NVIDIA Unveils Industry's First Cloud-Based GPU

[Adrian Wong]

October 17, 2012 — Engineers and design professionals will be able to work anywhere on virtually any device and still have access to the computing and graphics performance of a GPU-*powered workstation, with today’s launch of the cloud-*based NVIDIA® VGX™ K2 GPU.

Built on the NVIDIA Kepler™ architecture – the world’s fastest, most efficient GPU architecture – VGX K2 adds unprecedented workstation capabilities to the NVIDIA VGX platform, which was announced earlier this year.

The NVIDIA VGX platform utilises the GPU to allow enterprises to efficiently deliver virtualised workstation performance and capabilities – including rich multimedia and 3D graphics – to users on smartphones, tablets or
PCs. Its VGX K2 board, which includes two workstation-class GPUs, enables enterprises to increase user density without sacrificing performance or application compatibility.

Other key benefits of NVIDIA VGX K2 include:

• Faster interactivity: With 4 GB of graphics memory per GPU, VGX K2 ensures that graphics-*intensive design and content-*creation applications run with ease.
• Low-*latency remote display: Patent-*pending remote display technology minimises the lag traditionally associated with virtual desktop computing.
• Data center power efficiency: Using SMX, a revolutionary streaming multiprocessor, VGX K2 provides unsurpassed performance per watt for enterprise data centres.

“The VGX platform has been developed to bring rich, interactive graphics to all enterprise virtual desktop users,” said Jeff Brown, general manager of the Professional Solutions Group at NVIDIA. “With VGX K2 in the data centre, designers and engineers who create the core intellectual property for their companies can now access their IP from any device and still enjoy workstation-class performance.”

NVIDIA and Citrix Expand Enterprise Presence of Workstation-*Class Virtual Desktops
Citrix XenDesktop with HDX 3DPro uses NVIDIA VGX technology to deliver a faster, more interactive user experience. In combination with Citrix XenDesktop and Citrix XenApp, the NVIDIA VGX K2 board provides users full
compatibility and performance of all their graphics and GPU
computing-*intensive applications. In addition, the ecosystem of Citrix Ready partners around HDX 3D will be able to use VGX K2 to provide workstation-*class performance.

“In our increasingly global and mobile economy, companies are looking more and more to desktop virtualisation as a critical solution, and we’re working closely with NVIDIA to offer the most advanced virtualised user experience on the
market,” said Krishna Subramanian, vice president of marketing and partner engagement at Citrix. “XenDesktop with NVIDIA VGX acceleration aims to deliver workstation-class performance to the most demanding users in enterprises, while also increasing user density in their data centres.”

Availability
The NVIDIA VGX K2 platform for virtual workstations is expected to be available from leading server OEMs starting in early 2013.