even for highly complex projects. These mc² DSP channels can either be assigned to a single mc² console, alternatively they can be split into a maximum of four consoles.
The system latency is in the usual order of system architectures connected across the backplane. The high performance Ravenna profile used allows less than 1ms network roundtrip latency. The network I / O performance of the A_UHD Core can be compared to a total of 40,000 audio channels at 48kHz / 24-bit. Eight independent 10 / 1 GbE capable network interfaces enable the use of redundant networks via ST2022-7 seamless protection switching (SPS). For management the unit provides two redundant RJ45 1GbE management ports. In addition, full hardware redundancy is achieved by a 2nd hot spare unit which permanently mirrors all settings.
The flexible licensing model enables both mobile and stationary use of the UHD Core. This allows mobile productions to reduce ongoing operating costs through scalable DSP performance with time-limited licenses. At the same time, in-house applications can optimize infrastructure utilization through resource pooling and the appropriate provisioning of DSP resources to as many as four consoles.
