Industry insiders
Thoughts & opinions from the experts
“CPU virtualisation has been around for years and is a wellunderstood science, but it doesn’t solve every problem. IT departments have had some difficulty in the past in rolling out virtual desktops (VDI) prior to Nvidia Grid technology, because for some workflows, users simply could not run many of their most important applications. And not just high-end 3D apps – even running Windows Aero requires a GPU to work properly.
Through joint engineering efforts with Citrix and VMWare, we’ve brought our Grid technology into the mainstream. Nvidia’s Grid technology includes all the important elements necessary to provide graphics horsepower to any device.”
“One of the key approaches to creativity at Framestore is to group project teams together as much as possible. But projects can change quickly, so we find ourselves doing a large number of moves and changes to ensure that we match artist/ developer with the appropriate machines. For us, the promise of virtualised workstations is that we will have much greater speed and flexibility in the computer resources we deliver to an individual user’s desktop. In an ideal world, we’ll be able to dial up or down the performance based on the needs of the business during runtime as opposed to a more coarsegrained approach of managing an existing physical inventory.”
“We always tell people to start with the end user to work out what their workflow is, what applications they’re using and how they interact with the system. I advocate selling the fact that users are no longer tethered to a piece of tin under the desk. Some will love the freedom this offers. But your power designers are still going to want that warm fuzzy feeling of a unit right under their desk.
You also need to define what success looks like out of the gate. It is still necessary to make some compromises based on your infrastructure. It’s not realistic to expect 60 frames per second. Is virtualisation a game-changer? Absolutely. But it’s not a one size fits all solution, and we’re not saying that the workstation is dead.”