14 DAY TRIAL // When we saw that Supermicro released a server using NVIDIA's GRID graphics cards, we thought it was a very big deal. Not every day does a corporation reveal a machine that can play any high-end games for hundreds or thousands of web-connected users at once.
Now we find out that the Supermicro's announcement is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg, as there are three other companies that have servers of the sort.
We are, of course, referring to the three companies in the title: Dell, HP and IBM.
Dell has the PowerEdge R720, HP has the ProLiant WS460c Gen8 and HP ProLiant SL250 Gen8, and IBM has the iDataPlex dx360 M4.
All three run software made by Microsoft, Citrix or VMWare, but the NVIDIA GRID K1 and K2 boards do the actual work.
GRID K1 has four Kepler GPUs and 16 GB of GDDR5 VRAM, while K2 have two high-end Kepler GPUs and 8 GB of memory.
"IT departments face a growing challenge: employees increasingly bring their own devices to work, and expect mobility and a great experience," said Jen-Hsun Huang, co-founder and chief executive officer, NVIDIA.
"Virtualization enables them to provide secure, consistent access to company resources, but at the expense of performance and features. GRID eliminates this compromise."
In order to deploy GRID server systems, system designers need to go through a certification program that NVIDIA has launched. Citrix is helping establish an NVIDIA and Citrix Ready verification program offering fast track validation to OEMs and ISVs on the two cards mentioned above.
NVIDIA VGX software will be used to unlock the virtualization and remoting capabilities of NVIDIA GRID GPUs. Citrix has already licensed it.
"Enabling customers to virtualize their multiple workloads is a challenge Dell is committed to, and the NVIDIA GRID technology enables our solutions to be more powerful for design and graphics-intensive applications," said Sally Stevens, vice president of Dell PowerEdge marketing.