Nvidia to Deliver Graphics Via Cloud -- Big New Thinking

(MoneyWatch)  It seems like about a third of the tech stories these days have to deal with cloud computing. There's been a sameness to them, the way I described e-book readers as being too similar and even boring. Put storage up there, or run CRM, or accounting, or business intelligence analytics, or essentially some other neatly defined category of software, and then use the resources via the web. Useful, but predictable. That's what makes Nvidia announcement of what is essentially a graphics rendering farm as a cloud surface as inherently interesting as the Spring Design e-book reader that I described yesterday. Even if you don't have any personal interest in what they're doing, this is an important concept because it starts to push out the barriers of the usual associations.

In this case, Nvidia is using a GPU farm and software expertise from its acquisition of mental images to create what it calls the RealityServer platform to stream "interactive, photorealistic 3D applications to any web connected PC, laptop, netbook and smart phone." Some of the extra uses are fairly predictable. Some are less so:

Who would care? Engineers or architects, for example, might be able to much more quickly few products they designed in different lighting or other conditions. Someone shopping for cars or home furniture over the Web might be able to change colors, materials or locations to see how products look.

There's also potentially use for gaming designers, graphic designers, multimedia presentation producers, on-the-fly interactive product shots for web-based catalogs. But more importantly, it shows how diverse can be the types of services offered via cloud or remote delivery. Why not realtime routing directions for delivery companies, working around constant traffic updates and giving changes dynamically to drivers? Advanced chip design tools on a subscription basis?

The point is that companies need to start breaking out -- now -- from host of preconceptions that uses might have about cloud services. Not calling everything "cloud delivery" as the buzzword du jour, but finding new ways to deliver services that could benefit from the concentrated computing power available in a hosted environment. Finding the connection between what is possible and what people don't even realize that they yet want will ultimately drive adoption. The PC had it with the spreadsheet, offering an ability that no one had previously enjoyed. That's what cloud computing needs: not a silver-bullet-easy-answer-killer-app, but opening the door to radically new thinking.

Image via stock.xchng user fangol, site standard license.