AMD FirePro GPUs Now Offer Microsoft RemoteFX Support, Enable a New Generation of Thin Clients

AMD announced that their line of ATI FirePro professional graphics cards now supports Microsoft's RemoteFX technology, included in Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7 SP1 operating system, enabling thin clients and other remote users to run graphics intensive tasks.

These applications are run on a server in a virtual machine and then transmitted remotely to end-users while keeping the data secure in the data center. To users, this seems like a local Windows 7 desktop experience.

Hardware-assisted graphics acceleration enclosed in the RemoteFX technology enables a full-fidelity virtual desktop experience, including support for 3D applications (even games) and portable graphics content such as Microsoft Silverlight, Windows Aero.

The FirePro graphics cards accelerate the whole process and enable servers to support up to 12 clients per graphics card.

Right now, AMD offers RemoteFX only for the Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 operating system when paired together with an ATI FirePro V5800, V7800, V8800 or V9800 graphics card.

”With ATI FirePro professional graphics, RemoteFX gives users a great experience on their remote devices. Whether on a remote traditional PC, or from a web page on a thin client, users can enjoy a rich desktop and applications that include high-fidelity graphics,” said Manlio Vecchiet, director of Windows Server Product Management, Microsoft Corp.

“Taking advantage of host-side rendering, ATI FirePro professional graphics lets applications on the host computer run at full speed.

“Combining fast host-side rendering with traditional client-side rendering, Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 gives Microsoft VDI customers great deployment flexibility: In a single solution, you get great graphics performance for device-independent remoting, as well as for network-constrained environments.”

To get a sense of how powerful this technology actually is, during the 2010 edition of the Tech Ed Europe conference, Microsoft has demoed it with an HP thin client which was running the computer game Crysis from a remote server.