How Mellanox Technologies Brought the plaCMOS Race to Israeli Screens
"The Big Race" is a 2018 film campaign produced by Mellanox Technologies in Israel to promote the plaCMOS project, a European Union Horizon 2020-funded research initiative targeting 200 gigabits per second per optical channel in silicon-photonics technology, framing the global pursuit of faster computing as a race that ultimately benefits every user of modern applications.
The campaign was published in Israel in August 2018, coinciding with the plaCMOS project's public announcement on 28 August 2018, as documented on Placmos Eu. Mellanox Technologies, an Israeli semiconductor and networking company, served as both the project coordinator and the creative force behind the film, with the Tel Aviv-based creative team producing a single film asset designed to communicate the ambitions of a consortium spanning seven European companies, research organisations, and universities, according to Imdb. The project itself formally began on 1 December 2017, following the European Commission's signing on 21 November 2017, per placmos.eu.
In Israel, a nation that has positioned itself as a global hub for semiconductor and chip design talent, the campaign arrives at a moment when domestic technology companies were increasingly engaged with European Union research programmes. The plaCMOS project carried a budget of €4.04 million, according to placmos.eu, and was scheduled to run from December 2017 through November 2020 — a three-year programme whose mid-point announcement became the occasion for "The Big Race." The film's central creative argument is that the technology race in silicon-photonics, however specialist its science, produces outcomes felt across medical research, climate research, and space research, making the subject matter accessible far beyond the engineering community the project directly serves.
Silicon-photonics represented one of the fastest-growing segments within the broader electronics and technology landscape in 2018. The global silicon-photonics market was estimated at approximately 500 million US dollars in 2018, according to Techtime News, and was projected to reach 3.5 billion US dollars by 2025, implying a compound annual growth rate of approximately 32 percent over that period, per the same source, according to Developer Nvidia. Against that trajectory, the plaCMOS project's target of 200 gigabits per second per optical channel, as stated on placmos.eu, positioned the consortium at the performance frontier of a rapidly expanding field.
The strategic insight driving "The Big Race" is a recognition that pure technical communication fails to build public or institutional legitimacy for European Union research investment. Horizon 2020, the EU's research and innovation framework under which plaCMOS was funded, requires participating projects to demonstrate societal relevance alongside scientific merit. Mellanox Technologies chose to meet that requirement not through white-paper summaries but through film — a medium capable of embedding a specialist semiconductor research project within narratives of medical research, climate research, and space research that carry inherent human stakes.
In the competitive context of silicon-photonics development, plaCMOS sat alongside commercial programmes from companies including Intel, which had been shipping silicon-photonics products since 2016, and Cisco, which acquired silicon-photonics pioneer Luxtera in 2018. Where those programmes pursued commercial product timelines, plaCMOS operated as a collaborative pre-competitive research project — making its communications challenge less about market differentiation and more about demonstrating the value of European Union coordinated research to diverse stakeholder audiences across Israel and the broader European research community.
Mellanox Technologies assembled an in-house creative team in Tel Aviv to produce "The Big Race," with VP Creative Moshe Gellis overseeing the project, per clapboard.com. Creative direction and art supervision were handled by Ziv Almog, with art direction credits shared between Avi Cohen and Yael Slabetzky, as documented on clapboard.com. The production resulted in a single film asset — a format choice that concentrated the campaign's entire communicative weight into one tightly controlled piece of moving image work, according to Bigidea Fandom.
The film's central device is the race metaphor, which performs a specific translational function: it converts the abstract, highly technical ambition of achieving 200 gigabits per second per optical channel into a universally legible competitive narrative. Speed is a concept that requires no engineering background to understand emotionally, and "The Big Race" exploits that legibility to argue that advances in silicon-photonics technology accelerate outcomes across medical research, climate research, and space research — domains that carry immediate public resonance in a way that optical interconnect specifications do not.
The decision to produce a film in Israel for a project whose seven consortium members span European companies, research organisations, and universities reflects Mellanox's role as project coordinator, per placmos.eu. Producing the campaign from Tel Aviv rather than from a European creative centre is itself a statement about where the project's organisational gravity resided. The creative team's task was to build a film that could travel across consortium audiences in multiple European markets while remaining grounded in the Israeli technology communication culture that Mellanox's creative department knew best. The result is a campaign that prioritises conceptual clarity and thematic breadth over technical depth, trading specification-level detail for emotional accessibility across diverse research and policy stakeholder audiences.
No verified performance data for "The Big Race" is publicly available. The campaign archive lists one film asset with no reported reach, awards, or audience metrics, according to clapboard.com. No substantive reviews of the campaign appear in trade publications including Campaign, Ad Age, Adweek, The Drum, or Contagious, per clapboard.com editorial review.
In the absence of measured results, structural effectiveness can be assessed against the campaign's functional purpose. "The Big Race" was not designed to drive consumer purchase or generate attributable commercial return; it was produced to fulfil the communications and public engagement obligations associated with a European Union Horizon 2020 grant, as the plaCMOS project framework documents on placmos.eu make clear. By that criterion, the film's existence as a published, publicly accessible asset represents a baseline delivery of its mandate.
The race metaphor, and the explicit connection drawn between silicon-photonics advancement and outcomes in medical research, climate research, and space research, gives the film a structural argument capable of reaching non-specialist audiences — a prerequisite for effective Horizon 2020 public communication. Whether the film achieved meaningful reach or prompted measurable engagement among those audiences remains undocumented. The Clapboard Score for "The Big Race" is 63 out of 100, reflecting competent creative execution of a technically demanding brief within an institutional communications context where the ceiling for broad cultural impact is structurally constrained by the specialist nature of the subject matter.
plaCMOS is a European Union Horizon 2020-funded research project coordinated by Mellanox Technologies, per placmos.eu. It formally began on 1 December 2017 and was planned to run through November 2020. The project brought together seven European companies, research organisations, and universities, with a total budget of €4.04 million, targeting 200 gigabits per second per optical channel.
Mellanox Technologies' Tel Aviv-based creative team produced "The Big Race," according to clapboard.com. VP Creative Moshe Gellis oversaw the project. Ziv Almog served as creative director and art supervisor, with Avi Cohen and Yael Slabetzky as art directors. The campaign was published in Israel in August 2018 to coincide with the plaCMOS project's public announcement.
Mellanox Technologies chose film to translate a highly technical silicon-photonics brief into a broadly accessible narrative. The single film asset uses a race metaphor to connect semiconductor research to medical research, climate research, and space research. Film allowed the campaign to meet European Union Horizon 2020 public engagement requirements while reaching non-specialist audiences beyond the engineering community.
"The Big Race" was published in Israel in August 2018, per clapboard.com. Mellanox Technologies, an Israeli company, coordinated the plaCMOS project on behalf of a seven-member European consortium. Though produced in Israel, the film's thematic focus on European Union-funded research and outcomes across medical, climate, and space research gave it relevance across multiple European stakeholder audiences.
"The Big Race" holds a Clapboard Score of 63 out of 100. The score reflects competent creative execution of a technically demanding institutional brief. No verified audience metrics or trade-publication awards have been documented for the campaign, according to clapboard.com, and the specialist nature of silicon-photonics research places structural limits on the film's potential for broad cultural impact.
The film argues that advances in silicon-photonics technology accelerate applications across medical research, climate research, and space research, making faster computing universally beneficial. This framing meets European Union Horizon 2020 requirements to demonstrate societal relevance. Rather than detailing the plaCMOS project's 200 Gb/s technical target, the campaign leads with human-scale outcomes to reach non-specialist audiences.
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