GRAPHICS REMOTING ARCHITECTURE

• US 20090195537A1
• Filed: 02/01/2008
• Published: 08/06/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 02/01/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Abdo, Nadim Y., Qiu, Kan
• Granted Patent: US 8,433,747 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 345/419
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 1/20 Processor architectures; Processor configuration, e.g. pipelining
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 2200/16 involving adaptation to the client's capabilities

Abstract

Systems and methods to implement a graphics remoting architecture for rendering graphics images at remote clients are disclosed. In one implementation, when a D3D application hosted on a remote server is used by a remote client, the graphics associated with the D3D application are created and rendered at the remote client. For this, the D3D commands and D3D objects corresponding to the graphics are abstracted into data streams at the remote server. The data streams are then sent to the remote client. At the remote client, the D3D commands and D3D objects are extracted from the data streams and executed to create the graphics images. The graphics images are then rendered and displayed using output devices at the remote client.

Claims

1. A server computer comprising:

a memory;

a processor operatively coupled to the memory;

a user space in the memory, that corresponds to one or more clients, wherein the user space includes a abstraction module to monitor data traffic that includes (three dimension) 3D commands and 3D objects.

2. The server computer of claim 1, wherein the memory includes program data that stores the 3D commands, the 3D objects, and data streams.

3. The server computer of claim 1, wherein the user space includes a remote adapter that enquires as to availability and capability of a display adapter at a client device.

4. The server computer of claim 3, wherein the remote adapter establishes a communication channel between the abstraction module and a plug-in of the client device, wherein the plug-in receives commands and 3d objects.

5. The server computer of claim 1, wherein the abstraction module is configured to receive the 3D commands and 3D objects from a 3D application through an application program interface (API) that includes functions to render 3D images in the 3D application.

6. The server computer of claim 1, wherein the abstraction module assigns identifiers to the 3D objects.

7. The server computer of claim 1, wherein the abstraction module abstracts the 3D commands and 3D objects into a data stream and sends the data stream to the one or more clients.

8. The server computer of claim 1, wherein the abstraction module performs centralized encoding by compression and decimination.

9. The server computer of claim 1, wherein the 3D commands are high frequency commands.

10. A client computer comprising:

a memory;

a processor operatively coupled to the memory;

a 3D plug-in in the memory that receives that receives data streams the include 3D commands and 3D objects, and extracts the 3D commands; and

a graphics processing unit (GPU) that renders the extracted 3D commands.

11. The client computer of claim 10, wherein the 3D plug-in parses the data streams and extracts 3D commands.

12. The client computer of claim 10, wherein the 3D plug-in creates 3D objects by identifying handles associated with the 3D objects in the data streams.

13. The client computer of claim 12, wherein the handles includes entries that include an address of a resource associated with a graphics application.

14. The client computer of claim 10, wherein the 3D plug-in presents 3D graphics in full screen user interface.

15. The client computer of claim 10, wherein the 3D plug-in sends synchronization information to a server.

16. The client computer of claim 10, wherein the 3D plug-in renders output graphics based on a client-side-only rendering protocol.

17. The client computer of claim 10, wherein the GPU generates a proxy window to produce geometrical changes occurring at a window in a server computer that sends the data streams.

18. A method implemented on computer executable media comprising:

receiving and identifying from graphics application commands;

communicating the graphics application commands to graphics drivers;

abstracting the application commands and objects generated by the graphics drivers in a data stream.

19. The method of claim 18, wherein communicating is through an application program interface.

20. The method of claim 18, wherein the abstracting includes abstracting generated commands and objects as hidden data.

21. The method of claim 18 further comprising sending the data streams over a network to one or more clients.

22. The method of claim 21 further comprising compressing the data streams.