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It’s been a bit longer than I expected, but today Microsoft has finally released the official version of the RemoteFX product for Windows Server 2008 and Windows 7.

Today’s release of RemoteFX with Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 (SP1) and Windows 7 SP1 is the culmination of two years’ close collaboration between engineers at Microsoft and engineers in great companies across our industry. This work has allowed us to build a new graphics experience for Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) customers. The download for this release will enable millions of existing servers to run RDP 7.1 with RemoteFX and Remote Desktop Services. Hundreds of millions of Windows 7 Client machines will be enabled to take advantage of the benefits associated with accessing RemoteFX-capable servers.

If you’ve forgotten, RemoteFX is an addon to their existing Terminal Services and Remote Desktop services systems in use by various Thin Clients that adds the ability to use remote GPU’s for hardware acceleration and GPU compute.  This means the nice Aero desktop, data visualization products, and even video games can now be used on true Thin Clients.

Already, NVidia has drivers out for the product, and the blog post form Microsoft lists a slew of other companies like Ti, iGEL, HP, and Citrix with additional products.  I also like HP’s take on the new technology and it’s relation to the “Law of Conservation of Misery” (The total misery in any system must remain constant).

The law of conservation of misery that used to apply to client virtualization is now challenged with the Microsoft RemoteFX technology. It allows you to virtualize the GPU on the host side and also use the GPU’s computing power to do the rendering and compression of the graphics that are sent down to the client as fast as possible. But, what type of client? Any type of client able to run the new version of RDP 7.1, which means that even low-end ones will be able to do it. The end result? Client virtualization  users will have the opportunity to access rich media content and enjoy Windows in Aero mode, as well as to do VDI with high resolution, and with single, dual displays …and beyond. This explains why there is a lot of excitement in the market.

via The RemoteFX industry ships products today – Windows Server Division WebLog – Site Home – TechNet Blogs.

Hardware microsoft, remotefx, software

NVidia has caught up to AMD in support for Microsoft’s RemoteFX product.  If you haven’t heard of RemoteFX before, it’s best described as another version of VNC & VirtualGL.  In a corporate environment, you currently must deploy some type of GPU at each workstation, particularly if you want decent performance under Windows Vista or Windows 7, which can drive up costs significantly and cause a bit of an administrative headache from the power and cooling requirements which may cause systems to fail a bit faster than desired.  With RemoteFX, you can deploy thin clients that access remotely available GPU hardware.

That’s where NVIDIA and Microsoft RemoteFX come in. Enabled by server-discrete-GPUs, this solution will move the corporate user’s PC workload into the server room, and then IT managers will service those users’ PC requirements with anytime/ anywhere, secure access that is IT friendly. RemoteFX, combined with NVIDIA Quadro GPUs, will enable the full Windows 7 desktop experience including rich and 3D media for very low cost ‘thin’ clients from anywhere on a company’s network.

Not exactly new technology, Microsoft has had their Terminal Services product for a while and VirtualGL can do this today via VNC (for Free even), but it’s nice to see some major commercial entities acknowledging this use in something more than a hack.  Lo0ks like right now it’s only for Quadro products (Which makes sense, this is a somewhat high-end tool meant for professional use), but no information on what the differences will be between the AMD version and the NVidia version.  My guess is nothing, except the NVidia version will enable CUDA-type applications.

via The NVIDIA Blog – NVIDIA and Microsoft Enhancing the Virtual Desktop User Experience with Microsoft RemoteFX.

Hardware, Science microsoft, nvidia, remotefx

Microsoft has had a few tries at the “Remote Desktop” system over the years, with Terminal Server and Remote Desktop being the two most notable.  They’re coming out with the next iteration in this, in combination with Citrix systems, called RemoteFX.  AMD, in particular, seems excited about this, in particular with this one point:

And the Microsoft RemoteFX feature will accomplish this by harnessing the power of GPU computing to accelerate the rendering of hosted desktop PCs when paired with servers running Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1, such as servers based on AMD Opteron™ processors.

GPU acceleration is cropping up everywhere these days, and being able to push “rich 3D, multimedia experiences” remotely would be huge.  AMD has been working with Microsoft on some time by providing server hardware and testing platforms, and combined with this new “HDX” technology it could be a big win for AMD.

via Can You Visualize the Virtual Future? | The Fusion Blog. and Microsoft’s Announcement

Hardware, Science amd, citrix, hdx, microsoft, remotefx