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The Sun Ray was ahead of its time. After Oracle bought and killed it, "the cloud" kicked up and is exactly what the Sun Rays were built for in the first place.

by ksaj 8y ago

The Sun Ray was ahead of its time. After Oracle bought and killed it, "the cloud" kicked up and is exactly what the Sun Rays were built for in the first place. Oops!

technofiend 8y ago
From the original NCD X-terminal to the current Citrix-based smart terminals there's definitely something compelling about putting the compute elsewhere and displaying graphics locally. Nvidia have to be very worried about Google's Project Stream because of the cloud model: someone aggregating compute and render resources means net selling less than when each person has their own. It also means far less opportunity to exfiltrate data. There would be no Snowden if he had a dumb terminal that refused to mount storage USB devices, for example. I'm kinda surprised the intelligence community didn't go all in on dumb displays for that reason alone.
- akhilcacharya 8y ago
  Nvidia already has a product for game streaming that you can use today though!
- fyfy18 8y ago
  That's going to happen to Nvidia anyway. They must be blind if they can't see that. Even today a very small percentage of gamers are using Nvidia chips, as most games are played on mobile. This is why desktop gaming hardware is getting more expensive every year, as it's becoming more and more of a niche market.
- chatmasta 8y ago
  Nvidia was in the streaming game market before google got there. Their service, "GeForce Now," [0] is still in beta and allows playing games remotely. [0] https://www.nvidia.com/en-gb/geforce/products/geforce-now/waitlist/ https://www.nvidia.com/en-gb/geforce/products/geforce-now/wa...
Canada 8y ago
What was the advantage of these over doing the same with Linux and PC hardware? The Sun Ray looked slick but like everything Sun made was ridiculously overpriced and slower than commodity PC gear. I don't see the advantage of thin clients over network booted thick clients anyway. It's way more performant and more economical to execute client software on the client CPU.
patrickg_zill 8y ago
The ability to pull out your smartcard, have the desktop go away, then plug your smartcard in somewhere else and have your desktop come back was pretty impressive.
- ksaj 8y ago
  Indeed. When we got them for the lab I was working in, this was a feature that blew my mind. The segregation and amplification of the server/client roles is what makes me connect it to modern cloud computing. Your local device capabilities (speed and space) isn't nearly as important as long as it has a capable Presentation Layer and a network route.

by ksaj 8y ago

The Sun Ray was ahead of its time. After Oracle bought and killed it, "the cloud" kicked up and is exactly what the Sun Rays were built for in the first place. Oops!

technofiend 8y ago

From the original NCD X-terminal to the current Citrix-based smart terminals there's definitely something compelling about putting the compute elsewhere and displaying graphics locally. Nvidia have to be very worried about Google's Project Stream because of the cloud model: someone aggregating compute and render resources means net selling less than when each person has their own. It also means far less opportunity to exfiltrate data. There would be no Snowden if he had a dumb terminal that refused to mount storage USB devices, for example. I'm kinda surprised the intelligence community didn't go all in on dumb displays for that reason alone.

akhilcacharya 8y ago
Nvidia already has a product for game streaming that you can use today though!
fyfy18 8y ago
That's going to happen to Nvidia anyway. They must be blind if they can't see that. Even today a very small percentage of gamers are using Nvidia chips, as most games are played on mobile. This is why desktop gaming hardware is getting more expensive every year, as it's becoming more and more of a niche market.
chatmasta 8y ago
Nvidia was in the streaming game market before google got there. Their service, "GeForce Now," [0] is still in beta and allows playing games remotely. [0] https://www.nvidia.com/en-gb/geforce/products/geforce-now/waitlist/ https://www.nvidia.com/en-gb/geforce/products/geforce-now/wa...

Canada 8y ago

What was the advantage of these over doing the same with Linux and PC hardware? The Sun Ray looked slick but like everything Sun made was ridiculously overpriced and slower than commodity PC gear. I don't see the advantage of thin clients over network booted thick clients anyway. It's way more performant and more economical to execute client software on the client CPU.

patrickg_zill 8y ago

The ability to pull out your smartcard, have the desktop go away, then plug your smartcard in somewhere else and have your desktop come back was pretty impressive.

ksaj 8y ago
Indeed. When we got them for the lab I was working in, this was a feature that blew my mind. The segregation and amplification of the server/client roles is what makes me connect it to modern cloud computing. Your local device capabilities (speed and space) isn't nearly as important as long as it has a capable Presentation Layer and a network route.