Nvidia delivers GPU grid to power Citrix virtual workstations

Nvidia has released its vGPU Grid technology for Citrix XenDeskop and XenServer to support remote, hardware accelerated graphics processing.

The vGPU technology lets employees use any computing device, including their own notebooks and portable devices, to access office productivity and design applications virtually – just as they would at their desks – from anywhere at any time.

“Since the launch of our technology preview of XenDesktop and XenServer, we’ve demonstrated to customers worldwide that graphically demanding desktops and applications can be virtualised cost-effectively and with high scalability using Nvidia Grid vGPU,” said Calvin Hsu, vice-president product marketing, desktops and apps, at Citrix.

The technology is aimed at CAD/CAM users in architecture, engineering, construction, aerospace, manufacturing and design industries. Nvidia said vGPU delivers the flexibility to re-allocate resources to users based on constantly changing project needs.

Several third-party applications, including Adobe Creative Cloud and AutoCAD, have been certified to run on the vGPU Grid.

One early adopter of the technology, Serdar Kaya, an IT system engineer at Turkish Aerospace Industries, said: “Virtual desktop infrastructure and dynamic allocation of GPU power to virtual machines via vGPU became a necessity for our growing IT department. Our engineers require graphics power that varies each day from project to project, and simply buying and maintaining more workstations and graphics cards had become costly and unmanageable. 

"Grid streamlined our IT support, giving our users a boost of GPU power on the fly. It’s as simple as allocating additional GPUs in XenServer, and the GPU upgrade is there once the virtual machine is powered up again.”