Here comes more good news for the info tech sector. At the recently concluded National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) convention in Las Vegas, SGI also known as Silicon Graphics demonstrated solutions that put information technology (IT) to work for broadcasters, post-production professionals and broadband businesses.

An official release informs that the SGI data management solutions transform a slow, video-based workflow into an effective dataflow. This dataflow unites a facility's entire operations through the SGI CXFS shared file system with a storage area network (SAN) -- enabling the secure sharing of video as data files across high-speed networks. For broadcasters, that means getting news to air faster. For post-production professionals, it means moving multiple film or video resolution projects through their facilities simultaneously.

Overall, the SGI digital data IT infrastructure can improve a staff's productivity and profitability. The release informs that broadcasters and post-production professionals are just beginning to see the advantages of IT, of a digital data infrastructure. They have realised that just transitioning from analogue to digital video is not enough.

SGI states that as a computing company, what sets it apart from competitors is it's understanding of the world of video. Therefore the company is able to develop interoperability between the worlds of data and video. At NAB SGI showcased the return on investment, return on interoperability and return on IT that the SGI digital infrastructure delivers to customers.

SGI has digital infrastructure installations for broadcasters in Denmark, France, Germany, the United States and the Czech Republic. It also has production and film mastering facilities like EFILM, Laboratoire Eclair and Lord Of The Rings' Peter Jackson's Weta Digital.

The company has called the solution infinite structure as it is extremely scalable and flexible -- integrating Windows and Mac clients. The functions of SGI's data infrastructure include

-- Simplifying and integrating the use of multiple computer operating systems and video and film formats;

-- Transparently letting all the digital media stored in the facility appear as local storage to all applications; users no longer need to be concerned with where the material is because their access speed and usage rights will be as if the material is stored on their local systems;

-- It also supports hundreds of clients and millions of terabytes of storage;

This infinite structure is based on the SGI XFS file system, a 64-bit file system able to scale up to 18 million terabytes. This translates into thousands of years of 50MB broadcast material or nine million uncompressed movies at full 2K resolution. Although file systems routinely impose limitations on broadcasters and post facilities, the SGI file system provides an essentially limitless growth path.

File transfer speed will not be an issue either. Multiple Fibre Channel connections have already allowed SGI users to achieve 12GB per second of aggregate throughput. That kind of bandwidth will allow broadcasters and post-production facilities to expand, secure in the knowledge that they won't be outgrowing their data infrastructure for years to come.

The XFS file-journaling technology guarantees high reliability and restarts in less than one second after an unexpected interruption, regardless of the number of files it manages.

SGI claims to be the world's leader in high-performance computing, visualisation and the management of complex data. It's vision is to provide technology that enables the most significant scientific and creative breakthroughs of the 21st century.