The new PCoIP Ultra includes an expanded multi-codec architecture for third party codecs, to meet the graphics-intensive needs of much modern content.

Teradici, which invented the PCoIP [PC over IP] protocol, is giving it a major architectural redo, for the first time, in order to address the requirements of users who work with dynamic content. These PCoIP Ultra protocol enhancements to their multi-codec PCoIP protocol will be available to Cloud Access Software customers in May.

“This particular announcement is very unique and broad in nature,” said Ziad Lammam, VP of Product Management and Marketing at Teradici. “It’s the first time we have updated the PCoIP protocols. We’ve spent a lot of time internally working with that protocol. We have optimized it with the latest NVIDIA GPUs, and for new public clouds. But this particular enhancement involves a major rearchitecturing to take it up several steps.”

The issue here is that new content formats and display technologies have created much more graphics-intensive content, which is continually pushing the boundaries of performance within virtualized environments.

“We found that as more and more content is moving to the public cloud, we are getting higher rates of pixel transformation, because there is way more dynamic content,” Lammam said. “4K UHD, in particular, has pushed a higher density of pixels, and a demand for higher frame rates. So, while building on our core foundation, we rearchitected the protocol to scale across modern multicore CPU environments, and to leverage AVX2 instruction sets, to let us achieve a higher performance bar at higher framerates.”

The PCoIP Ultra enhancements use an expanded array of encoders, to enable the choice of the most efficient hardware or software codecs for particular content characteristics. This flexibility results in a faster, more interactive experience for users of remote workstations working with high-resolution content, including creative design applications, dynamic wireframes, video editorial suites, and animation tools.

Another key enhancement is support of an expanded multi-codec architecture for third party codecs, including H.264/HEVC

“This ability to support third party codecs will also be of interest to a wider community,” Lammam said. “We have always been a multi-party protocol. What we are introducing now is the ability to include third party codec, using NVIDIAs GPU offload. We think that will open up some doors for content formats like compressed video, which works really well with H264. Making it a part of Ultra lets customers get the best of both worlds

“The leading use case is graphics-intensive environments, but it addresses a wider range of requirements,” Lammam continued. “We have improved the CPU efficiency by using multiple cores. That will result in broad cost savings. This time next year, you will see much more use across a wider range of industries and use cases – around CPU efficiency, and around how efficient the coding is in a CPU environment.”

Two weeks ago, Teradici announced with NVIDIA the ability to do acceleration on their workstation platform.

“This is an example of what the new protocol will be able to support,” Lammam said

The PCoIP Ultra enhancements will be available as a technical preview to Cloud Access Software customers in mid-April. General availability is scheduled for May 2019.