The Minority Report

I use RDP^W (Remote Desktop Services nee Terminal Services^W) every day for network administration and this topic is interesting to me. Maybe it’s interesting to you too?

Before Calista, RDP remoted graphics primitives (the graphics drawing commands, such as “draw a line from screen location A to screen location B”) from the host, over the network, to the client. Those primitives where then rendered (drawn – converted from primitives to actual pixels on the screen), on the client device by the client’s software and hardware. Calista adds innovative and important host side rendering (with select primitive remoting – so as to optimize for certain client and network capabilities / bandwidth / application behavior / etc.) Thus, with Calista technology, rendering is done primarily on the host, and a “smart capture” mechanism is used to monitor which parts of the screen have changed and need to be forwarded to the client. This approach significantly increases the range of client device hardware/software combinations for which the full Windows desktop experience can be enabled.

Calista has pioneered the technology to share (virtualize) a single GPU between multiple VMs. This GPU virtualization technology has major implications for centralized computing scenarios like VDI and Terminal Services as well as other VM applications.

Calista developed an advanced compression scheme (CODEC) specifically designed to remote the Windows desktop (optimized for low latency, high-frequency data, etc.). While this CODEC can run on the CPU, large parts of it can also run on the GPU (providing better performance and utilizing the GPU’s untapped power).

Terminal Services Team Blog : More details about Calista Technologies