Nvidia unveiled Wednesday a new cloud-based GPU it claims is the industry's first to virtually arm smartphones and PCs with the robust graphics performance found in workstations.

The new GPU, called the Nvidia VGX K2, is based on the chip maker's low-power Kepler architecture and rounds out the broader VGX virtualization platform Nvidia announced earlier this year. The new chips, which are targeted primarily at engineers and design professionals, allow users to access the same rich multimedia and 3-D graphics they would on a workstation through virtualized environments on smartphones, tablets or traditional PCs. Put simply, designers using the new VGX K2 GPUs will be able to access their applications and other work on the go rather than be tethered to a workstation.

"The VGX platform has been developed to bring rich, interactive graphics to all enterprise virtual desktop users,” said Jeff Brown, general manager of the Professional Solutions Group at Nvidia, in a statement. "With VGX K2 in the data center, designers and engineers who create the core intellectual property for their companies can now access their IP from any device and still enjoy workstation-class performance."

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What's more, Nvidia said its new VGX K2 board, which combines two VGX K2 workstation GPUs, allows enterprises to on-board more users within their virtualized workstation environments while still maintaining performance. The board delivers 4 GB of graphics memory per GPU, includes a next-generation remote display technology that Nvidia says minimizes the lag time found in most virtualized environments, and draws 225 watts of power.

Nvidia said the new VGX K2 board can also be used alongside Citrix XenDesktop, a virtualization solution offered by Citrix that allows users to access Microsoft Windows desktops from mobile computing devices, to increase graphics performance. The new GPUs can also be used in conjunction with Citrix's XenApp solution, a virtualization tool that allows IT teams to monitor, safeguard and deploy applications to users, regardless of client device.

"XenDesktop with NVIDIA VGX acceleration aims to deliver workstation-class performance to the most demanding users in enterprises, while also increasing user density in their data centers," said Krishna Subramanian, vice president of marketing and partner engagement at Citrix, in a statement.

According to Nvidia, the first Nvidia VGX K2 virtualized workstation platforms will be available from leading server OEMs including HP, Dell, Cisco, IBM and Supermicro in early 2013.

PUBLISHED OCT. 17, 2012