Nvidia Grid, VM GPU

My friend pointed me to these articles about nvidia's grid.  This could open up the door for gaming using the ESXi clients.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8042/nvidia-grid-update-nvidia-launches-grid-test-drive-for-vdi-desktops

http://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/NVIDIA-GRID-Virtualized-Desktops-the-Future-of-Computing-572/

http://www.nvidia.com/object/grid-boards.html

Wow, great find.  Sounds like a wise guy.

Wow, great find.  Sounds like a wise guy.

Oddly enough his name is also Aaron

The cost of the grid gpu's are hugely expensive.  While a single grid gpu may serve more than 1 machine at once, it would probably be cheaper to build a number of whiteboxes to more performance for less money... I suspect while serving 16 gaming clients the performance would be quite low.

These cards are not really geared towards consumer/gaming. They are built for CAD/CAM applications when served through VDI. They are typically $4-6K per card or more, but will serve multiple users (the number will vary on the load of each virtual desktop). As suggested by Benoire, you'd be better served buying high end Nvidia GTX cards and dedicated one to each VM.

The other thing is that since these are geared towards corporate VDI solutions it's going be aiming at Citrix XenDesktop or VMware Horizon and not you just trying to run multiple Win8.1 hosts on your UnRAID box.

Saying that, one of the cards listed above was a high performance gaming grid card... equivalent to 2 x GTX 680 from what I can recall... Again for the price you'd better off getting multi gpu that can be run as required.

These cards are not really geared towards consumer/gaming. They are built for CAD/CAM applications when served through VDI. They are typically $4-6K per card or more, but will serve multiple users (the number will vary on the load of each virtual desktop). As suggested by Benoire, you'd be better served buying high end Nvidia GTX cards and dedicated one to each VM.

 

The other thing is that since these are geared towards corporate VDI solutions it's going be aiming at Citrix XenDesktop or VMware Horizon and not you just trying to run multiple Win8.1 hosts on your UnRAID box.

Actually nvidia talks about gaming with them and calls it cloud gaming.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/cloud-gaming-benefits.html

Saying that, one of the cards listed above was a high performance gaming grid card... equivalent to 2 x GTX 680 from what I can recall... Again for the price you'd better off getting multi gpu that can be run as required.

I remember when nvidia came out with the PhysicX card for dedicated physics calculations to tack the load off the CPU it too was expensive.  Give it time the price will come down.  I just though it was cool that there is advancements in 3D virtualization.

Cloud gaming is a nice term, but it's not really mainstream. VDI vendors such as Citrix/VMware are branching out to multi-tenant VDI solutions which is only in it's infancy really, but is what makes this possible. The GRID cards are geared to professional workloads, however given the underlying technology they can also be utilized for gaming (at an inflated price).

There will likely be a few consumer solutions based on this, but I still have a hard time believing this will be anything other than a niche play for a quite a while. Technically being able to do something, and realistically finding a market for something are two different things. It is an interesting premise, however for most consumers it's not really a solution that is going to make sense today.

These cards are not really geared towards consumer/gaming. They are built for CAD/CAM applications when served through VDI. They are typically $4-6K per card or more, but will serve multiple users (the number will vary on the load of each virtual desktop). As suggested by Benoire, you'd be better served buying high end Nvidia GTX cards and dedicated one to each VM.

 

The other thing is that since these are geared towards corporate VDI solutions it's going be aiming at Citrix XenDesktop or VMware Horizon and not you just trying to run multiple Win8.1 hosts on your UnRAID box.

 

Actually nvidia talks about gaming with them and calls it cloud gaming.

 

http://www.nvidia.com/object/cloud-gaming-benefits.html

 

Saying that, one of the cards listed above was a high performance gaming grid card... equivalent to 2 x GTX 680 from what I can recall... Again for the price you'd better off getting multi gpu that can be run as required.

 

I remember when nvidia came out with the PhysicX card for dedicated physics calculations to tack the load off the CPU it too was expensive.  Give it time the price will come down.  I just though it was cool that there is advancements in 3D virtualization.

Yeah it is cool, the whole ability to pass through gpus or use a dedicated system like Grid is fun.  I think GPU passthrough is more mature and will be more mainstream but the ability to run a number of grid cards and dedicate cards as you need is pretty sweet.