About a year ago, AMD FirePro™ professional graphics and Microsoft® RemoteFX technology came together to deliver the world’s first true graphics virtualization capability for the data center. Dell and Microsoft certified AMD FirePro™ V7800P professional graphics with Microsoft RemoteFX in the Windows Hardware Quality Labs (WHQL) and the Dell PowerEdge M610X blade server – the first complete RemoteFX solution for VDI.
RemoteFX was a huge focus at Microsoft TechEd 2011 and it’s a hot topic again this year. Microsoft just made available a release candidate for Windows Server® 2012, with the full version expected to make a debut this fall. And with Windows Server 2012 comes a revamped RemoteFX, the brand representing all of the user experience improvements made in Remote Desktop Protocol. Following are just a few of the improvements you can expect to see later this year, taking virtualized graphics to the next level:
- Adaptive Graphics: helps enable the seamless delivery of virtual desktop and Windows Server 2012 RemoteApp programs with Aero and 3D experiences across a variety of networks, including those where bandwidth is limited and latency is high.
- Media Remoting: ensures smooth multimedia experiences on those same problematic networks, including smooth video playback using H.264 encoded video streaming and audio/video synchronization.
- Multi Touch: brings true multi touch and gesture remoting with support for multiple simultaneous touch inputs, enabling users to exploit a new breed of touch- and gesture-enabled applications in remote desktop environments.
- vGPU: allows IT administrators to share physical GPUs (supporting DirectX® 11) on a Hyper-V server across multiple virtual machines, enabling applications running in a virtual machine to access GPU resources. The result is a rich multimedia desktop experience for users:
- Superior performance for 3D graphics-intensive applications
- Full graphical animations and transitions
- Broad application compatibility, running as a console session within a virtual machine
AMD FirePro™ professional graphics cards are expected to fully support Windows® 8, Windows Server 2012 and RemoteFX later this year, but in the meantime you can download our initial driver and experience these improvements today. For more information on AMD FirePro cards supporting Windows Server 2008, and to download drivers, click here.
Lastly, for more detailed information on what’s new with RemoteFX be sure to check out the blog Eric Han, senior program manager for Remote Desktop Virtualization at Microsoft, posted today.
Mitch Furman is a senior product manager, Professional Graphics, AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.