Today is a huge day for desktop virtualization. Microsoft, Citrix, and several other partners are announcing a slew of new things specifically related to desktop virtualization, and we'll dig deep into each of them over the next few days. There's even a dedicated website, DesktopVirtualizationHour.com, setup for the announcements.
The first announcement we'll dig into today is that Microsoft's Calista-based graphics remoting capabilities will be called "RemoteFX" and shipped as part of SP1 for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. I've written quite a bit on Calista in the past, including Microsoft's purchase of the company over two years ago and some updates (1, 2) on their progress along the way.
For those who don't know, RemoteFX is an enhancement to RDP's graphics remoting capabilities. The goal of RemoteFX is to deliver the full modern Windows desktop experience—including multiple displays, Aero, and multimedia—to all types of client devices including very thin, sub-$100 thin clients. RemoteFX does this via a technique known as host-based rendering, which means the entire final composited screen image is rendered on the remote host and then compressed and sent down to the client. (In effect this moves more computing into the datacenter and lessens the importance on specific client devices or client specs.)
Fundamentally RemoteFX is just a codec (like H.264) that's been written for real-time encodes. (H.264, on the other hand, is meant for content that can be pre-rendered not in real time, like TV shows and movies.)
There will be several initial ways RemoteFX will function once it's released, including:
- Full software-based encoders on the host.
- a GPU/CPU-based encoder (with extensions to Hyper-V to let GPUs be shared between multiple VMs).
- A custom chip-based encoder, either on a plug-in card or built-in to the host.
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