Calculating Hardware Compute Requirements

Owned by Noah Chamow
Mar 12, 2024
2 min read

Cinedeck does not accept responsibility if the hardware you purchase does not perform as expected. For guaranteed hardware performance we recommend you buy a ZX or RX from Cinedeck.

Different Codecs require different hardware processing power. Below are some calculations and samples you can use to assist with selecting the best hardware to meet your production requirements.

Rule of thumb: CPU base clock speed x real cores = Processing power

e.g. 1: Intel® Xeon® Gold 6226R Processor : 2.9GHz x 16 = 46.4GHz

e.g. 2: Intel® Core™ Core i9-13900K Processor : 3.0GHz x 24 = 72GHz

e.g. 2: Intel® Core™ Intel Core i7-13850HX Processor : 2.1GHz x 20 = 42GHz

Faster is better! 64 cores @2GHz = 48 cores @2.6GHz Choose the higher base frequency and lower core count option.

 

You can use the table below to help you determine your CPU requirements based on the format/framerate and number of channels your require for your production.

Power Required per Codec per Ingest Channel (GHz)

Format

SD

1080

UHD

Frame rate

30p

60i/30p

60p

30p

60p

AVC- I

2.9

5.8

11.6

29

58

XAVC* - I (Talk to Sales)

2.9

5.8

11.6

46

92

DNxHD - all qualities

2.9

5.8

11.6

n/a

n/a

DNxHR - all qualities

2.9

5.8

11.6

23.2

46.4

ProRes - all qualities

2.9

5.8

11.6

23.2

46.4

XDCAM50

2.9

5.8

n/a

n/a

n/a

H.264** Quicksync/GPU

2.9

5.8

11.6

23.2

46.4

JPEG2000

3.9

7.7

15.5

30.9

61.9

DPX

5.8

11.6

n/a

n/a

n/a

IMX - D10 (SD only)

5.8

n/a

n/a

n/a

n/a

JFIF

5.8

n/a

n/a

n/a

n/a

Uncompressed

 

11.6

n/a

n/a

n/a

eg 1: Lets say you need to ingest 6 channels of 1080 60p to DNxHD: Therefore your would need 6 X 11.6 = 69.6GHz so based on the above rule of thumb a Core i9-13900K or a dual Xeon® Gold 6226R would be required.

eg 2: 8x 1080 50i to XDCAM = 8 X 5.8 = 46.6Ghz so based on the above rule of thumb a single Xeon® Gold 6226R would be the minimum required.

Keep in mind that your video I/O channels and storage/network throughput will also need to be considered.

 

Below is a table giving samples of the number of channels different processors should be able to handle. If you would like to use a different processor you can use the the rule of thumb to determine your total GHz and the “Power Required per Codec per Ingest Channel (GHz)” table above to calculate your expected channel count.

Encode Channels per Processor for 1080 60p ProRes Encoding

 

Format

SD

1080

UHD

 

Frame rate

30p

60i/30p

60p

30p

60p

Processor

Processor GHz

 

 

 

 

 

Xeon® 6226R

46.4

8

8

4

2

1

i9-13900K

72.0

25

12

6

3

2

i7-13850HX

42.0

14

7

4

2

1

 

*XAVC processing:

XAVC encoding is intensive and requires additional hardware cards

**h264 processing:

Intel i7 and i9 processors include Intel® Quick Sync Video which enables h264 encoding on the CPU

For h264 processing on Xeon based systems a GPU is required.

Recommended GPU’s:

RTX4000