IDF 2010 – Intel is showcasing a ray-traced demo of Wolfenstein rendered in the Cloud and streamed to a small laptop.
According to Intel researcher Daniel Pohl, the above-mentioned Cloud configuration comprises four servers powered by an advanced platform dubbed “Knights Ferry.”
“[Its] many Integrated Core (MIC) architecture [is] targeted towards the High-Performance Computing (HPC) market – [rather than] individual gamers.
“And as ray tracing is a highly parallel application, it benefits from [multiple] cores that are in a single chip on the Knights Ferry board.
“[For example], once a chip in one of the servers has finished calculating a new frame for the game it will send it over the network to a thin client – in this case a small laptop.”
Pohl also noted that rendering high-end gaming graphics in the Cloud is an “emerging [and fast evolving] trend” that offers several definite advantages.
“[Indeed], rather than being constrained to running these high-end applications only on your desktop at home, you can in principal play on any computer – such as a system at your friend’s house or even lightweight systems like a netbook or tablet.
“[And] in the future, it could also free up compute resources on your system to be used for voice and gesture recognition, increasing the level of immersion for the application.”
