Spark Video Processor

A modular, low-latency live video processing platform for the NVIDIA DGX Spark (GB10 Grace Blackwell). The first module ingests uncompressed SMPTE ST 2110-20 video, changes resolution and/or frame rate (motion-compensated) on the GPU, and emits uncompressed SMPTE ST 2110-20 — all controllable from a web interface.

Status: Milestone 0 (feasibility spike) complete (2026-06-15) — all hardware gates validated, Rivermax-free (DPDK mlx5 tx_pp pacing on the CX-7). See docs/M0-feasibility-findings.md. Next: M1, the st2110_rx → … → st2110_tx pass-through, which also measures paced-loopback precision/latency (gate 4).

Architecture

Two strictly separated planes (the real-time video path is never stalled by control/UI traffic):

• Engine (engine/) — C++/CUDA pipeline on NVIDIA Holoscan SDK (operator graph), with the Holoscan advanced_network DPDK backend (mlx5 tx_pp HW pacing; DOCA GPUNetIO in reserve) for ST 2110-20 IO, NPP for scaling, and Optical Flow/FRUC for frame-rate conversion. Zero-copy GPU tensors, PTP-locked. (No Rivermax — see docs/M0-feasibility-findings.md "Networking IO".)
• Control daemon (control/) — native C++ gRPC service owning pipeline lifecycle + telemetry, with a REST/WebSocket gateway.
• Web UI (web/) — vanilla-JS dashboard (no build step): NMOS routing, format config, a filter-chain panel rendered from the daemon's /api/filters descriptors (enable/reorder/tune each GPU stage), start/stop, and a live stats bar.

engine/    C++/CUDA Holoscan engine (operators = modules)
control/   C++ control daemon (gRPC + REST/WS)
web/       vanilla-JS dashboard (served by the daemon)
proto/     shared gRPC/protobuf contracts
deploy/    systemd units, container, NIC/PTP/core tuning
spike/     M0 validation scripts
docs/      design + findings

Hardware reality (DGX Spark)

• GB10 Grace Blackwell, aarch64, 128 GB LPDDR5x unified memory, CUDA 13, NPP + OFA present.
• Integrated ConnectX-7 (2× QSFP, hot-plug, treat as 2× 100G) is the SMPTE 2110 + PTP NIC.
• Onboard Realtek 10GbE has no hardware PTP — not usable for 2110 timing.

See the full plan and milestones in docs/.

Quick diagnostics

bash spike/diagnose.sh