GeForce Grid, Cloud Games Without Lag obviously has announced NVIDIA

GPU manufacture NVIDIA today announced GeForce Grid, a cloud gaming platform capable of “streaming next-generation games to virtually any device, without the lag that hampers current offerings.” The tech leverages NVIDIA’s Kepler-based family of graphics processors to deliver low latency gaming over the cloud. A single Grid instance can simultaneously encode up to eight game streams, allowing providers to scale efficiently with less overhead in regards to power and costs.

What’s under the hood? A Grid GPU boasts 3,072 CUDA cores — the same as NVIDIA’s flagship GTX690 card. It also includes 8GB of VRAM, with memory and shader performance clocking in at 320 GB/sec and 4.7 TFLOPS, respectively. The wattage rating comes in at a respectable 250W — reasonable when you consider how much power the card is packing.

Impressively, with the Grid tech, NVIDIA says server power-consumption per game stream has been reduced to about one-half that of previous implementations. Under ideal conditions, the Grid platform reduces server latency to as little as 10 milliseconds. According to NVIDIA, “gamers will feel like they are playing on a gaming supercomputer located in the same room. Lightning-fast play is now possible, even when the gaming supercomputer is miles away.”

OnLive competitor Gaikai will be one of the first providers to deploy the new tech. Additionally, several industry figures and developers have praised NVIDIA’s latest effort.

“Cloud has the potential to deliver an even more powerful experience in the future by enabling ultra-high-end GPUs like the GeForce GTX 680 to stream ultra-high-quality graphics such as those made possible by UE4 to a huge range of devices, well beyond console capabilities. The result will be that more people can enjoy EPIC’s games on more devices at higher quality,” said Epic Games founder Tim Sweeney.

“It is exciting to watch how cloud gaming is becoming mature and gives better and better user experience — and NVIDIA’s GeForce GRID technology is example of it. We are looking forward to see how cloud computing using this technology will change the future of gaming and the overall gaming experience and how it will affect consoles and PCs,” said CD Projekt RED lead programmer Bartlomiej Wronski.

Many have questioned the viability of cloud-driven gaming platforms in the past, but it goes without saying that NVIDIA’s Grid tech looks to be a game-changer. Going forward, it’ll be exciting to see how the platform evolves.

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Bid to kill the lawsuit antitrust has been missing from E-book publishers

Apple and five book publishers lost their bid to have a private antitrust suit over electronic book pricing dismissed.

U.S. District Judge Denise Cote in Manhattan denied on Tuesday a request by the defendants to throw out the complaint by plaintiffs seeking to represent a class of consumers. They say Apple and the publishers violated federal and California state law by conspiring to raise the price of e-books.

Last month, the U.S. government sued Apple and the publishers, Hachette SA, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin Group and Simon & Schuster, saying they broke the law in setting prices for e-books. Cote is overseeing the government suit and private antitrust suits filed in federal court.

SOFTWARE

Juror dismissed in Android case

A juror in Oracle's lawsuit against Google over Android software was dismissed by the trial judge, who said the case will proceed with 11 jurors.

The juror was dismissed after she said car trouble forced her to miss Tuesday's session in federal court in San Francisco.

TELEVISION

ESPN confers with AppleTV

Walt Disney Co.'s ESPN sports network is talking with Apple about including the WatchESPN application on the computer maker's television device, network executive Sean Bratches said.

ESPN subscribers with AppleTV would gain access to the network's Internet service on their sets. The sports network said a deal isn't imminent.

The most-watched U.S. sports network is making more programming available online and on mobile devices to reach viewers away from their TVs. ESPN already provides the app to subscribers with Microsoft's Xbox video-game console as part of some pay-TV plans, including those from Verizon Communications' FiOS and Comcast.

CLOUD

Nvidia advances remote access

Nvidia Corp. introduced a version of its processors that will work in cloud-computing centers, offering users the ability to stream advanced graphics through the Internet to remote devices such as Apple's iPad.

Nvidia collaborated with software maker Citrix Systems to make the technology work, Chief Executive Officer Jen-Hsun Huang said at a company conference Tuesday in San Jose. Nvidia is one of the top three providers of graphics processing units, or GPUs.

Huang said his company is working on several applications of the technology intended to improve the capabilities of electronics devices such as smart phones, tablets, televisions and personal computers. He demonstrated a new, high-end video game being played by two competitors via the Internet, one using a tablet and the other using a television.

"With the cloud we can literally put GPU computing in the hands of billions of mobile users around the world," he said.

In an another demonstration, Huang showed an iPad remotely accessing a PC running Microsoft's Windows operating system. The technology may be deployed by customers such as phone-service providers or Internet-access providers.

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