Wyse unveils powerful thin client based on AMD Fusion

Wyse Technology has announced its most powerful thin client ever, according to the firm, beefing up the processing power to meet the demands of applications such as video and unified communications in virtual desktop environments.

Available later this quarter, the Wyse Z90 is based on AMD's G-Series Fusion processors and runs Windows Embedded Standard 7, a modular version of Windows 7 aimed at embedded applications.

The AMD G-Series processor combines CPU and GPU functions onto a single chip, alongside hardware video decoding. These provide a major boost for media processing capabilities, and Wyse claims that the Z90 is 187 per cent faster than its nearest rival at handling 3D business graphics.

The company said that this level of performance will be required as organisations start making greater use of unified communications while also moving towards virtual desktop infrastructure, where users remotely access a Windows desktop using an endpoint device such as a thin client.

"The real driver is things such as Cisco's VXI, where people are dealing more and more with voice and video alongside data, and we anticipate that the processing requirements for thin clients will get higher and higher in future," said David Angwin, director of marketing for EMEA at Wyse.

This move contrasts sharply with another recent development in virtual desktops, that of 'zero client' endpoints, which are simple appliance-like hardware with no CPU or operating system, and which basically act as a remote screen.

Angwin said that offloading media processing to the endpoint, as Wyse does with the Z90, is the most satisfactory way to deliver applications such as IP telephony and unified communications.

"If you look at unified communications, there is a lot of peer-to-peer traffic between devices. Although you are connected to a virtual desktop, the link between your video camera and that of the person you are calling is peer-to-peer," he explained.

As videoconferencing moves to high-definition, the volume of data will increase dramatically, but Angwin claimed that the Z90 has plenty of performance overhead for a long service life in enterprise environments.

Another advantage of the AMD Fusion processor architecture is that it delivers performance while keeping power consumption low, so the Z90 draws 15W, the same as existing Wyse devices.

The Z90 has gigabit Ethernet as standard, plus 802.11a/b/g/n Wi-Fi as an option, and high-speed USB 3.0 ports.

With Windows Embedded Standard 7, the Z90 also supports the full Aero graphics desktop experience of Windows 7.

Wyse said that the device can be updated to take advantage of the new RemoteFX graphics capabilities that Microsoft is due to support in Windows 7 SP1, once this is available.