GPU offload with Blast Extreme

[nealus]

Hi guys,

I'm looking to get some clarification on the status of CPU/GPU offload on the client when using Blast Extreme.  I have a setup I am testing at the moment using an Nvidia P6 GPU with a P6-4Q profile assigned to a Horizon 7.2 based Windows 10 virtual machine, running the latest driver set (385.41 for Windows, 384.73 on the ESXi 6.5 host).  We are using a variety of options to connect including laptops and tablets with the latest Horizon client installed (4.6.1), Dell Wyse thin clients, and some 10Zig zero clients.  All connections use the Blast protocol.  I am aware that the encode of the H.264 remoting stream is taken off the CPU of the host and is instead done by the GPU (The P6 in this case) with the advantage of density increasing, performance, etc.  However I am interested to know if there is any client-side decoding done, particularly on those laptops running high-end Nvidia GPU? 

I have some experience with TGX, which uses the power of certain GPU to perform encode/decode functionality at both client and sender end, and wonder, as TGX and Blast are both H.264 based, whether the same decoding occurs on a suitable client when using Blast?

Thanks

[nealus · Accepted solution]

The answer is yes, the clients can perform hardware decode.  Following some research on my side (the Horizon client documentation) tells me the following:

Under 'Configure VMware Blast Options' :

"Configure this option to allow H.264 decoding in Horizon Client. When this option is selected (the default setting) Horizon Client uses H. 264 decoding if the agent supports H.264 software or hardware encoding. If the agent does not support H.264 software or hardware encoding, Horizon Client uses JPG/PNG decoding. Deselect this option to use JPG/PNG decoding"

Many endpoints nowadays capable of running the Horizon client have the capability to decode H.264 in hardware so I think this answers my question.