Think your requirements are too tough for desktop virtualization? Think again.
Manufacturers and engineering firms have desktop problems most of us never have to think about. Whether collaborating with design engineers across oceans using advanced CAD/CAM or GIS apps or working out product issues with an iPad on the production floor, the secure, high performance delivery of GPU accelerated 3D applications and desktops with XenDesktop has never been more powerful or efficient.
So why desktop virtualization for these extreme performance graphics?
1. Datasets are getting bigger- As software vendors continue to push the envelope with increasing accurate and sophisticated data models for capturing the “virtual” details behind increasingly complex designs, the data generated and stored against these models continues to grow. As multiple engineers or CAD operators need access to those models, it means moving around large amounts of data. While there are a range of technologies to help deal with big data, it still requires synchronization and increasingly big pipes.
2. New requirements for collaboration- Many manufacturers and engineering firms are increasingly leveraging global design teams to keep projects working around the clock, collaborate with vendors and suppliers across continents, and take advantage of outsourced talent. These requirements for collaboration further stress infrastructure as many users may need to leverage the same design data in real time, making synchronization impractical.
3. Protection of IP- The design data captured in modern applications holds critical value for the owners of that IP. At the same time, the demand for collaboration with third parties puts increasing pressure on the protection of designs.
XenDesktop with HDX 3D technologies secures sensitive intellectual property and privacy-sensitive data while improving collaboration and performance eliminating the need to synchronize and transfer massive data files. Meanwhile, users leverage state-of-the-art graphics processing hardware in the datacenter to access designs from any device, anywhere.
As another component of Citrix workshifting solutions, HDX 3D Pro technology included in XenDesktop 5.6 Feature Pack 1, available in June, 2012, will provide breakthrough visual performance while reducing the bandwidth requirements for the most demanding graphics experience in half, leveraging a new ultra-efficient deep compression codec.
Deep compression codec
The new deep compression codec leveraged by HDX 3D Pro can be compressed and decompressed in software without consuming cores in the GPU, leaving the GPU free for calculating vertices and textures and enabling lower cost GPUs for many applications.
GPU Passthrough
The GPU Passthrough option released with XenServer 6 enables (initially) up to 4 GPUs to be installed in a server and then “passed-through” to virtual machines running on the hypervisor. This option for deploying HDX 3D Pro permits IT to manage workstations as virtual machines, with all the flexibility, management and control of VDI, but still provides a full GPU for each user. Systems supporting this model are now available from Dell, HP, IBM.
You can read the original blog post here.