Stefan Mileschin

AMD thinks that gamers will move to the cloud and it can save its bacon by getting in first.

The outfit thinks that special new cloud-focused enterprise graphics cards, called Radeon Sky Graphics will take off.

AMD has partnered with CiiNow, G-Cluster, Otoy and other cloud-based gaming services to deliver their vision for the future of cloud gaming.

The processors have specifically been created to work with remote gaming servers and have the ability to stream content to a variety of devices from PCs, smartphones and tablets.

It means that gamers who don't have extremely high-end PCs can potentially play titles that they normally wouldn't be able to enjoy by offloading the intense processing work to a remote server.

The danger here is that cloud-based gaming effectively renders the need for a high-end PC graphics card obsolete. This is a good money spinner for AMD as gamers with deep pockets like to buy them. But with more gamers moving to mobile toys, there needs to be a way to get higher quality graphics on them.

AMD seems to hope that the money will be made back from an increase in cloud-based server farms which will buy its expensive cloud graphics service chips.

But this means that AMD needs to move fast to get its foot in the door, it will not be out evolved when the cloud takes over.

Ocanada has seen a tech demo of what AMD has in mind built with Crytek's CryEngine 3 called Ruby which looked jolly nice.

The system will prove popular with games publishers because it will also mean that DRM will be easier to implement.

The downside is that it needs a really good connection to work.

http://news.techeye.net/chips/amd-looks-to-cloud-gaming