Amazon Working On EC2 Linux OpenGL Support, Considering Vulkan

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Amazon Working On EC2 Linux OpenGL Support, Considering Vulkan

Amazon Web Services today revealed more information about their EC2 Elastic GPUs support they are working to implement in the cloud...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Amazon-Elastic-EC2-GPUs-GL

[boxie]

That is kinda cool - is it for a full desktop in the cloud?

[Jabberwocky]

Hopefully this will help developers to test their software on multiple platforms/APIs.

[schmidtbag]

I'm confused - it's a GPU meant for cloud services, yet it supports OpenGL but not OpenCL? Even in regards to that "NICE visualization", I don't understand why they'd spend so much time and money producing something that any other existing GPU could do. Perhaps there's some architectural advantage it has that I'm not aware of?

[starshipeleven]

I'm confused - it's a GPU meant for cloud services, yet it supports OpenGL but not OpenCL? Even in regards to that "NICE visualization", I don't understand why they'd spend so much time and money producing something that any other existing GPU could do. Perhaps there's some architectural advantage it has that I'm not aware of?

Same reason for using thin clients in general, but now with 3D workstations too. http://www.nice-software.com/products/dcv

And they need OpenGL/Vulkan/DX as this is for 3D rendering.

[schmidtbag]

Same reason for using thin clients in general, but now with 3D workstations too. http://www.nice-software.com/products/dcv

And they need OpenGL/Vulkan/DX as this is for 3D rendering.

But that's what I don't get - if what they mostly care about is 3D rendering, why not just use an existing GPU? Creating an entirely new architecture from scratch that can outperform AMD's or Nvidia's offerings doesn't sound very cost effective to me.
However, they're also interested in using it for cloud services. In that case, making new hardware from scratch would make sense and be economically viable; it'd basically be an ASIC. But I don't understand why they'd need OpenGL for that.

[starshipeleven]

But that's what I don't get - if what they mostly care about is 3D rendering, why not just use an existing GPU? Creating an entirely new architecture from scratch that can outperform AMD's or Nvidia's offerings doesn't sound very cost effective to me.
However, they're also interested in using it for cloud services. In that case, making new hardware from scratch would make sense and be economically viable; it'd basically be an ASIC. But I don't understand why they'd need OpenGL for that.

I'll repeat, in simple words.

They want to replace expensive 3D workstations with thin clients (or non-workstation PCs) connected to a server or computing node with a ton of GPUs inside doing the 3D rendering job and sending them a slideshow of pre-rendered frames to display. It works like remote desktop, but not crappy.

Amazon is providing virtual GPUs for their cloud VMs that are in fact offloading the 3D calculations on physical GPUs in their datacenters.

OpenGL is required because they want to be running applications using OpenGL in these VMs.

None is making new hardware here.

[schmidtbag]

They want to replace expensive 3D workstations with thin clients (or non-workstation PCs) connected to a server or computing node with a ton of GPUs inside doing the 3D rendering job and sending them a slideshow of pre-rendered frames to display. It works like remote desktop, but not crappy.

Amazon is providing virtual GPUs for their cloud VMs that are in fact offloading the 3D calculations on physical GPUs in their datacenters.

That makes a lot more sense and cleared things up for me.

Though gets me to wonder why they don't just use NoMachine, or contribute toward VirtualGL.

[starshipeleven]

Though gets me to wonder why they don't just use NoMachine,

They said the stream will be displayed on any HTML5 browser.

or contribute toward VirtualGL.

They aim to provide this service for any dumb device around.
VirtualGL requires support in the client too, HTML5... even teapots have browsers with HTML5 support nowdays.

Also, VirtualGL relies heavily on X11, imho it's not something worth pursuing in its current form.