During a presentation at this year's CES,
AMD and
OTOY unveiled plans for a new supercomputer they believe will revolutionize
entertainment. By calculating all relevant data sever-side and then
streaming the results to online devices, AMD claims the platform can bring video
games and other "graphically-intensive applications" to "virtually any type of
mobile device with a web browser without making the device rapidly deplete
battery life or struggle to process the content."
"Imagine playing the most visually intensive first person shooter game at the
highest image quality settings on your cell phone without ever having to
download and install the software, or use up valuable storage space or battery
life with compute-intensive tasks," teased AMD digital media and entertainment
director Charlie Boswell. In the announcement, video game publisher
Electronic Arts expressed its optimism, saying that it looks "forward to the new
customers we can reach and the new interactive expressions that emerge from
revolutionary technology like the AMD Fusion Render Cloud," and was joined
on-stage by Lucasfilm, Dell and HP.
Boswell detailed another possible use, suggesting that users could watch a movie
on their cell phone, then "seamlessly" continue the movie on their HDTV in full
resolution when they get home. The supercomputer is also said to provide "remote
real-time rendering of film and visual effects graphics." Dubbed the "AMD Fusion
Render Cloud," the supercomputer will be powered by AMD Phenom II processors,
AMD 790 chipsets and ATI Radeon HD 4870 graphics processors. OTOY noted plans
for the system to be ready by the second half of 2009, but it was unclear if
OTOY was referencing its software or the supercomputer itself.