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Taashee Linux Services
Taashee Linux Services

Posted on • Originally published at taashee.com

Amazon Enhances NICE DCV for High-End Graphics and CAD/3D Industries

A boon for high-end graphics users
In November 2020, Amazon made significant enhancements to NICE DCV, which included an improved performance for high-frame usage in GPU-accelerated virtual machines. Additionally, in June 2021, the company also made substantial advancements in audio-visual synchronization. The lack of attention to audio synchronization to graphics and other related issues in the protocol market has been a long-standing problem, not only for video calls but also for high-end graphics users such as those in VFX and editing workflows. These developments position Amazon well to serve the needs of demanding graphics users and customers in the 3D and CAD industries who value the performance, availability, and reliability of their applications.

*Ubuntu & RHEL Support *
NICE DCV is the protocol behind Amazon’s AppStream 2.0 service, which is widely used by ISVs such as Siemens to deliver CAD and 3D applications as SaaS. Historically, Amazon’s digital workspace service, Amazon WorkSpaces, utilized a proprietary protocol called WSP. However, Amazon has recently announced that it will now support Ubuntu and Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) virtual desktops using NICE DCV as the underlying protocol for WSP 2.0.
This is a logical move as NICE DCV was specifically designed with features that can handle the demands of 3D graphics, CAD/CAE/AEC, VFX, and Petroleum sector applications, which are the types of applications that are often run on high-end Linux operating systems such as Ubuntu and RHEL. Furthermore, Ubuntu and RHEL are two of the few Linux operating systems that are officially supported by NVIDIA for their vGPU/GRID technologies, which allow for virtualized GPUs to run graphically and computationally intensive applications.

Integration with Amazon WorkSpaces
Amazon has announced new versions of its digital workspace service, Amazon WorkSpaces, that will use WSP 2.0 (i.e., NICE DCV) as of October 26, 2022. The new version, Amazon WorkSpaces Web Access for WSP, will include seven new features, including bi-directional audio and video. This indicates that Amazon is focusing on using NICE DCV technology through WSP 2.0, while retaining the original WSP 1.0 for legacy use cases, such as older endpoint clients and industries with regulated change control.
AWS provides a variety of GPU-enabled virtual machine instances for EC2, designed for high-end graphics through NVIDIA GRID Virtual Applications such as G3, G4dn, and G5 instances. Additionally, AWS uses AMD’s GPU virtualization technologies within cost-effective instance families like the G4ad.

Taashee updates its NICE DCV offerings
In the past, NICE DCV had limited options for performance metrics and monitoring APIs for third-party vendors. However, this is no longer the case, and Taashee is now utilizing the new metrics that Amazon has made available through supported APIs, to offer a comprehensive experience for our clients.

This article was originally published on our company blog.

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