Amazon Uses NVIDIA GPU to Power G2 Cloud Instance

NVIDIA (NVDA) announced that its GRID technology is now available from Amazon Web Services (AWS) through its newly announced Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) G2 instance, delivering GPU acceleration to users running graphics-intensive applications and games in the cloud.

Available immediately, the new G2 instance is designed for cloud computing, with NVIDIA GRID GPUs making possible a new generation of GPU-accelerated SaaS applications -- such as virtual workstations, accelerated virtual desktops and gaming-as-a-service. Based on the NVIDIA Kepler architecture, GRID GPUs include a powerful H.264 encoding engine that lets high-resolution graphics be compressed in real time and streamed to any internet-connected display.

"Cloud computing has reached an inflection point driven by the growing variety of devices that can take advantage of application streaming," said Jeff Brown, vice president and general manager of the Professional Visualization business at NVIDIA. "By using the graphics horsepower of NVIDIA GRID on AWS, companies can stream applications to more customers on more screens with a lower barrier to entry."

To make it easy for software companies to deploy applications onto G2 instances, OTOY has enabled a Windows- and Linux-based Amazon Machine Image (AMI) with OTOY's ORBX middleware. SaaS companies can install their applications into OTOY's AMI and begin streaming to web browsers within minutes.

"AWS sees a growing benefit for adding GPUs to our cloud," said Matt Wood, general manager of Data Science at AWS. "The NVIDIA GRID GPUs in our new G2 instances enable graphical applications to be rendered in the AWS cloud and streamed to a world with increasing internet bandwidth and proliferation of device types."