CMP020L002A Computer Systems

Your company just won a contract with the English Premier League (EPL) to encode and deliver their digital archive. Your company is willing to invest in new computing resource to complete the work. They are looking for the best return of investment, that is the cheapest method that meets the specifications made by the EPL.

The table below defines five different systems from different manufacturers that are available, including:

1.The number of cores available on each system.

2.The time taken, in hours, to encode 1 hour of video content at different resolutions:

a.720p

b.1080p

c.2160p

3.The cost to buy the system.

4.The running cost of the system per hour.

System Cores 720p hour encoding 1080p hour encoding 2160p hour encoding Initial Cost Cost Per Hour

1     1                    8 hours                        16 hours                              32 hours                      £3000                        £0.30

2   2                   6 hours                             12 hours                         24 hours                        £5000                 £0.60

3   4                    3 hours                              6 hours                          12 hours                      £10000                 £1.00 

4   8                     1 hour                              2 hours                           4 hours                        £20000                 £1.50

5  16                     0.25 hours                       0.50 hours                            1 hour                          £0                          £5.00

The EPL also want to ensure their fans have the best experience when watching video online. They have asked you to test the following browsers and determine which one is best:

a.Microsoft Edge

b.Google Chrome

?Mozilla Firefox

To test the performance, they have provided a test video (https://youtu.be/LXb3EKWsInQ). They require testing of all resolutions (720p, 1080p, 2160p).

The EPL has 100,000 hours of content to encode. They require 50% of the content to be available in twelve weeks, and the following 75% in 24 weeks, and the full 100% in one year.

As the head of the system engineering department, you have been given the responsibility to draft a report on the following:

1.Relative performance of the different systems as measured in speedup in comparison to System 1 for the different workloads.

2.The cost of using each system to encode video for each milestone and the overall cost. The EPL require encoding in all resolutions defined. You can buy as many instances of a system as required to meet the contract requirements.

3.A recommendation on which system provider to purchase systems from based on cost to deliver the contract.

4.An analysis of streaming the test video in full-screen in each resolution using Window’s Performance Monitor.

5.A recommendation on which browser the EDL should recommend to their fans.