Just two weeks ago, Citrix released the first version of its client hypervisor: XenClient. While promising, the product still presents raw edges and limitations, as Brian Madden detailed in an early, uncensored report.
While Intel vPro technology is not mandatory, contrary to what Madden initially reported (virtualization.info correctly reported that vPro is just highly recommended), it’s still true that XenClient Hardware Compatibility List (HCL) is significantly small. The biggest limitation is the complete lack of support for notebooks powered by the NVIDIA GPUs.
Citrix already stated its commitment to extend the HCL on the stage of the Synergy conference just ten days ago.
The company expects to introduce NVIDIA display cards support within the first half of 2011, according to an official reply published on the XenClient support forum.
In a follow-up article, Madden unveils additional details about Citrix plans to support multiple GPUs:
Xen’s Paravirtualization architecture abstracts the model for the devices. Citrix’s plan is to come up with abstract models for different GPUs. So today they can do that with Intel, so a single set of paravirtualization GPU drivers could work for many different Intel GPUs, but they can’t use that to make an Intel GPU look like an ATI or Nvidia GPU. But because these GPUs aren’t boot devices, you can always fall back to a generic graphics driver.
On top of that, Citrix is already working with Lenovo to support their laptops and desktops in future builds of the client hypervisor. Specifically, the two companies are developing support for ThinkCentre M Series desktops and ThinkPad X and T Series laptops.