There is a lot to be excited about with the release of Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops 2112. Among all the features included in this release are optimizations to our Citrix HDX graphics stack, which have exceeded even our expectations. Let me rewind a little and start from the beginning. I assure you, it’s worth the read!

Several months ago, the Citrix Product Management and Engineering teams decided that an overhaul of the HDX graphics stack was needed, and we saw an opportunity for innovation in 3D-Pro workloads. Indeed, much of the recent HDX optimization work had concentrated on bandwidth and scalability improvements, and it had been a while since we did an in-depth study of these heavier, more demanding 3D workloads. So we did some internal testing ourselves, and, sure enough, we saw what some folks had been telling us: lower than ideal framerates and higher than normal resource usage.

We set about investigating and profiling, from the very bottom of the hypervisor stack, all the way to the pixels on the user’s screen. Believe me when I tell you that there’s a lot of stuff in between! It soon became apparent that the VDA was struggling to deliver frames. Armed with a selection of development tools, we discovered at least one major bottleneck. Joy soon turned to frustration however, as a solution turned out to be very elusive. But we did not give up, and with some help from the subconscious (yes, part of the solution was actually seen in a dream — I kid you not), we produced something that performed well beyond what we expected. As the saying goes, “WE SMASHED IT!”

Here are our significant improvements, by the numbers:

  • 2x improvement in FPS: We can now deliver up to 120 FPS at 1080p (unrestricted).
  • 60 FPS at 4K: That’s up from 30-40 FPS in 2109. Actually, if the client has a decent GPU, we can deliver up to an unrestricted 120 FPS at 4K!

And the most exciting point? We are comfortably ahead of the competition, further securing HDX as the leader in high-end graphics remoting. If you didn’t already know, it’s an industry that Citrix helped pioneer well over a decade ago with the aerospace industry.

What’s more, performance is much better in a sliced GPU scenario. For example, in two or three VM deployment, each with an equal share of an NVIDIA A40, all VMs achieve 2x-3x higher FPS than 2109. Here’s a chart showing this, and how we now compare to two of our leading competitors:

Click image to view larger.

The Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops 2112 instance is the yellow line. We track the benchmark (Unigine Superposition @ 1080p) perfectly, averaging around 80 FPS with great interactivity. The green and blue lines are our two main competitors.

And here’s one showing the improvement at 4K:

Click image to view larger.

The purple line charts the performance of another competitor product. The proof is truly in the numbers. We’re over the moon about these improvements because it’s the most cost-effective way of delivering high performing desktops to a demanding user base.

Please note, these improvements are currently enabled for NVIDIA GPUs by default — that’s where we’ve observed the biggest gains. Furthermore, we see similar gains in non 3D-Pro cases, too (basically anywhere where the GPU is used). We are continuing to explore gains on Intel and AMD GPUs for future optimization. Stay tuned for updates on those platforms.

This is only the beginning! We’ve got more to look at over the coming months, mainly other demanding use cases like multiple 4K screens. We’ve set the bar pretty high for ourselves (but that’s what makes it all the more fun)!

To get started today. Download Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops 2112 and take full advantage of these HDX improvements! We would love to hear what you think of these changes, please feel free to leave comments below! We would like to offer a huge thanks to NVIDIA for helping us out with some of their newest GPUs, and of course, Citrix, for continuing to invest in HDX.