Intel hopes to gain market share in the data center with its GPUs by eliminating license fees for using the things in VDI environments. This is intended to make virtual desktops with GPU power more accessible to the general public.

Intel wants to conquer the VDI market with its GPUs and is immediately showing why competition is a good thing. In the fight against market leader Nvidia, the manufacturer is pulling out the cash card. Typically, you pay a license fee if you want to use a GPU in a VDI environment, which makes the implementation more complex. Intel is now completely waiving this license for its DataCenter GPU Flex 140 and Flex 170.

Tailored for VDI

“Intel is providing free virtual GPU software licenses to its customers, reducing the overall cost of VDI,” the manufacturer said. “This could be a catalyst for faster adoption of GPUs in VDI environments.” Intel recognizes that accelerating graphics workloads is often necessary but is held back by excessive costs.

Both Flex GPUs were specifically designed for VDI. This approach is most evident in the Intel DataCenter GPU Flex 140. The card has two GPUs on board, with eight Xe cores per GPU. This division makes it possible to assign a modest but fully-fledged GPU to two virtual machines using just one PCIe card. The Intel DataCenter GPU Flex 170 does not offer this option and has a significantly more powerful GPU with 32 Xe cores.

The focus of the cards is not on AI training, but rather on accelerating more traditional media-related workloads. For this purpose, the cards have an integrated AV1 encoder. AI inference (use of existing models) should also work. Intel’s move will certainly be welcomed by VMware users. The GPUs will make GPU acceleration in VMware Horizon much easier. The DataFlex GPUs are therefore immediately certified.