150 Nvidia graphics cards power The Sphere
Nvidia hardware is behind the world's largest LED dome. The servers process three 16K video streams.
If you stand directly in front of the Sphere in Las Vegas, you can see the empty spaces between the pixels. From further away, they are no longer noticeable.
(Image: c't / uk)
The Madison Square Garden Company (MSG) has put a huge LED dome into operation in Las Vegas in 2023. What was not previously known is that dozens of servers with Intel and Nvidia hardware are working in the background to control the systems.
Nvidia explains the technology in a short blog post: "Sphere Studios creates video content in its Burbank, Calif., facility, then transfers it digitally to Sphere in Las Vegas. The content is then streamed in real time to rack-mounted workstations equipped with NVIDIA RTX A6000 GPUs, achieving unprecedented performance, capable of delivering three layers of 16K resolution at 60 frames per second."
The three layers are three separate video streams that technicians can merge, for example to mix a natural backdrop with the live image of a music band. In total, there are around 150 RTX A6000 workstation graphics cards from the somewhat older Ampere family. They sit in GX-3 racks from Disguise, a company that specializes in media servers for video and sound mixing.
(Image:Â c't / uk)
Hundreds of millions of pixels
Countless LEDs on a 14,864 m² curved video wall display 16,000 × 16,000 pixels, i.e. 256 million pixels in total. For comparison: 4K displays show just under 8.3 million pixels.
There are 57.6 million LEDs on the 53,883 m2 outer wall, with 48 forming one pixel each. The resulting resolution of 1.2 million pixels is roughly equivalent to a display with 1280Â Ă— 960 pixels, only huge. The low resolution of 0.1 dpi on the outside is not a problem because the Sphere is viewed from a distance. All kinds of video animations run on it, such as a giant tired smiley face or "Pacman" games. Here too, the GX-3 servers take care of the image output.
To control all the LEDs, the technicians divide the video streams into segments that are distributed throughout the dome. Nvidia's BlueField network processors ensure low-latency, simultaneous playout of the videos.
Data is distributed via a 100 Gigabit Ethernet connection. Nvidia also provides the appropriate software, Rivermax, from its acquired subsidiary Mellanox. Between the LEDs and the media servers are upscaled display electronics, here in the form of FPGA boards.
High-power consumption
The energy requirement for the server hardware alone could reach 100 kilowatts under peak load. Nvidia specifies 300 watts per RTX-A6000 card alone. Disguise specifies 700 watts per GX-3 server under full load.
On the whole, however, the servers are lost in the electricity bill: The external lighting alone can consume up to six megawatts. The total electrical power consumption is estimated at 20 megawatts.
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(mma)