WIndows 8 comes with ARM support in RT, and new HP terminals (t410 example) use ARM processors. Nice writeup on DailyTech
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A pair of HP t610 thin-clients (powered by AMD APUs)
Yes, they can even play Crysis
The idea of so-called "thin-client" virtualization is simple and not terribly new. The idea is basically you take a very powerful server computer and create a number of hosted environments on it, and then stream video to cheap, low-powered desktop clients. The hosted environments receive all the input (say keyboard and mouse) from the clients.
I. Power Efficient CPUs Drive HP's Growing Thin-Client Army
While the idea itself is not all that new, low-power processing and broadband streaming technology has only just now reached the point where server makers can come up with the products to make it attractive and affordable on a wide scale.
One of the key companies leading the way is Hewlett-Packard Comp. (HPQ), which is looking to leverage emerging processor design to offer businesses cheap and capable thin-clients.
It's current demoing two designs -- one based on a 1 GHz Texas Instruments Inc. (TXN) chip using an ARM Holdings Plc (LON:ARM) Cortex-A8 intellectual property core + instruction set, and the other using a 1.65 GHz dual-core T56N "accelerated processing unit" (APU) from Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD), which comes with a built in Radeon graphics processing unit.
These cheap, low-power processors from TI/ARM and AMD prove the key to HP's ambitious thin-client vision.
A pair of HP t610 thin-clients (powered by AMD APUs)
(The ARM product is dubbed the HP t410 AiO Smart Zero Client, while the AMD APU variant is named the HP t610 Flexible Thin Client.)
Michael Clifford, HP Director, Cloud Computing, UK&I, spoke about showing the new designs at the upcoming IP EXPO, which is being held this Wednesday and Thursday in London. He comments, "The Cloud Computing space is constantly accelerating and maturing, and it is important that IT departments are not left behind. At this year's IP EXPO, we will demonstrate how our secure cloud solutions establish the ideal foundation, allowing businesses to become the 'service broker' and decide how and where to deliver IT services, opening limitless horizons of new abilities and powers."
So what does all that mean?
Your employer may soon be replacing your full-fledged PC (expensive) with a small, lightweight, power-efficient thin-client (cheaper). But you won't see any performance hit (in-theory), thanks to the beefy server back-end.
II. Enabled by Windows 8
Speaking of that back-end, that gets back to a final player in both HP and its rival's thin client experience -- Microsoft Corp. (MSFT). Microsoft's latest Windows 7 and Windows Server operating systems are offering a technology called RemoteFX, which allows the server backend to deliver a so-called "remote desktop" (the virtualized workspace) to the thin-client. Microsoft shows off the might of RemoteFX in a recent video, showing that yes, a thin-client really can play Crysis.
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