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I know that PCoIP can route display, sound and power controls over Ethernet to a remote user. But for my new workstation, the vendor is not providing PCoIP support but only IPMI. I want to know that if I would be able to route true video output with all OpenGL and 3D rendering at the server (unlike VNC) using IPMI. Also what about sound?

Edit: And if not, are there any competing technologies to PCoIP with similar capabilities?

Aamir
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I'm not sure why you would want such a technology, but it sounds a lot like MS's new Remote Desktop extensions. The difference being that the RDP Extensions would allow you to use the video acceleration on the displaying computer.

I don't think you're going to find what you're looking for. Conservatively, lets say your running 1024x768 resolution, 32 bit depth, at 60Hz. That's 1.5Gbps of raw data. You could cut it down to 500Mbps by cutting the frame rate to 20Hz, but lower than that and you'll notice flicker. Now we could employ compression technologies like MPEG-x to get lower bit rates, but that's going to require some powerful hardware compression to do it in real time where it would be acceptable for remote desktop use. So now we're talking a very low volume product, with high cost components, and very little value; that's a recipe for 'not gonna happen'.

IPMI was meant for Management functions, not streaming live OpenGL 3D renderings over IP.

Chris S
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  • Agreed - not gonna happen. – EEAA Jul 16 '10 at 22:19
  • And yet, have a look at http://www.onlive.com/ streaming video games, your machine sends control inputs back, and decompresses a video stream to your machine, the game runs on a remote machine in their server farm. – Ronald Pottol Jul 16 '10 at 23:05
  • @Ronald, those onlive.com games run a 720p, never see a real graphics card until they hit your computer, require at least 5Mbps downstream, don't support WiFi for lag & bandwidth reasons, and warn you that lag may impact game play. It's a highly specialized system that runs on a server farm. That's a **lot** different than what this question is asking. – Chris S Jul 17 '10 at 02:51
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    Have a look at http://www.teradici.com before discounting the possibility of 60fps video+audio transport over Ethernet. Terradici has already implemented PCoIP in hardware. But thanks for the answer that it is not going to be possible with IPMI. – Aamir Jul 17 '10 at 04:48
  • I would bet they do the compression on a real graphics chip, along with the rest of the rendering. And to think I used to say that I wanted gigabit so I could send NTSC video around the lan with out compression. – Ronald Pottol Jul 17 '10 at 16:15
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The workstation vendor doesn't need to provide PCoIP support. You can buy it separately if you'd like. EVGA sells portals and host cards.

With a 1920x1200 display resolution I'm seeing around 45 fps at the portal and it claims to be using 130,000 kbps. The latency is averaging around 2 ms. This is through a small 1G switch that both the portal and the host card are connected. It is sending DVI, not HDMI. That might matter if you are trying to display a HDCP protected video, but otherwise it works.

Jay R.
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