In the era of modernization, everyone wants a digital part. However, the lurking threats to security and privacy and malicious activities have led companies to create integrated solutions. Due to this, many organizations are developing their own security systems, cloud servers, and computing software. And there is no way the tech-giant Google can be left behind.
If you notice, YouTube is a bandwidth stealer, and for obvious reasons. Statistics reveal that about 30 million users land on YouTube to watch 1 billion hours of videos daily. So, it means YouTube has a lot of transcoding to do. For example, if you create one 8K video, then YouTube has to transcode it into every resolution, i.e. 144p, 240p, 360p, 480p, 720p, 1080p, 1440p, 2160p, and 4320p. It means it creates a different resolution video from the original one for it to be accessible to everyone. And this is just for one video.
As a result, in order to keep everything seamless and functional for YouTube, Google decided to develop a custom video chip named Argos. It is a video coding unit (VCU) that will limit the data and time consumption while keeping the quality consistent. Now all the end-user has to do is get a reliable internet connection like from Mediacom. Theprovider offers reasonably-priced plans so you can get efficient and effective speeds for browsing, watching videos, gaming, and even streaming. You can contact Mediacom customer service to gain more insight into their internet plans.
What Do We Know So Far?
The amount of video content that YouTube receives is overwhelming, even for the tech giant. In addition, the daily amount of work pressure can tire even the most advanced chipsets, which is why it needs new specialized equipment.
For that purpose, Google gathered a team of 100 engineers in 2015 to bring solutions to the table. That is where a new ASIC chip or Argos was born. The video encoding unit, Argos has one job – convert 500 hours of video playback that is uploaded every minute into various screen and compression formats for everyone’s ease of access. Still, as easy as it may sound on paper, it is not. The task of handling the massive scale of YouTube was the biggest challenge as everything from design, the board on which everything sits, and the data clusters needed to be perfect.
As a result, the product that came out was the Argos video coding unit, which, according to Google, is a full-length PCI Express card and resembles a graphics card. The great power of Argos is capable of helping YouTube process a high-definition 4K video in hours instead of several days. Although the framework was simple, designing a chip for transcoding videos, the number of videos was the least of Google’s worries. They had to find a way around failed chips and a phenomenon called blackholing, in which chips waste resources by failing after deployment. However, the team worked on issues and discussed solutions. The first Argos entered the market to take existing video workload and do it cost-effectively. That led to more transcoding work while maintaining consistent image quality and less data use. And the low data benefits by decreasing the load of limited data plans and loading the content faster.
With its efficiency and performance, Argos helped Google and YouTube handle 25% increased video playbacks during the pandemic. It was so well managed by Google because Argos is able to serve 20 to 30 times better and more effectively than traditional server chips. And not to mention the increased costs and energy it saves and will save.
Play as You Go!
Nowadays, the number of devices that use YouTube has grown tremendously as people are using Phones, TV, laptops, and desktops to enjoy their favorite video platform. Furthermore, the pandemic also led many to start their very own streaming or videos channel. The only thing they need is a high-quality internet package for seamless connectivity and entertainment at all times. With Mediacom, you get some of the best ISP solutions and have reliable service in the form of Mediacom internet plans. This further increased the load, and it was essential to develop a solution.
The main purpose of Argos is to handle the high load of videos and transcode them every minute. Moreover, there are also multiple screens and compression formats to enable easy playback across many devices, no matter the internet quality.
Still, Google and YouTube have a long way to go before they can even come near the chip lords, AMD, Nvidia, or Intel. But that is not what Google wants to do. Instead, they designed their chip for one purpose, and that is video encoding, and it is doing its job perfectly. For other tasks, there are already high-end chips ready to perform at the highest level to provide desired results.
