AMD recently unveiled plans for the Fusion Render Cloud, a supercomputer aimed at changing the way we consume and interact with media and the internet, with a particular focus on video games.
As part of the new Fusion initiative being unveiled over at CES, this supercomputer would combine cutting edge hardware and server-side rendering technology to deliver next-gen games and HD content to internet connected devices.
AMD's press release does a fine job of explaining the composition of their computational beast. Over 1000 ATI graphics cards work in tandem with AMD processors and chipsets to render and compress graphically intensive content, which is then streamed over the internet to all sorts of devices, eliminating the need for computational effort on the receiving end.
Internet-connected devices – from cell phones to laptops – would theoretically be able to play games and HD movies without draining much of their battery life or even requiring potent hardware.
Though the system isn't scheduled to be ready until the second half of 2009, the ramifications of such a device are staggering. System requirements for PC gaming would be a thing of the past, as your computer would serve as little more than a conduit to the internet, and all of your devices would be interconnected.
Imagine playing Crysis on your cell phone, pausing the game as you stepped off the train, and unpausing at the exact same position, in full resolution, at your PC hours later. With Electronic Arts as one of the major publishers showing support for the Fusion Cloud, the idea isn't as far fetched as it seems.
But will it work? As far as PC gaming is concerned, piracy fears would be mitigated, as content would be streamed directly from the Cloud – why risk going to retail, or even making digital downloads available, when customers could just stream their games? Add in the fact that expensive gaming PCs would no longer be required, and developing for the PC suddenly becomes a no-brainer.
As an added bonus, if the technology proves sound, imagine shutting entire armies of fanboys up once and for all – there would no longer be a need for dedicated consoles, and third party manufacturers could simply create a few peripherals to suit a player's needs, whether that be a gamepad, a mouse and keyboard, or a Wiimote-style pointer device. Content would be king, and forum warriors would have to find other ways to pass the time.
There are caveats. For starters, there's no word on what sort of pricing structure the Fusion Cloud would adopt, though a subscription model seems like the obvious choice. So you could forget the notion of actually owning your games – then again, it looks like DRM is taking us in that direction anyway. On the technical side, how will the broadband service providers react to all of this content being streamed over their equipment?
And if people were worried about losing all of their games should Steam go under, imagine the backlash when the Fusion Cloud goes down for repairs, and paying customers suddenly lose access to, well, everything.
As someone who actually enjoys assembling my gaming PCs, I'm a bit wary of these developments. Hassle-free gaming on inexpensive machines would be a godsend, but experience (and a fair dose of cynicism) suggests that if the Fusion Cloud delivers anywhere near the levels of performance that AMD is suggesting, we can expect to pay dearly. That being said, cloud-computing is the stuff of science fiction, and it's fascinating to see baby steps being made in the name of perpetually-connected gaming.
Image courtesy AMD
AMD Supercomputer To Deliver Next-Generation Games and Applications Entirely Through the Cloud [AMD]
