Technology makes the Winter Olympics better

No matter how much we are reluctant and unforgettable, the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics has come to an end, and China has once again written an unparalleled Olympic legend in Olympic history. Low carbon, happiness, technology... countless exciting labels appeared in this Winter Olympics. As the global TOP partner of the Olympic Games, Intel has integrated its own technological concepts with Olympic culture and sportsmanship, bringing new inspiration and innovative practices to the cultural presentation of the Winter Olympics, the innovation of sports training methods, the construction and operation of competition venues, and the live broadcast of live competitions.

Looking back at this Winter Olympics, the light of science and technology shines in every corner, illuminating every place that people can think of or cannot think of.

Especially in the programs "Tribute to the People" and "Snowflakes", the tacit cooperation between the actors and the ground large screen system of the National Stadium made the audience feel the surprises brought by technology to art. This "tacit cooperation" is based on the 3DAT three-dimensional athlete tracking technology running on the 3rd Generation Intel® ^Xeon® Scalable Processor , and the "AI-based large- ^scale performance real-time special effects system" customized for the opening ceremony scene, allowing the actors to present perfect artistic effects without precise rehearsal.

The wind and snow special effects work perfectly with the athletes. Wherever the athletes go, the "wind and snow melt"; the snowflakes follow the children like a shadow, accompanying them to move freely on the stage... With the help of leading artificial intelligence and computer vision algorithms , it is possible to accurately capture the movement trajectories of hundreds of actors and render artistic special effects in real time on a super-large stage such as the Bird's Nest. Whether it is the shock brought by the athletes pushing away the ice and snow to reveal the Olympic motto in "Tribute to the People", or the touching feeling brought by each cluster of crystal snowflakes following more than 500 children running freely in the huge Bird's Nest in "Snowflakes"... They are all charming sparks blooming when technology transforms into art.

Opening Ceremony Program: Salute to the People

Opening ceremony program "Snowflakes"

The "light and shadow performance" in figure skating exhibition skating is another interpretation of the Olympic technology aesthetics. Intel and its partners collected figure skating materials from the general public and used Intel® ^3DAT technology to generate data models of figure skating postures, movements, etc. These data models were artistically processed in the figure skating exhibition skating program, showing the love of all Chinese people for ice and snow sports and their own ice and snow stories. This light and shadow performance has both a sense of the future created by technology and a natural blend with the actors' movements; it has an international style and incorporates Chinese cultural characteristics; it is both classic and fashionable, both beautiful and strong, and uses advanced technology to form a unique artistic expression form, telling a wonderful story of the combination of sports, art, culture and technology.

"Snowflakes, snowflakes, blooming in the sunshine, are equally shining in their hometown and in the distance..." Technology has brought people closer to beauty, allowing the truth, goodness and beauty that the Olympics want to convey to be vividly presented to the audience.

Intel® ^3DAT 3D Athlete Tracking Technology

Chinese athletes have made history again and again in this Beijing Winter Olympics. The Chinese speed skating team won the gold medal in the men's 500-meter speed skating event and broke the Olympic record in the event. The Chinese skeleton team won a medal at the Olympics for the first time. These historic breakthroughs are hard-won. We are well aware that every standard technical action on the field is inseparable from years of professional training. But how to make training more scientific, efficient and perfect? ​​3DAT three-dimensional athlete tracking technology running on the 3rd Generation Intel® Xeon® Scalable Processor provides powerful and ^accurate assistance ^. Let us witness these historic moments together!

Intel® 3DAT has long been used in the training of athletes of the Chinese speed skating team, cross-country skiing team, and skeleton team , using technology to help athletes in these projects ^make continuous breakthroughs. Taking speed skating as an example, Intel® ^3DAT uses artificial intelligence and computer vision algorithms to extract key bone point information, key body postures, and motion trajectories from speed skaters' training videos for three-dimensional reconstruction, and then uses artificial intelligence to analyze the data to generate biomechanical data parameter sets such as athlete's stride frequency, ice-pushing time, knee and ankle angular velocity, and starting angular velocity. The data can be used to analyze the impact of training postures at each stage on speed, ice-pushing quality, etc., so as to accurately guide coaches and athletes to continuously improve their techniques and movements.

Technology with warmth will accompany athletes at every moment. It witnesses the excitement and pride of winning gold medals, and also shares the sweat and hardship of hard training.

Intel® ^VSS Digital Twin Venue Simulation Service

This is the first Winter Olympics in the world in the pandemic era. In the current pandemic, hosting an international event is extremely difficult. Safety and efficiency, accuracy and urgency, large-scale and high coordination... will become "fish and bear's paw". The VSS digital twin venue simulation service built by Intel and its partners running on the 3rd Generation Intel® ^Xeon® Scalable ^Processor will digitize, animate and three-dimensionalize the 12 competition venues, 3 Olympic Villages and the main media center of the Beijing Winter Olympics through related cutting-edge technologies such as virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and computer graphics , provide accurate simulation of the inside and outside of the venues and the elements of the activities, and use the twin virtual 3D world to assist the operation of the real world, so that staff can work efficiently and collaboratively in the virtual world as if they were there. Especially in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, this technology has made cross-border collaboration a reality, greatly reducing the workload of staff on-site exploration and review, and providing strong support for ensuring that the Winter Olympics will be held as scheduled.

Technology can make the world bigger or smaller. It can enable people from all over the world to break the barriers of time and space, work together, host the Winter Olympics together, and move towards the future together.

Intel® ^8K 360° VR Technology

The Olympics is a grand event for all mankind. The Beijing Winter Olympics is not only for athletes, but also for hundreds of millions of viewers around the world. With the participation of the audience, the Olympic spirit can be passed on, the spirit of sports can be inherited and promoted, the victory of athletes can be shared, and peace and love can be infected... With the audience, the Winter Olympics is complete. Intel's 8K 360° VR technology platform for the broadcasting industry is an innovation based on the third-generation Intel® Xeon® ^Scalable Platform . Through cooperation ^with relevant broadcasters, it provides viewers with a clearer, more real-time and more immersive remote viewing experience. Due to the deployment of multiple VR recording devices on site, viewers can watch the Winter Olympics through screens of various sizes such as VR headsets, mobile phones and PCs, freely choose different perspectives to watch the game, and obtain 360° high-definition panoramic viewing pictures. The unique immersive experience and strong sense of the scene allow the audience to feel the atmosphere of the scene as if they were there. It quickly brings the audience into the event scene, together with the athletes, and shares the sportsmanship and moments of victory more extreme.

8K直播必须依靠高性能的视频编码。 英特尔 ^® SVT (Scalable Video Technology)可扩展视频软件技术 ，其三维度优化，尤其是在时域（前后帧的依赖关系）、空域（画面中的不同部分）和编码流程上可实现了并行化，可以将视频编码任务灵活的分配到 第三代英特尔 ^® 至强 ^® 可扩展处理器 上，并且对AVX-512高级矢量扩展指令集做了专门的优化。实现延迟和视觉质量的最佳平衡。通过SVT的高效处理和编码，在不改变画质的情况下，8K视频码率可以显著性降低，有效缓解网络传输带宽压力，满足通过5G或IPTV实时收看的条件。

According to the characteristics of 360-degree panoramic video, the user's perspective at a specific moment usually only occupies a small area of ​​the entire image. If the panoramic image is transmitted and decoded in 8K, it will cause a huge waste of network and computing resources. Intel Open Visual Cloud's OVC360 technology uses a "tiled" tiled video processing method, that is, the image is divided into several "tiles" for transmission. Only when the client rotates the perspective, it can autonomously obtain the video content of the corresponding perspective from the cloud for rendering and transmit the part that the audience sees. This not only reduces the requirements for the audience's equipment, but also greatly reduces the bandwidth required for transmitting 8K 360-degree live broadcasts, avoids delays/stuttering, ensures smooth and high-quality video playback, and realizes the 8K experience of 2K devices.

Great moments need to be witnessed on site to be more meaningful and ceremonial. Technology allows us to be present at the scene, allowing us to witness the arrival of every great moment more deeply, intuitively and realistically.

Intel® ^5G + Edge Computing Technology (MEC) Solution

The Olympic Village is the main place for athletes and coaches to live and move during the entire Olympic Games. In addition to the necessary dining, accommodation, work, and training areas, leisure and entertainment are also very important components. At the Beijing Winter Olympics (Winter Paralympics) Athlete Entertainment Center, Intel has greatly enriched the living and entertainment experience of athletes and coaches with new technologies. Based on the 5G+ edge computing technology (MEC) solution , Intel has created immersive experience content with unique innovative technology, including VR simulators for winter sports such as skiing using the ^Intel® Core ™ ⁱ⁷ processor system , VR simulations of high-tech equipment such as spacecraft ^and deep-sea submarines using the Intel® Core ^™ i7 processor system and Intel® Optane ^™ enhanced SSD , and the display of traditional ^Chinese cultural content such as the Terracotta Warriors and Horses of Qin Shihuang and Dunhuang murals through modern virtual reality technology. Through the perfect combination of "modern technology × traditional culture × sports", Intel has created an unprecedented technological Olympic Village entertainment center.

Technology is serious, but also relaxing. The most important meaning of technology entering our lives is to make complex, rational, cold data, calculations, and connections bring people a relaxing, happy, and enjoyable experience.

Mobileye® ^​

In terms of commuting, how can the travel safety of many participants during the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics be fully guaranteed? Mobileye, a subsidiary of Intel, has equipped more than 500 buses for athletes, technical officials, media, etc. with Mobileye 8 and Shield+4 designed for large urban vehicles . These AI safety systems that can issue warnings in real time use computer vision technology to play an auxiliary driving role and continuously scan the road ahead. Once pedestrians or cyclists enter the danger zone, the system will issue visual and sound alarms in real time to remind the driver to take action.

Technology focuses on people's achievements and even more on people's lives. Advanced technology often has the most simple humanistic concept to serve every detail of people's lives that deserves happiness.

The 2022 Winter Olympics flame will not be extinguished, and this inextinguishable flame will be rekindled in another great city four years later. The flame of human technology, like the Olympic flame, will continue to illuminate the path of mankind to the future. As a "torchbearer" on the road of technology, Intel will continue to use its technological fire to warm the world and create a better future together with all mankind.