Gennum, the Canadian video broadcast, telecommunications, networking and storage specialist, is looking to 3D for a big boost to revenues and profits, Martin Rofheart, senior vp for analogue and mixed signal at Gennum told the Globalpress Summit Conference in Santa Cruz today.
"Global IP traffic will have a five times increase in the next four years to 667 Exabytes," said Rofheart, "and video will be 91% of global traffic by 2013. Significant network upgrades are required."
Ethernet is going to 40G, SONET to 40G, Fibre Channel to 16GFC and FCoE, Infiniband to Nx10G, PCIe Gen 3 to 8G.
"A 3D signal takes twice as much infrastructure as an ordinary signal", said Rofheart, "all the key components of broadcast studios have to get bigger, for instance routers are having to double in size."
At the same time there’s a need for standards. "The industry is rushing to develop a 3D protocol", said Rofheart, "there are two parts to that: forming and mapping; and physical layer transport. Gennum is the chair and vice-chair of the two committees."
Gennum’s 3D SDI products for broadcast equipment, cable equalisers, reclockers, cable drivers, receivers and transmitters, are going into equipment being made by Panasonic, Harris, Miranda, Nevion, and Astro, among others. They support all current 3D formats, from 720p, 1080i and 1080p.