NVIDIA Targeting Real-Time Cloud Rendering

MojoKid writes "To date, the majority of cloud computing applications have emphasized storage, group collaboration, or the ability to share information and applications with large groups of people. So far, there's been no push to make GPU power available in a cloud computing environment — but that's something NVIDIA hopes to change. The company announced version 3.0 of its RealityServer today. The new revision sports hardware-level 3D acceleration, a new rendering engine (iray), and the ability to create 'images of photorealistic scenes at rates approaching an interactive gaming experience.' NVIDIA claims that the combination of RealityServer and its Tesla hardware can deliver those photorealistic scenes on your workstation or your cell phone, with no difference in speed or quality. Instead of relying on a client PC to handle the task of 3D rendering, NVIDIA wants to move the capability into the cloud, where the task of rendering an image or scene is handed off to a specialized Tesla server. Then that server performs the necessary calculations and fires back the finished product to the client."

Comments

Incomparable to OnLive - different goals

[Animaether]

NVidia's offering performs full scene raytracing/pathtracing, with effects ranging from reflections and refractions to global illumination and caustics all the way through to sub-surface scattering and participating media.

Some of these things can be done in proper realtime (say, at least, 30fps at 720p) on existing GPUs, but typically by using hacks that look 'good enough', but aren't actually correct. Which is fine for gaming (where refresh rates matter), but not fine for product visualization, architectural visualization or to go to an extreme.. materials and lighting analysis, where you don't care if it's not 30fps, but are more than happy to wait 10 seconds for something that used to take 15 minutes.

That said... if the cards keep getting faster, then eventually 30fps@720p will be possible and there's no reason, in the time inbetween, that games couldn't add the more fancy effects and have the GPGPU solutions take care of those on a 'cloud' platform.

Re:Stupidest idea ever

[im_thatoneguy]

I take it you don't have a render farm. If you're closer to delivery your render farm is probably completely occupied rendering final frames. If you are in the middle of a project it's probably running at quarter or half capacity. A render farm is often either over burdened or under burdened. That's a situation that's perfect for cloud computing. Instead of wasting thousands and thousands of dollars in idle machines you simply pay for the time when you need processing power. And since most of the world won't be rendering simultaneously a shared farm better distributes the investment. The only challenge now will be asset management and synchronizing a couple of GBs of scene data back and forth.

OnLive similarity

[Anonymous Coward]

Doing graphics work in real-time is OnLive's department. I wonder what the patent status of this will be - OnLive filed a fair few - although I don't know which specific bits they cover. Should be interesting to see which company can deliver.

Re:No more!!

[Sockatume]

I would humbly suggest that the people who talk about a 1920 by 1080 anything are unlikely to misuse the term "cloud computing", either. The people who use "cloud computing" as a magic talisman without bothering to know what it means are the sort of people who start their "CPU" with the front-panel lock key and download internets from the email.

This is besides the point. It was argued that, because people use "cloud computing" without knowing what it means, then the term has no meaning. This is simply an absurd statement.