Windows 8 Allows New HP ARM Thin-Clients, AMD APU Clients Also Showed Off

Daily Tech ^ | October 16, 2012 1:33 PM | Jason Mick (Blog)

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

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)}

[DManA]

What about Citrix? Don’t they sort of dominate that space?

[radioone]

RE: Win8. Friend of mine that works in an IT department with hundreds of computers wrote me a note this morning. Some of this is WAY above my pay grade:

"Yeah, I'd definitely have to agree about Windows 8. Let's put it this way - I would say that the learning curve one has to grasp, going from Win 7 to Win 8, is almost twice that of what we had between XP and Win 7 for the vast majority of "everyday" users. Now, seasoned IT people like ourselves will have little difficulty, but the average user isn't going to be thrilled. Windows 8 is very much optimized for the mobile (phone, tablet, etc.) experience, both in it's visual presentation and method of operation. Though you can configure it to look and work like Win 7, it doesn't come out of the box that way!

It wasn't all that long ago that we were just telling people that they should upgrade to Windows 7 - and a lot of the office staff on-campus were not all that thrilled about having to learn something totally new. Now, Windows 8 is totally different when compared to Windows 7 - I wonder how they're going to handle that!?!?! The other part of that involves our many user labs, which run software apps that are specific to specific areas of study. The problem with these apps is that they're almost purpose-built for certain configurations and making them run on Windows 7 was a tough challenge. I can't wait to see what Desktop Services will pull out of their hat to make Win 8 run these apps when it has a totally new execution engine.

I've ran Windows 8 and Server 2012 over their Beta cycles and the one thing that you quickly notice is that the visual presentation is identical across editions... Win 8 is the same on desktops, phones, and tablets. The idea was that, from a developer's perspective, you could write your app ONCE and then have it run on ANY of the Windows 8 editions. Server 2012 has the same Win 8-style interface but Microsoft, since the day they announced Server 2012 (Server 8, in the beginning), has advocated for the use of the "Server Core" interface which is a command line only interface which uses PowerShell 3.0 and a single Microsoft Management Console (MMC) app to manage all server functions! It's pretty strange when compared to previous versions of Windows Server."

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Don't know about Citrix.

Have not heard of remotefx from microsoft before.

So if a shop is Linux,...wonder how this all might work.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Found this RE: Remotefx

Explaining Microsoft RemoteFX

[Dr. Sivana]

That trick NEVER works.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Citrix has a deal with this...see link at post #5.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

From HP:

HP Introduces Thin Clients--LAS VEGAS, Feb. 13, 2012

*****************************************EXCERPT***************************************

The HP t610 features a dual-core AMD G-series processor with integrated discrete-class AMD Radeon graphics, which at 1.65 GHz

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Pushing Windows 9 into the enterprise might get interesting...

So take away their current PC which in some cases might be running Windows XP,,,,personally customized and and replace it with both new hardware and new operating systems....

Man I have been thru some of those exercises....not fun!

[knarf]

OK .. I run XP Pro and a few months ago I started getting a popup every time I logged into youtube, that youtube would no longer be supporting W7 "soon" (whatever THAT means/meant), so I "upgraded" to W8

I see no change at all.

When I view one of those home pages that says, "You're running .... and your ISP is ...."

It always says W8

So what am I missing?

BTW, the youtube popup no longer pops up.

[Blue Highway]

I thought Microsoft wasn;t going to offer the classic XP/Vista/Win 7 Start menu instead opting for the metrosexual tiles view. Is there a way to opt out of the new metrosexual view?

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Well,...it is suppose to be a big change...so your comment is interesting.

Maybe it depends on how deep one gets into it.

I am running Linux so I really don't know.

[catnipman]

the notion of “thin clients” has been around for over 20 years, resurrected about once every five years or so, each time with a different name. Not once have they ever been successful.