Page 4 - CT Innovation in Education, 2021

Innovation in Education | NVIDIA – learn more at nvidia.com
Mastering the Art and Design of Remote Work
Remote work and study aren’t going away; NVIDIA virtual GPU technology is essential to ensure a quality learning experience from any place and at any time.
WHEN COVID-19 STRUCK and remote learning and work became the new norm at the University of Colorado School of Dental Medicine, IT, with the help of NVIDIA, was ready:
ƒ Faculty and students could continue teaching and learning.
ƒ Compute-intensive electronic health software, clinical orthodontics and radiology applications remained accessible.
ƒ IT performed work remotely without having to touch end-user computers or visit clinic chairs.
This was all made possible by the University of Colorado’s existing virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) upgraded
with NVIDIA virtual GPU technology (NVIDIA vGPU). As
one member of the school’s IT team put it, once VDI was deployed with NVIDIA vGPU, “the user experience improved significantly. The greatest change was excellent system performance and responsiveness.”
While the benefits are clear, the role of NVIDIA vGPU in virtual environments isn’t commonly understood. NVIDIA
is famous for its graphics processing units (GPUs) that accelerate applications such as gaming, film production, graphics-intensive design and research. But in a world where remote rules, the vGPU technology is only recently becoming an essential component.
On a traditional physical computing device like a workstation, PC or laptop, a GPU typically performs all the capture, encode and rendering for power complex tasks, such as 3D apps and video. NVIDIA virtual GPU technology virtualizes GPUs installed in the data center to be shared across multiple virtual machines or users. The rendering and encoding are done on the virtual machines’ host server rather than on a physical endpoint device.
The basic idea is to share the GPU functionality with multiple users and give them the same experience as they’d have if they were running applications on dedicated workstations. The advantage is this: Instead of having a
Ismet Nesicolaci
Sr. Product Specialist, NVIDIA
one-to-one connection — one GPU per computer — you get one-to-many. The physical GPU runs in a server and the vGPU software dynamically slices it up to allow multiple users to access its power (up to as many as 64 users per GPU).
The Benefits of NVIDIA vGPU
To take advantage of the NVIDIA vGPU, education institutions need three elements: 1) a server with NVIDIA GPUs installed; 2) virtualization software from VMware, Citrix, Red Hat or another VDI company; and 3) NVIDIA vGPU software.
Once in place, the NVIDIA vGPU approach offers numerous benefits:
REMOTE ACCESS TO HIGH-POWERED SOFTWARE.
Students can access the high-end programs their classes require no matter what kind of hardware they have at their fingertips. No going to a dedicated computer lab; no having to ship out workstations. With NVIDIA vGPU, even tablets and Chromebooks can take advantage of industrial-grade engineering design programs. They’re delivered as a service.
IMPROVED USER EXPERIENCE. The NVIDIA vGPU handles three important GPU tasks: capturing, rendering and encoding. What’s sent down the wire to the remote user is optimized and latency is dramatically improved. Even the transmission of video gets better.
A BOOST IN EXISTING VDI INFRASTRUCTURE. Up to now, IT may have to pick and choose what’s run in VDI, which means users have to be able to get back to workstations to run anything not on the list. With vGPU, that isn’t necessary. Any and all can run through the VDI setup.
EXTENDED MACHINE LIFE. Machines in computer
labs typically have a three- to five-year lifecycle before everything needs to be upgraded. With the addition of NVIDIA vGPU to the VDI infrastructure that equipment gets a longer lease on life. The same is true on the software side too. The migration from Windows 7 to Windows 10 increased the number of graphics calls by 50% to 55%. The use of NVIDIA
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