ASIC-RDX and Compute-Compression Efficiency Optimization for UGC Video Processing

Facebook and user-generated content (UGC) platforms encode videos at “billion-scale” and deliver them worldwide to a variety of devices (Mobile/Laptop/TV) across different networks. The popularity of UGC videos can vary widely ranging from millions of views for a very-popular viral video to relatively few views for a privately shared video. Improving the compression of video encoding is critical to both reducing the cost of data-usage to both end-users and infrastructure providers, as well as providing good Quality-Of-Experience in poor bandwidth networks. At the same time, due to “billion-scale” we need to take into account the computational complexity of the encoder as well as device support for the codec. In this presentation, we show how ASIC-leveraged hybrid RDX plays a central role maximizing the compression efficiency for video delivery while meeting the constraints for codec-support and available compute. We also present an optimization framework that allows us quantify the compute impact due to changes in device support for advanced codecs and video watch-time distribution, as well as point out ASIC improvements that can further overall compute efficiency.