Grass Valley, CA (September 6, 2023) – AJA Video Systems unveiled KONA XM, a new Desktop I/O card that is designed and certified to meet medical equipment manufacturer requirements. Combining dual, full-size BNC 12G-SDI connections and dual HDMI 2.0 connections, KONA XM delivers reliable, ultra-low latency video I/O for AJA Developer Partners building artificial intelligence (AI) tools for medical procedures and surgeries. AJA developed KONA XM in close collaboration with NVIDIA and Dedicated Computing to ensure integrated support for the NVIDIA IGX artificial intelligence (AI) platform and the NVIDIA Holoscan software development kit (SDK).

"KONA XM represents a new generation of I/O technology from AJA that leverages GPUDirect RDMA and Streaming DMA to ensure up to ultra-low latency for the most mission-critical video applications, including surgery and medical procedures, where video delivery is crucial to a successful outcome. It fills a real niche in the space, providing the I/O performance required of AI medical devices," shared AJA President Nick Rashby. "We're thrilled to team with NVIDIA and Dedicated Computing on KONA XM to bring this card to market and share it with the community." 

"AI is adding a new level of precision to modern medicine, with technologies like NVIDIA IGX and Holoscan paving the way to medical devices that vastly improve how doctors and surgeons treat patients," shared Yaniv Lazimy, Senior Technical Product Manager for Medical Devices at NVIDIA. "Secure, reliable video processing is integral to the continued evolution of these technologies, which makes AJA's KONA XM, with its built-in safety features and high-quality, low latency video, an exciting prospect for medical professionals." 

Dedicated Computing Senior Product Manager Jeff Durst added, "Medical technology is evolving at a breakneck pace, with high resolution, high dynamic range video, and AI/machine learning opening the doors to new solutions that will vastly improve healthcare. Working with AJA and NVIDIA to build technologies like KONA XM and NVIDIA IGX into our M1000 Family of Edge AI hardware and software systems makes it easier for us to accommodate growing customer demand for AI assisted surgical tools, without expending significant R&D resources."

KONA XM feature highlights include:

• Built-in support for NVIDIA IGX and Holoscan: The recommended video I/O solution for NVIDIA's IGX edge computing AI hardware platform, KONA XM integrates seamlessly with NVIDIA Holoscan, a deployable software solution targeting IGX and other NVIDIA platforms. The combination of NVIDIA IGX and Holoscan makes it easy for medical device manufacturers to apply real-time, low latency, high-performance AI-driven overlays to live video in a variety of medical devices.
• Ultra-low latency: KONA XM lets users achieve as low as sub-frame latencies with GPUDirect RDMA technology, which provides a direct path for data exchange with the GPU. By avoiding unnecessary writes to and from CPU system memory, this greatly reduces perceptible end-to-end visual delays on processed video that the card outputs — a crucial feature for AI-enhanced medical procedures with instructional and information overlays that must be tracked precisely.
• 60601-1-2 EMI/ESD certification: Rigorous testing certifies KONA XM for use in medical devices.
• Robust connectivity including VESA HDMI I/O support: The 4-lane PCIe 3.0 KONA XM includes dual full-size BNC 12G-SDI connections (one for input and one for output), and dual, full-size HDMI 2.0 connections (one for input and one for output). VESA HDMI I/O support enables more HDMI formats for capture and playback with agnostic subsystems video timing.
• In Firmware Microcontroller: KONA XM customers can run code directly on the card for supervisory and safety purposes and achieve ultra-low latency or functionality that might need to exist before the system containing the card fully boots.
• Intuitive programming and configuration: AJA's robust and proven software development kit (SDK) is available on Windows, Linux, and macOS.
• Two cooling options: KONA XM is available in both active (with fan) and passive (fanless) cooled versions.

Pricing and availability

KONA XM will be available through AJA's Developer Partner program in Q4 2023 for $4,195 US MSRP for the active cooling model and $3,995 US MSRP for the passive cooling model. For more information about KONA XM, visit: www.aja.com/kona-xm.