Not to long ago—a company would never imagine trying to run a graphics intensive application such as a hospital Radiology PAC system, Autodesk applications and Solidworks. Citrix is working on a project (that is available as a Tech Preview) called Apollo 3D Accelerated Bitmap Remoting. To quote Citrix:
Apollo 3D Accelerated Bitmap Remoting, a new Citrix technology that leverages graphics processor hardware acceleration to efficiently deliver high end 3D professional graphics both OpenGL and DirectX over DSL-like network connections. Most customers’ graphics needs are already well met by SpeedScreen Progressive Display, a revolutionary technology introduced in Citrix XenApp Presentation Server 4.5 and also included in XenDesktop. However, working with large 3D graphics models often requires the added computational power of a graphics processing unit (GPU). Apollo 3D Accelerated Bitmap Remoting enables standard PCs and desktop appliances to edit and manipulate large CAD/CAM, geospatial, and medical imaging models. Apollo 3D Accelerated Bitmap Remoting for XenDesktop provides an ideal new way of delivering graphics-intensive DirectX and OpenGL applications such as Autodesk Inventor®, Autodesk Revit® Architecture, Bentley MicroStation™, Dassault Systèmes Solidworks, Catia and Delmia as well as 3D PACS to your most demanding users while keeping application software and data in the data center.
This is very exciting technology! Below is a video demonstration from Citrix Summit 2008.
