NVIDIA introduced its new GRID Visual Computing Appliance (VCA), which enables smaller facilities to deliver ultra-fast GPU performance to any Windows, Linux or Mac client on their network.
The NVIDIA GRID Visual Computing Appliance (VCA) is a GPU-based system that runs complex applications from companies like Adobe, Autodesk and Dassault Systèmes, and sends their graphics output over the network to be displayed on a client computer. This remote GPU acceleration gives users the same rich graphics experience they would get from an expensive, dedicated PC under their desks.
NVIDIA GRID VCA provides great flexibility to small and medium-size businesses with limited IT infrastructures. Their employees can, with the click of an icon, create a virtual machine called a workspace. These workspaces – which are, effectively, dedicated, high-performance GPU-based systems – can be added, deleted or reallocated as needed.
“NVIDIA GRID VCA is the first product to provide businesses with convenient, on-demand visual computing,” said Jen-Hsun Huang, co-founder and chief executive officer, NVIDIA. “Design firms, film studios and other businesses can now give their creative teams access to graphics-intensive applications with uncompromised performance, flexibility and simplicity.”
NVIDIA GRID VCA is an easy-to-manage 4U appliance. Its 16 NVIDIA GPUs and NVIDIA GRID VGX software provide NVIDIA Quadro-class graphics performance for up to 16 concurrent users, with low latency, high resolution and maximum interactivity.
“We’ve had enormous success using remote GPU acceleration on our content-creation applications,” said James Fox, chief executive officer at Dawnrunner, a San Francisco-based film production company. “Thanks to NVIDIA GRID VCA, we don’t spend weeks configuring workstations and transcoding files and projects. Instead, we have more time to deliver a higher quality product for our customers. And we can take on new projects with tighter deadlines.”
Scheduled to ship in May, NVIDIA GRID VCA will be offered in 8 GPU or 16 GPU configurations, with pricing starting at $24,900, plus an annual software license of $2,400.
