Interesting article in Computer World that is consequence for your future upgrades, internet connection and services you buy: http://www.computerworld.com/articl...ing/youll-soon-be-using-gpu-as-a-service.html It could certainly benefit mobile - removing some of the overhead from your phone and putting it in the Cloud, prolonging battery-life. Also, this is basically what 'next-gen' consoles will become. Small section:
Unless I'm mistaken surely that'd rely on a really fast, low latency internet connection to avoid horrible lag?
To an extent, console gamer's already play on wireless controllers at 30FPS. It certainly won't satisfy your average PC user. For mobile though most games are point and click not 3D, so offloading could be done.
Outside-the-home infrastructure is still not yet sufficient for streaming completed rendered frames. inside-the-home infrastructure is often not good enough (wired Ethernet good, wireless almost always not good enough). I was hoping for "GPU-as-a-service" being a "pay a monthly subscription to get the latest Titan Whatever whenever it gets released and send the old one back as soon as it's outdated" service. That could be pretty neat.
That would be neat but the monthly payments would have to be huge. If you consider something like the titan - you'd have to take into account the initial price (huge), the rate of depreciation (very fast) and the time until it would be replaced (quite quickly) and you'd have to pay out a lot each month.
It would definitely be a premium in the long run over buying GPUs yourself and flipping them when you upgrade, but depending on the margins (buying GPUs in bulk rather than from a reseller, batch RMAs, wastage from client damage, etc) it might be worth it to spread the cost and to avoid the hassle of launch rushes and second-hand sales.
