Reducing Environmental Impact in AV with SDVoE’s Energy-Efficient ASIC Technology

Keith Kennedy
Managing Director at ProITAV

Sustainability is becoming a critical requirement for audiovisual manufacturers, integrators and end users across industries. Whether deploying AV systems for corporate boardrooms, government control centers, healthcare environments or houses of worship, there is growing pressure to reduce energy consumption, minimize waste and prioritize long-term reliability.

Modern AV design is now less about arbitrary reliability metrics and more about engineering smarter, more efficient systems. Downtime in mission-critical AV environments is not just inconvenient, but it’s costly. Expenses for technician labor, replacement parts and service calls can add up quickly. In sensitive environments, even minor disruptions may lead to reputational damage and operational inefficiencies.

SDVoE technology provides a high-performance solution without compromising durability or operational stability. Compared to typical FPGA-based systems, SDVoE systems are engineered from the ground up for efficiency and simplicity. Fewer parts, smarter design and reduced power demands all contribute to fewer points of failure, easier maintenance and better long-term performance.

At the heart of SDVoE’s sustainability focus is its commitment to application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) technology. Unlike field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), which are general-purpose and designed for flexible programming, ASICs are custom-built for a dedicated task. When you apply value engineering to ASIC-based designs by using only what’s needed, such as an AVP1000 in simpler scenarios and an AVP2000 where higher performance is required, you can meaningfully reduce component count. ASICs offer multiple environmental and operational benefits, including:

Reduced Complexity and Greater Efficiency

ASIC-based systems allow manufacturers to simplify designs. Reducing component count means saving space, decreasing power draw, generating less heat, and improving reliability because the fewer components you have, the fewer potential points of failure. This kind of simplicity in design not only supports sustainability but also leads to more dependable systems.

Lower Power Consumption

ASICs can consume up to 80% less power than FPGAs while performing the same function. For AV integrators and end users, this translates into meaningful energy savings. When deployed across hundreds or thousands of devices, the impact on power bills and carbon emissions is substantial.

Smaller, Fanless Devices

Lower power consumption means less heat generation, allowing for more compact, fanless device designs that eliminate the need for noisy cooling systems and reduce material use. Fewer fans mean fewer moving parts, which leads to even higher mean time between failures (MTBF) and longer product life cycles.

Traditional AV distribution often involves multiple layers of compression to handle high-resolution video over limited network bandwidth. The approach requires complex, power-hungry processing hardware that grows more demanding as resolutions increase. The increased complexity leads to larger devices, more heat, more fans and inevitably, more failures.

By contrast, SDVoE overcomes these limitations by eliminating the need for traditional compression in many use cases. The efficiency of ASIC-powered processing enables SDVoE technology to deliver uncompressed or minimally compressed 4K60 video over standard 10G networks with near-zero latency. The reduction in system complexity means more than just better performance, but it also saves money, conserves space and minimizes energy use. As a result, there’s a reduced need for complex hardware and associated energy costs, creating a more straightforward, more reliable and more sustainable solution.

In place of dated reliability metrics like MTBF, forward-thinking AV design focuses on simplified, component-efficient architecture, which results in reduced power use, cost savings, minimized heat and longer usable lifespans. Today’s organizations are setting ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) targets, such as reducing carbon footprints and minimizing electronic waste. These goals increasingly extend to AV and IT infrastructure decisions and choosing SDVoE-based technology aligns with these initiatives by reducing total power consumption across AV installations and extending the usable life of devices, decreasing the frequency of hardware refresh cycles. Additionally, SDVoE technology minimizes system downtime and maintenance-related emissions, such as travel, shipping and parts replacement.

At ProITAV, we believe that high-performance audiovisual technology and sustainability must go hand in hand. As a contributing member of the SDVoE Alliance, we support technologies that prioritize both performance and environmental responsibility. The SDVoE Alliance remains the only AV-over-IP ecosystem that has fully embraced ASIC technology, enabling more compact, cost-efficient, energy-efficient solutions that are engineered for simplicity and reliability.

For more information on the SDVoE Alliance, please visit www.sdvoe.org. Keep up with the latest news from the SDVoE Alliance on LinkedIn,Twitter and YouTube.