NVIDIA has announced the NVIDIA GRID, its new server product that will bring video games to the cloud. While it has been done before – services such as OnLive do provide a service – NVIDIA’s GRID is predominantly GPUs allowing each frame to be recomputed every time, which the cloud is not able to handle.
“The applications, the textures, the objects, the world is being completely synthesized every time you touch the computer. Every frame is being recomputed,” NVIDIA’s Jen-Hsun Huang said on stage, also adding that the GRID is NVIDIA’s integrated system and is designed to be the most powerful and most efficient.
NVIDIA GRID is able to serve up to 26 users concurrently, and up to 36 times more HD-quality game streams than other cloud-gaming systems. It has 20 grid servers, and has 240 handcrafted GPUs with a combined power of 200TFLOPS – or the equivalent of 700 Xbox 360 consoles.
The NVIDIA GRID already have some partners, including Agawi in the US, Cloud Union and Cyber Cloud Technologies in China, G-cluster in Japan, Playcast Media Systems in Israel and Ubitus in Taiwan. It will also partner with LG to facilitate streaming games to its smart TVs – including a demo at CES to stream games such as Assassin’s Creed 3.