Techniques for enabling remote management of servers configured with graphics processors

Abstract

A technique for enabling the use of a baseboard management controller in a computer system configured to stream 3D graphical user interfaces to remote clients is described. In an exemplary configuration, a cap driver that is written to conform to a driver model that can interface with a 3D graphics application program interface can be loaded for use with the baseboard management controller instead of a legacy driver that was written to conform to a legacy driver model. This allows a control program to load a graphics driver that can interoperate with the 3D graphics application program interface. In addition to the foregoing, other aspects are described in the text of the summary and detailed description, the claims, and drawings.

Description

technical field [0001] The present invention relates to techniques for enabling remote management of servers, and in particular, techniques for enabling remote management of servers configured with graphics processors. Background technique [0002] Servers that handle 3D graphics workloads are an increasingly tight commodity. For example, a server hosting a remote desktop session and / or a virtual desktop session (i.e., a session in which a personal computer environment runs within a virtual machine and sends a user interface to the remote computer) may include generating computing power on a 3D graphics processing unit (GPU). Dense three-dimensional (3D) graphical user interface applications. The resulting graphics generated by the 3D GPU can then be streamed to the client over a network such as the Internet. [0003] These servers are typically housed in data centers and rarely interact physically after deployment. Instead, each server may have an installed baseboard man...

AI Technical Summary

Problems solved by technology

[0004] The problem is that the display drivers for these low-end GPUs used by BMCs are written according to a legacy display driver model that is incompatible with the display driver model that servers use to render 3D GUIs

Or in other words, the operating system cannot simultaneously run a traditional driver model (for example, Windows Driver Model (XPDM)) and drivers for driver models used by servers to render 3D graphical user interfaces (for example, Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM)

This conflict causes the operating system to load drivers written according to the legacy driver model for the graphics processing unit used by both the BMC and the 3D graphics processing unit

This in turn results in 3D graphics processing units operating at reduced performance levels, e.g. no advanced 3D graphics processing capabilities

This problem puts administrators in an undesirable situation

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