NVIDIA Quadro Comes to Microsoft Azure Cloud

Working through workstations, data centre servers or virtual workspaces, NVIDIA Quadro graphics cards support professional 3D applications for artists, designers and engineers, and also enable such innovations as AI-accelerated rendering and real-time, interactive simulation.

Users can now access Quadro GPU-acceleration on any device, from any location using the Quadro Virtual Workstation (Quadro vWS) software available from the Microsoft Azure cloud service provider marketplace.  IT departments can set up a GPU-accelerated virtual workstation in a few minutes with no need to manage endpoints or back-end infrastructure.   

The technicians will need to install the Quadro applications and configure the NVIDIA GPU instance, vCPU, memory and storage requirements, but no additional physical hardware is necessary. After the initial installation, the company can scale up or down as their business demands change, paying only for what they need on an hourly basis. Meanwhile, Microsoft continues to optimise performance with the most recent drivers and upgrades.

Quadro vWS cloud instances are expected to be especially useful to Microsoft Azure cloud customers in industries including architecture, entertainment, oil and gas, and manufacturing that rely on visual computing hardware for design and development.

Quadro vWS on NVIDIA Tesla GPUs, also from the Azure marketplace, has the same performance as on-premise VDI (virtual desktop infrastructure) deployments, with up to 24GB of frame buffer per GPU. Through these resources, IT teams can manage compute workloads from the cloud, and at the same time support high performance workflows.

For a multiple-user Windows 10 cloud deployment, the Quadro vWS instances on Tesla GPUs are also supported on Windows Virtual Desktop on Azure.

NVIDIA’s cloud software partners are using Quadro on Azure with success, mainly due to the combination of speed, interactivity and ease of use in affords their customers.

For example, ANSYS Discovery Live is a virtual prototyping environment used to interactively explore designs early in development. With Quadro vWS from Azure, design engineers can interact with simulations in real time and iterate design alternatives remotely on any device.

Discovery Live performs instant 3D simulation, closely combined with direct geometry modelling to support rapid product innovation. Users can manipulate geometry, material types or physics inputs, and then immediately see the resulting changes in performance, making it useful for long series of design iterations and feasibility studies on concepts when bringing products to market.      

Teradici develops PC-over-IP systems, which are cloud-based virtual machines, and Cloud Access Software. The company’s display compression architecture transmits only pixels to a range of software, mobile and stateless PCoIP Zero Clients for remote teams using CAD, architectural design, 3D modelling and video editing. The Cloud Access Software with NVIDIA Quadro vWS on Azure can be quickly deployed to visualise applications remotely, and used to deploy and manage entitlements from combinations of public and private clouds.   www.nvidia.com