Thin client-Opening

What is the biggest cost of human activity? I think it is about communication and learning. From the very beginning, we have been constantly learning the lessons learned from our predecessors. School education has greatly accelerated this process. With the development of the Internet, people can freely share their knowledge and experience, so that we can find answers to common problems on the Internet. Therefore, the Internet deserves to be one of the greatest inventions of mankind. How much does it reduce?
The cost of communication and learning!In this series, I want to talk about the thin client. All the knowledge involved is from the Internet, so thanks to Google and Wikipedia. Finally, I gave back my learned and summarized knowledge to the Internet, hoping to help and inspire others.

 

Let's get down to the truth, let's start talking about the thin client things ......

 

The so-called "thin client" means that we only need a general-configured terminal device (PC Computer, handheld device, etc.) to have the computing and processing capabilities of a super computer. In fact, this is not far away from us. With the development of BS applications, we can use Google to perform hundreds of millions of search calculations as long as we have a smart phone with a general configuration.

 

The above model is no longer familiar to anyone. The client sends a command, and the server receives the command. After the calculation, the result is returned to the client. However, what I want to talk about in this series is not the above model,:

 

Our mobile phone (thin client) is no longer a sender and receiver of a simple search task in Google search, but a more real-time experience of operating the supercomputer. Every time we move the mouse, click, keyboard input, and touch screen sliding, the mobile phone itself is a supercomputer. With such a thin client, we no longer need to buy expensive computers with ashes, but we only need a low-configuration netbook, tablet computer, or smart phone, you can play World of Warcraft and freeline with just the same pleasure. Smart watches for phone calls in future sci-fi movies and glasses for viewing combat indexes are all possible.

 

At the same time, we do notProgramCross-platform. Thin Clients can execute various applications across platforms, such as Windows Word, Linux OpenOffice, and Mac
. What's even more surprising is that we don't need to go through the steps of "Download" and "Install" before running a software, but use it immediately. No matter how big a game is, there are more complicated configuration software. I even boldly speculate that in the future, people will no longer use Windows, Linux, Mac and other operating systems, instead of network-based operating systems. However, it is difficult to maintain the development of existing operating systems without individual users, and these operating systems will be gradually eliminated. In the end, all kinds of network-based operating systems based on different thin client protocols will emerge. The chromium operating system developed by Google is in line with this development trend, but I have never used it, and it is hard to say.

 

In this series, I try to avoid using hot words like "Cloud. We have seen so many so-called "Clouds". In all likelihood, they are pseudo clouds, such as the largest fraudulent cloud detection and removal in the anti-virus field. Cloud computing is compatible with the thin customers mentioned here, but they are not exactly the same. Cloud computing emphasizes the on-demand distribution of large-scale data centers, just like centralized power plants. Cloud computing is the "fat" of the server, and thin customers emphasize the "thin" of the client. If the two are combined, there will be a spark.

The future is not far away. All of the things we can think of are being tried. Well-known foreign companiesOnlive,Gaikai,Otoy,
They all implement private protocols to remotely play large games such as the solitary islands crisis on general-configured machines. Especially onlive, due to its strong strength
Film developers all have in-depth cooperation. For example, OnLive independently invests and develops customized hardware and
Arts, Ubisoft, and Take-Two interactive
Software), Warner Brothers, interactive entertainment and electronic Electronic Arts Co., Ltd. (electronic)
Arts, Ubisoft, and Take-Two interactive
Software), Warner Brothers, interactive entertainment, and INPE digital. Even Google Microsoft wants to buy out onlive technology.

 

 

IPad display onliveDemo:Http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMTgyMzYzNjI4.html

A company in China has implemented such a technologyYunlian Technology. The company has been established for more than a year. In China's existing network environment, without customized hardware, it has made such amazing results and has to be lamented.

However, why is such a good technology not yet available? The biggest obstacle is "latency" and huge server consumption.

Let's talk about latency first. Latency, not bandwidth ". Why? Latency is latency and bandwidth is bandwidth. Many times, people will confuse the two. Some people do not know why I upgraded my bandwidth to 4 MB, and I still got stuck playing online games on Telecom servers? Bandwidth refers to the maximum transmission capacity per second, and latency refers to the time from when a signal request is sent to when it is received.

Misunderstanding: As the bandwidth increases, the latency will also decrease.
The figure above has been clear that if the transmitted data does not reach the bandwidth limit, even if the bandwidth is larger, the signal from occurrence to receipt of the time T1-T0, only depends on its transmission speed and distance. If the server is in the United States, distance cannot be changed, Einstein said, the speed limit is the speed of light. The optical fiber transmission speed may only reach 40% light speed. Therefore, if you want to transmit data 4000 kilometers away, such as from California to Massachusetts, the latency cannot be less than 44 milliseconds.

 

In fact, the actual bandwidth consumed by games or software is not much. In theory, the bandwidth can be infinitely increased, and latency is the biggest problem, because the speed of transmission cannot exceed the speed of light. For example, I used telecommunications
K bandwidth network play three, very smooth. Now I use Unicom's 4 M bandwidth to play the game, but the delay is very high. Companies like gaikai can only accept Los Angeles due to distance restrictions.
Try-on application for regional gamers.

 

To reduce latency, speed up the transmission rate and shorten the transmission distance as much as possible, such as deploying servers nearby.

Another obstacle is huge server consumption. As we can imagine, it takes us a lot of money to buy machines with good performance to smoothly play large games such as the island crisis. Cloud game servers like onlive
Server supplier, which is equivalent to providing each of us with such a server. The cost is huge. Even with OnLive's own customized hardware, one server can only serve several people at the same time.

In addition to using thin clients to play large games, we can also use thin clients to run the software or games we use everyday. No need to download, no installation, a single point of use, cross-platform, how attractive! Moreover, compared with games, the software does not require high-definition video transmission, and therefore has much lower bandwidth requirements. Software developers no longer need to develop for each platform. Theoretically, we only need a version of "Plants vs. Zombies" to run on iPhone, Android, PC, and other terminal devices.

How is this technology implemented? Companies like onlive and gaikai use their own proprietary transmission protocols, which I cannot verify. HoweverArticleI will start from some of the existing well-known or open-source remote transmission protocols and gradually go deep into technical details to tell you what I know about the thin client. Coming soon ~

Series of thin clients:

Thin client-Opening

Thin client-remote transmission protocol

What about thin clients-nomachine secrets

......