Stefan Mileschin

Taipei, Taiwan, October 26, 2011- Leadtek Research Inc., a leading cloud computing and video telecommunication products manufacturer, announces product launch of the TeradiciTM APEXTM 2800 server offload card today.

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) deployments are complex and difficult for a corporation’s IT staff to predict CPU consumption of their VDI environment. In a typical VDI deployment the responsibility of servicing applications and rendering plus the encoding of the display content for virtual desktops is left to the server’s CPUs. Responsibility for all of these tasks makes it difficult to manage spikes in demands such as that generated from multimedia or graphically-intense applications. If even 10% of the users in a VDI deployment begin watching web videos at the same time, the impact on all of the VDI users can be significant. In addition, it’s difficult to know in advance how much headroom is required to support future applications which could be even more taxing on the CPUs. This situation can lead to an overburdening of the CPUs, a poor end user experience, and a perceived failure in deploying a VDI solution.

The TeradiciTM APEXTM 2800 server offload card by Leadtek Research Inc. provides hardware-accelerated PCoIP® image encoding for server-hosted VMware View™ virtual desktops. Available as a standard PCIe expansion card for industry standard servers, the APEX APEXTM 2800 uses real time statistical analysis to constantly measure display graphical content changes generated by each virtual desktop and automatically offloads the image encoding of the most demanding displays from the CPUs to the APEXTM 2800 card. As demands change the card will seamlessly and automatically shift between hardware encoding on the APEXTM 2800 processor and software encoding on the virtual desktop’s vCPUs. This means that in a typical configuration, up to 64 of the most active displays will be assigned for offloading, providing a significant advantage over CPU image encoding available today.



Through constant monitoring and intelligent usage of available resources, the APEXTM 2800 provides three main benefits to VMware View VDI deployments:

Lower VDI deployment risk
The APEXTM 2800 card helps to ensure that processing power is available to meet the image encoding demands of displays while application processing requirements are buffered from the changing demands of image encoding. Most importantly it leads to a more consistent and predictable level of performance especially as displays transition from low to high graphical demands. The APEXTM 2800 can encode more display content changes than an Intel X5690 6 core, 3.46GHz Xeon server CPU. It offers IT managers a predictable and scalable solution for their VMware View VDI deployment.

Consistent end user experience
Previously server CPUs tasked with running power-hungry user applications, encoding virtual desktop displays and running multiple virtual desktop images. The APEXTM 2800’s ability to monitor display content changes from all virtual desktop displays and make intelligent choices over which get offloaded, reduces these server side factors. Those displays with the most active content such as those running multimedia applications or scrolling through documents will be offloaded for encoding, while the encoding of less active displays will likely remain on the CPU. End users will benefit through a more consistent and reliable experience.

Lower total cost of ownership
In a VDI deployment in which even 10% of the users could be simultaneously generating significant display content changes, the APEXTM 2800 can reduce CPU utilization by up to 50%. For this case, servers which are equipped with the APEXTM 2800, can support an average of 1.4 times more virtual machines than those completely dependent on the servers CPUs. This consolidation reduces the number of servers required which translates into lower power consumption, lower cooling requirements, less data center floor space and fewer emissions, not to mention less money spent on server hardware, upgrades and maintenance time.

The APEXTM 2800 is comprised of two fundamental components working in concert: specialized hardware for PCoIP® image encoding and constant, real-time monitoring of display activity. Performance oriented, scalable, and cost-efficient, the APEXTM 2800 card is a smart investment for any server hosted, VDI deployment using VMware View with PCoIP®.

Product Advantage
Protect the user experience so that it’s reliable and consistent as loads change.
Consolidate more users on the same server, up to 1.4x.
Increase VDI consolidation ratios with offloading 64 displays each card at a resolution of up to 1920x1200.
Decreases CPU utilization by up to 50%.
Dynamically and seamlessly manages the most active heavy loading displays.
Provide cost benefits by adding more virtual machines with fewer servers.