Entertaining like never before: How Lenovo helps Sphere deliver exciting, immersive experiences

Learn how Lenovo and its partner ecosystem are helping enable multi-sensory, immersive experiences at the Sphere – the $2.3 billion venue changing the face of live entertainment.

Extraordinary experiences

Sphere is a truly unique venue. At 366 feet tall and 516 feet wide east of the Las Vegas Strip, it is the largest spherical structure on Earth. In fact, Sphere and the 1.2 million LED tiles that illuminate its exterior are visible from space.

Both the exterior LEDs and the 16K resolution floor-to-ceiling wraparound screens inside are fully programmable. The 360-degree digital display known as the “Exosphere,” along with an immersive sound system, 4D wind, temperature and scent effects, and haptic vibrating seats, provides audiences with an unparalleled immersive experience.

Sphere is part of Madison Square Garden Entertainment Corp. (NYSE: MSGE) (“MSG Entertainment”) – a leading live entertainment provider whose collection of world-famous venues host a wide range of sporting events, concerts, family shows and more to millions of guests annually. Lenovo has a strategic technology partnership with MSG and its family of companies.

Stunning images

At MSG Sphere Studios in Burbank, California, production and technology teams work with creators, artists and partners to create next-generation immersive content. The Burbank campus features a large, curved LED display that is a quarter-scale, full-resolution prototype of the Sphere Las Vegas screen. This so-called “Big Dome” serves as a specialized demonstration and production facility as well as a content laboratory.

Creating such an immersive visual experience requires enormous computing power. Enter Lenovo.

Urgently needed computing power

Lenovo has been selected as the infrastructure provider to support content creation for Sphere, and Lenovo ThinkSystem SR655 servers will drive the custom imaging software.

Hundreds of Lenovo ThinkSystem SR655 servers with AMD EPYC™ processors and NVIDIA A40 GPUs are used to develop and test original content and immersive experiences. AMD EPYC processors offer up to 128 PCIe 4.0 or 5.0 lanes, which is critical for multi-GPU systems. Each GPU requires significant bandwidth, and the more GPUs connected, the more PCIe lanes are required. EPYC processors ensure that even in systems with many GPUs there is enough PCIe bandwidth available to avoid bottlenecks – making the Lenovo ThinkSystem SR655 the ideal mix of performance and efficiency for rendering cutting-edge graphics for the Exosphere.¹

Choosing the right technologies

Lenovo’s strong technology partnerships with AMD and NVIDIA were a key selling point for Sphere. The combination of AMD EPYC processors and NVIDIA Accelerated Computing makes the Lenovo ThinkSystem SR655 a powerful and versatile server.

To enable robust network connectivity for media streaming, NVIDIA BlueField DPUs and NVIDIA ConnectX-6 Dx NICs – along with NVIDIA DOCA Firefly Service and NVIDIA Rivermax software – were used to ensure all display panels function as a synchronized canvas.

Lenovo, AMD and NVIDIA worked closely together to develop a strategy for the best product combination for MSG Sphere Studios’ use case, which ultimately delivered the optimal combination of price and performance.

To keep the project on schedule, the Lenovo team had to meet very strict delivery deadlines for the Lenovo ThinkSystem SR655 servers, including a two-day deadline for an initial test system. Lenovo coordinated with AMD and NVIDIA to ensure all components were on site and assembled so the Sphere team could test the server on schedule. This demonstrated the company’s commitment to the success of the project while providing outstanding service and product performance.

Put the plan into action

Lenovo worked with CDW to deliver a total of 450 ThinkSystem SR655 servers to MSG Sphere Studios in Burbank.

Thanks to its globally developed supply chain, ranked 10th in the world according to Gartner, Lenovo was able to deliver 50 servers per week to MSG Sphere Studios for six weeks, fulfilling the original order of 300 servers. Lenovo and CDW supported the installation, and Lenovo’s technical team helped MSG Sphere Studios set up a remote management environment using Lenovo XClarity software.²

Impressive audience

Today, Lenovo ThinkSystem SR655 servers help MSG Sphere Studios quickly render extremely high-resolution video content – from immersive concert film to U2:UV Attention Baby Live in the Sphere Residency to the impressive images for Darren Aronofsky’s multisensory cinema experience, Postcard from Earth.

With technology from Lenovo, AMD and NVIDIA, MSG Sphere Studios is also able to create themed content and immersive experiences for sporting events. Sphere recently hosted the Riyadh Season Noche UFC Fight and the 2024 Upper Deck NHL Draft™. Sports and entertainment will never be the same again.

Click here to see upcoming shows and events at the Sphere. To learn more about Lenovo’s partnership with the MSG Family of Companies, click here.

¹ The SR655 supports up to 6 single-width GPUs, making it ideal for AI inference, virtualized desktop infrastructure (VDI), and other GPU-intensive applications.
² Lenovo XClarity Administrator provides robust system management capabilities that enable efficient monitoring and handling of hardware alerts and events.