AMD Invests in Cloud Gaming Tech CiiNOW

AMD said on Monday that, through its AMD Ventures arm, it has made an investment in cloud gaming technology company CiiNOW. In turn, CiiNOW will use AMD's Radeon graphics chips as part of the standard solution for its new cloud gaming platform.

As previously reported, OnLive ran out of money and was thus sold to an investor. The service uses web-connected data centers that compute games in centralized servers which then pumps the video streams over a broadband connection. But the infrastructure costs were too high, and there weren't enough subscribers to cover the costs. Thus, the company had no choice but to sell off its assets and begin anew.

Rather than suffer the same fate, CiiNOW is taking a different route by licensing out its cloud gaming solution to game publishers and service firms. The company says it offers a high-speed, low latency, streaming software that runs on top of of data center servers, providing up to eight HD streams per server blade, and up to 272 HD streams per server rack "for HD quality game streaming instantly from the cloud for ubiquitous game streaming across all subscribers, devices and access technologies."

"For game publishers, the CiiNOW solution offers access to millions of new customers and new monetization opportunities via CiiNOW’s global service provider partners," CiiNOW said in a separate announcement. "In addition, the service provides input via gamepad support as well as other input methods and minimal game porting is needed. The service also allows customers to spectate or step in to take control of a friend’s remote game session across different service provider platforms."

CiiNOW said that its patent-pending hardware and server management technology have been designed for scale, cost and ease of service deployment. Its unique scalable container technology virtualizes applications and optimally maps games and applications to available resources resulting in a fully automated infrastructure. The solution also offers fast deployment, taking just weeks to leverage existing hardware in service providers’ data centers.

"In the last twelve months alone, we’ve seen a significant increase in the demand for cloud gaming services," said Ron Haberman, CEO of CiiNOW. "The CiiNOW platform is built with the goal of transforming the industry. CiiNOW provides retailers, publishers, and service providers the first complete solution to offer games to anyone with a screen – utilizing the most cost efficient compute systems in the cloud. “Our partners can now deliver a full range of games at a low cost and industry leading performance."

For more information about CiiNOW, head here. The CiiNOW technology is available immediately, the company said.

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