AMD targets shifting streaming workloads with new ASIC, not FPGA

The artist formerly known as Xilinx has unveiled its first new product since its acquisition by AMD, with the Video Transcoding Group launching the Alveo MA35D Media Accelerator. The plug-in card is apparently an industry-first 5nm architecture, and is being aimed at the new crop of interactive and dynamic video streaming workloads. Notably, this is an ASIC-based approach, and not the FPGAs that Xilinx was best known for. The reprogrammability of the FPGA was often its main selling point, with the ASIC often criticized in that sales pitch for its relative lack of flexibility. The trade-off was that the FPGA was more expensive, but if you knew that the ASIC’s workload would not change during its lifetime, then the cheaper…