A Cost-Efficient Cloud Gaming System at Scale

This article proposes a transparent gaming (TG) cloud system that allows users to play any popular high-end desktop game on the fly over the Internet. Toward this goal, we have introduced the TG-SHARE technology to share the underlying hardware capabilities, particularly for the GPU and the dedicated compression acceleration unit (XCODER). TG-SHARE utilizes offthe- shelf consumer GPUs without resorting to expensive proprietary GPU virtualization technology (e.g., GRID from NVIDIA). XCODER adapts the compression based on the network dynamics, learned gaming behaviors, and hardware resources to significantly reduce bandwidth consumption. Google's webRTC protocol is integrated to offer real-time interaction and ubiquitous access from heterogeneous devices. Compared to the existing cloud gaming vendor using the GRID technology, our TG-SHARE not only reduces the expense per user (i.e., 75 percent hardware cost reduction, 20-40 percent network cost reduction), but also improves the quality of experience with higher rate of frames per second (i.e., 2 x FPS).