Netflix optimizes platform performance with Intel oneAPI

31/05/2024

With 260 million subscribers worldwide, Netflix strives to deliver a customized and reliable entertainment experience across all devices. To achieve this, Netflix has utilized Amazon EC2 instances, supported by Intel® Xeon® processors. By working with Intel, Netflix improved processor performance by 3.5 times, exceeding linear scaling expectations, while optimizing cloud spend.

Netflix manages a multitude of micro-services to deliver a seamless and personalized streaming experience to its users. These services include development, rendering, encoding and recommendation of relevant content. To always ensure exceptional streaming quality, a reliable and scalable cloud solution with advanced troubleshooting tools is essential.

To address unexpected latency issues, the Netflix team leveraged Intel VTune™ Profiler and Intel® PerfSpect to analyze how software interacts with hardware. These tools identified inefficiencies in processor utilization and corrected bottlenecks in the microarchitecture, optimizing performance.

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By using Amazon EC2 instances, Intel Xeon processors and Intel oneAPI Deep Neural (oneDNN), Netflix optimized instance utilization for various tasks. During peak viewing hours, resources are prioritized for streaming, while during off-peak periods, they are used to accelerate video encoding. This strategy improves the overall efficiency of the platform, while reducing operational costs.

Intel-driven optimizations increased processor performance by 3.5 times, while significantly reducing latency and cloud costs. With Intel® oneDNN and Intel® AVX-512, Netflix improved video encoding rate, delivering superior quality across all devices. These innovations also enable Netflix to reduce the number of instances required for critical tasks, optimizing its cloud infrastructure spend.

« I love the fact that we can get better performance out of the same hardware. What we save on infrastructure goes back to the business. »

– Vadim Filanovsky, Performance and Reliability Engineer – Netflix

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