Killing the Business Desktop PC Softly
by Johan De Gelas on July 19, 2007 3:00 AM EST- Posted in
- IT Computing
Workstation Blades
The IT experts among our readers are probably protesting: CCI was launched in 2005 and blade PCs have been on the market since 2004-2005. So what's new? Besides the fact that the technology has matured and been upgraded, the technology is now able to meet the needs of more demanding applications like those used by CAD users, data miners, financial traders, and even 3D artists. So basically, the blade PCs are also now offering higher graphics and CPU performance. The "magic" to make this work is to replace the normal "remote protocols" such as ICA (Citrix) or RDP (Microsoft) by a proprietary lossless compression and encryption protocol. IBM has not yet given it a name to our knowledge; HP calls it Remote Graphics Software or RGS.
The blade workstation performs all 2D and 3D calculations and compresses and encrypts each frame before it's sent to the thin client. This kind of network transmission of 3D and 2D graphics at high "refresh" rates requires between 2 and 4 Mbit/s of bandwidth on average. The goal is to make it feel like the manipulation of 3D CAD is actually being done on the thin client. For this you need at least 50-60 frames per second and a response time of less than 20ms. With an excellent broadband internet connection, a leased line, or a LAN connection, it should be possible to get good performance even if your thin client is 2000 miles away from the blade PC or workstation blade. As long as your network connection doesn't add more than 10-15 ms to your frame time, it feels like you are working on a normal workstation. RGS works on both Red Hat Linux and Windows XP. You can also license RGS for blade PCs: HP's blade PCs contain a mobile version of AMD's 690G chipset.
Both the IBM and HP blades are based on the Intel 5000p chipset platform. The fastest supported CPU is a dual core Xeon 5150 at 2.66 GHz. The HP blade supports 16GB, the IBM blade 8GB. However, the IBM has the faster graphics card: it can support up to the modern Quadro FX1600 (256-bit interface), while the HP is limited to the relatively low-end older FX540M 128MB (128-bit memory interface). Notice that both IBM and HP are using lower clocked mobile versions, a result of using the cramped blade chassis. Both IBM and HP make quite a bit of noise claiming that their workstation blades require quite a bit less power than a typical workstation, around 150-200W versus >300W for a typical PC workstation. Although the workstation blades are slightly more efficient thanks to the fact that several blades use one or two big PSUs, the biggest gains are the result of using mobile but slower performing video chips.
The IT experts among our readers are probably protesting: CCI was launched in 2005 and blade PCs have been on the market since 2004-2005. So what's new? Besides the fact that the technology has matured and been upgraded, the technology is now able to meet the needs of more demanding applications like those used by CAD users, data miners, financial traders, and even 3D artists. So basically, the blade PCs are also now offering higher graphics and CPU performance. The "magic" to make this work is to replace the normal "remote protocols" such as ICA (Citrix) or RDP (Microsoft) by a proprietary lossless compression and encryption protocol. IBM has not yet given it a name to our knowledge; HP calls it Remote Graphics Software or RGS.
The blade workstation performs all 2D and 3D calculations and compresses and encrypts each frame before it's sent to the thin client. This kind of network transmission of 3D and 2D graphics at high "refresh" rates requires between 2 and 4 Mbit/s of bandwidth on average. The goal is to make it feel like the manipulation of 3D CAD is actually being done on the thin client. For this you need at least 50-60 frames per second and a response time of less than 20ms. With an excellent broadband internet connection, a leased line, or a LAN connection, it should be possible to get good performance even if your thin client is 2000 miles away from the blade PC or workstation blade. As long as your network connection doesn't add more than 10-15 ms to your frame time, it feels like you are working on a normal workstation. RGS works on both Red Hat Linux and Windows XP. You can also license RGS for blade PCs: HP's blade PCs contain a mobile version of AMD's 690G chipset.
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| IBM's HC10 and HP's XW460c | |
Both the IBM and HP blades are based on the Intel 5000p chipset platform. The fastest supported CPU is a dual core Xeon 5150 at 2.66 GHz. The HP blade supports 16GB, the IBM blade 8GB. However, the IBM has the faster graphics card: it can support up to the modern Quadro FX1600 (256-bit interface), while the HP is limited to the relatively low-end older FX540M 128MB (128-bit memory interface). Notice that both IBM and HP are using lower clocked mobile versions, a result of using the cramped blade chassis. Both IBM and HP make quite a bit of noise claiming that their workstation blades require quite a bit less power than a typical workstation, around 150-200W versus >300W for a typical PC workstation. Although the workstation blades are slightly more efficient thanks to the fact that several blades use one or two big PSUs, the biggest gains are the result of using mobile but slower performing video chips.
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smokenjoe - Wednesday, July 25, 2007 - link
I just thought I would post some end user experience as these are not all that common. We had an intel based thin client. When they were fist implemented last year they were OK slower than the dated computers they replaced but usable. Unfortunatly as time went oth they started having more and more issues to the point that it was common to have only one working thin client out of 6. We had to boot the clerks off their old PIII computers from the dark ages because they were the only ones that worked. People literally jumped for joy when we got the PC's back.Without being part of the IT department it is hard to say where the fault was but at the bare minimum make sure you have people that have the training and security privileges to fix problems any time they are needed. I had multiple reports of "I cant fix that I dont have the security privileges we will have someone fix it on Monday."
Thank god they did not think the clerks important enough to upgrade or we would have been lost.
yanman - Monday, July 23, 2007 - link
Another alternative which is available through a mix of technologies is removing only the local storage of your corporate desktop fleet and replacing this with a PXE-boot solution. There are vendors that can allow iSCSI boot of XP installs via a proprietary solution using PXE.i.e. Dell Optiplex with onboard GbE, boots from PXE, loads iSCSI stack, mounts guest LUN on the SAN for it's XP image, boots. Possibly you could leave the local hard disk in and use it only for swap space.
Advantages
- Less forced change on the users
- Better workstation performance
- Retains the thin-client advantages of ensuring all data is on the SAN
Disadvantages
- Can significantly increase SAN and network utilisation
- Slightly exotic setup that may not be fully supported by the hardware vendor.
Ajax9000 - Thursday, July 19, 2007 - link
Could you please spell out VDI on page 9. I knew pretty much what was being talked about, but I still had to Google to be sure.The workstation blades are an interesting development. Would it be possible to do VDI over workstation blades?
I ask because where I work (a government department) went Citrix in about 2001. At that time performance was reasonable in Head Office, but flaky in the handful of regional offices. We had thin clients, skinny clients (PCs stripped down to act as thin clients -- to save on TCA of course), and fat clients for specialised uses. It worked quite well -- I'd run 20MB+ spreadsheets under Citrix and use a fat client for publishing & graphics apps that wouldn't run under Citrix.
The only problem was making sure IT didn't downgrade you from fat client. :-)
But the government then amalgamated us with some other agencies (with standard PC setups) and we went from ~800 staff to over 2500 staff with many regional offices with poor network connections. And there was much more specialised uses such as greatly expanded GIS/mapping, web mapping, publishing, etc. Trying to get a sensible IT setup took three years ... and then there was another round of amalgamations with another round of IT integration issues that still haven't been resolved (and again involving lots more GIS/mapping, web mapping, etc).
So, would it be possible to do VDI over workstation blades as a way of distributing ARCinfo "floating" licences, Adobe apps, etc, across multiple sites rather than having dedicated workstations in "fixed" sites?
RandyDGroves - Thursday, July 19, 2007 - link
This was a nice detailed review of CCI, but completely missed the fact that IBM is using PC-over-IP technology from Teradici (www.teradici.com) instead of a Thin Client. Unlike software solutions such as ICA, RDP, and RGS; Teradici's PC-over-IP processors use hardware to bridge the video, audio, and USB traffic between the desktop device (called a Portal) and the blade workstation. This enables a perception-free experience in which the end user cannot detect that their PC has been remoted. Furthermore, since the Portal only has a hardware decoder chip, it is lower power than a Thin Client.For full disclosure, I am the CTO for Teradici and obviously biased. But, here are some links to recent articles in other publications that may be of interest:
Wall Street Journal - http://webreprints.djreprints.com/1722520524296.ht...">http://webreprints.djreprints.com/1722520524296.ht...
EETimes - http://www.eetimes.com/news/latest/showArticle.jht...">http://www.eetimes.com/news/latest/showArticle.jht...
The Register - http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/06/06/teradici_b...">http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/06/06/teradici_b...
JohanAnandtech - Thursday, July 19, 2007 - link
The briefing we got in IBM's blade HQ in Raleigh about the IBM HC10 was a lot more about the concept. The actual hardware and software was not discussed in detail. That is why I focused mostly on CCI, as I had been shown the exact specifications.florrv - Thursday, July 19, 2007 - link
As a network security manager for an F100, we've found a very useful niche for VDI technology: 3rd party developers.Rather than have a 3rd party connect directly into your dev environment, you set up a VDI environment and give them a controlled sandbox. This way, you can lock down what data goes back and forth to the 3rd party.
senseamp - Thursday, July 19, 2007 - link
As mentioned, this has been out for 8 years as SunRays.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Ray">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Ray
You can take your badge out, go to any place in the company with a Sunray (like drop in office), put your badge in, and it will pop up the desktop where you left off. Unix (such as Solaris) is designed from ground up for this kind of work (multiple users running on same OS with remote display), so it works very well, if the network is behaving well. With star/open office and firefox/thunderbird, that's good enough for most office work, and if you need a lot of performance, you can dispatch jobs to bigger machines or compute farms in the company.
szaijan - Thursday, July 19, 2007 - link
Sun has been pushing the thin client architecture for years, yet there's no mention in the article. Having worked on multiple Sunray clusters, and many PC netwroks, I have the say the thin client setup is much better for day-to-day office and e-mail work, simply based on the lack of overhead in installation, bug resolution, boot times, et. al. Cost is much lower overall. The downside is that network problems make work impossible, while you can still utilize a PC when the network is down or overloaded. A decent netwrok infrastructure makes this a minor issue.All that said, CAD, Photoshop, 3D Modeling, et. al., while not impossible, are badly hampered by the mouse latency, and the precision needed for such endeavors just isn't there. Of course you can just add a work station to the network for employees who require that level of client power.
Adul - Thursday, July 19, 2007 - link
We've been on a mission to getting rid of our thin clients as they been a source of pain since they keep getting infected with viruses, we can't patch them with normal updates, etc.JohanAnandtech - Thursday, July 19, 2007 - link
Very interesting. As you might have noticed, there are a lot "should" and "might" in the article :-). Could you tell me what kind of thin clients you are using? Running XP Embbedded? Why can't you patch them?