Organisations looking to render high-resolation graphics are to be offered a new cloud-based service. Hosting provider Peer 1 said that its new hosted graphics processor unit (GPU) in the cloud would offer considerable savings to organisations interested in accessing
The Peer 1 system is based on the RealityServer 3D web application service platform, developed by Nvidia subsidiary mental images. The platform delivers interactive and photorealistic applications and is aimed at animators, product designers and architects to visualise 3D images.
According to Amanda Dunn, Peer 1's cloud GPU hosting manager, the offering will bring high performance computing power to small companies with added flexibility. "By offering hourly, daily or weekly pricing we'll be allowing SMEs to have access to high performance computing. There are lot of service companies that would like to have access to this sort of power," she said.
"The flexibility is important," she added. "A company could order at a day's notice. And with hourly charges from £3.65, it's very affordable - you could pay that on phone calls."
She said that by providing the graphical tools as well as the hosting, the company was offering a complete service to its customers.
The other important aspect of the service was it allowed customers to allocate spending to opex rather than capex. "Not only that," she added, "but because they no longer have to buy a workstation to render these images, they're not only saving on equipment costs but don't have a heating issue - workstations give out a lot more heat," she said.
Nvidia's Tesla S1070 and Tesla M2050 hosted GPUs are being hosted as a managed hosting offering at Peer 1 Hosting's data centres in Toronto, Canada and London.
