(upbeat music) Welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of AWS re:Invent 2021. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE. We have George Watkins, the product marketing manager, cloud gaming and visual cloud at AMD. George, thanks for coming on theCUBE. >> Thank you for having me. >> Love this segment, accelerating game development. AWS cloud, big topic on how the gaming developer environment's changing and how AMD is powering it. Let's get into it. So streaming remote, working remote, flexible collaboration, all powered by the G4ad virtual workstations, it's been a big part of success. Take us through what's going on there. >> Yeah, certainly. So obviously from a remote working perspective, there was a huge impact on collaboration and productivity for many industries out there. But, a collaborative environment like game design, it was even more so. First off, happy to have these big bulky workstation ship to local artists, so they can actually carry on working was a massive nightmare for IT management. Making sure that they have the right hardware, the right resources, the right applications and security. So it was a real mean task. And on top of that, working remotely also brings in other efficiencies when it comes to collaboration. So for example, working on a data sets, as I mentioned before, it's a huge team collaboration effort when it comes to game development, and using the same dataset happens very very often. So if you're actually working remotely and an artist, for example pulled a dataset, from a server, worked on it, then took it back up into the cloud. I'll tell you now, it takes some time to do. And at the same time you might have one or two other artists trying to use that data set. The problem or the big issue that comes here is version control. And essentially because these artists are using the older version, there's creating errors, and keeping that production timed longer. So it's very very inefficient. And then this is where the cloud really comes to end zone. First off the cloud, and then obviously in this case, the AWS cloud, with G4ad instances, really does bring the whole pipeline together. It brings the data sets and the virtual workstations, obviously, as I mentioned, G4ad, as well as all the applications into one place. It's all centralized. And from an IT perspective, this is fantastic. And actually sending out a workstation now is really really simple. It's log in details into an email to your new staff, and there's some really great benefits as well from a staff perspective. Not only are they not tethered to a local workstation, they have the flexibility of work where they need to, and also how they like to. But it's also really interesting about how they work on a day-to-day basis. So a good example of this is, if a artist is using or working on a very very heavy dataset and the configuration from their VM or virtual workstation, isn't up to snuff because of the such a large dataset, all they need to do is call up IT and say, I need more resource. And literally in a couple of minutes time, they can actually have that resource, again, improving that productivity, reducing that time. So it's really really important. And just a final note here as well, with having all that data and all that resource in the cloud, version control tools, really do help bring that efficiency as it's all built into the applications and that data sets really, really exciting staff and ultimately, bring in that productivity and reducing that time and errors down. >> I could see your point too because, when you don't bring it to the cloud, people are going to be bored, waiting for things to happen. And they say I want to take a shortcut. Shortcuts equal mistakes. So, I can see that the G4ad with focus for artists is cool because it's purpose-built for what you're talking about. So take me through how you see the improved efficiencies in the development pipeline with cloud computing around this area because, obviously it makes a lot of sense. Everything's in the cloud, you've got the instances there. Now what happens next? How does the coding all work? What's going on around the game development pipeline? >> 3D applications today, particularly at use in the game industry, I'll be honest, they are still based on legacy hardware. And what I mean by this is that the applications typically require higher CPU Hertz the typically single threaded, maybe some kind of multi threaded functionality there. But generally they are limited by what the traditional workstation has been. And obviously why not? They've been built over the last 10-15 years to access that type of data. Now that is great, but it's not accessing what could be, all the resources that are available in the cloud. And this is what's really really exciting in my part. So ultimately what we're saying is that is that you have this great virtual workstation experience. You have all your applications running on there, you can be efficient, but then there's these really specific and really interesting use cases that aren't accessing the cloud. And I've got a couple of examples, so first off there's a feature inside Unreal 4 engine, called Unreal Swarm. And this feature helps actually reduce the time it takes, in this case and to bake light maps into auto scale, to bake light maps into a game. And this is done by auto scaling, the compiling in AWS cloud. So for example, after making the amends to a light map, we're ready to essentially recompile, but instead of doing this on the local workstation, using the traditional CPU and memory resource, which you would expect to see in a workstation, and actually in this case, it takes around about 50 minutes to do. When you actually use Unreal Swarm, you can, the coordinator as part of this functionality, bursts the requirement or the actual compiling into the cloud. And actually in this case, it's using, like, 10 C5a instances. So these are all CPU high-performance computing instances. And because you have this ability to auto-scale, you actually essentially bring that time, that original 50 minutes, down to 4 minutes. And this type of kind of functionality or this type of task that you would typically see with a 3d artist or with a programmer, basically happens multiple times a day. So when you start factoring in a saving of 45 minutes multiple times a day, it starts really bringing down, the amount of time saved, and obviously the amount of cost saved as well for that artist's time. So it's really really exciting and, certainly something to talk about. >> That's totally cool. I got to ask you since you're here, because it brings up the question that pops into my head, which is okay. What's the state of the art development trends that you're seeing because, on the cloud side, on non gaming world, so shift left to security. You start to see more agile kind of methods around what used to be different modules, right? So you mentioned compiling, acceleration, what's going on in the actual workflows for the developers? What are some of the cool things that you could share that people might not know about that are important? >> Well certainly it's really about finding, those bursty computational expensive and time consuming processes, and actually moving them to the cloud. So really, from a compiling standpoint, they are usually CPU bound. So essentially the GPU does all the work when it comes to the view pole, all that high rendering frames per second, that's what it's really designed for. And it does a very good job with that. But actually the compiling aspect, the compute aspect is all done on the CPU side. And, the work that we've been doing with AWS and the game tech team is actually finding certain ways of actually helping to reduce the compiling nature because ultimately that is always restricted by the amount of calls that you actually have on a local device. So again, another example is there's a company out there called Incredibuild, and they specialize in accelerating the development of that programming code. And obviously in this case, it's the game code. And if an artist, entered a clean source code built on unreal engine full, it would take approximately around about 60 minutes to do on a local machine. However, using the Incredibuild solution to accelerate that type of workload, you can complete it in just 6 minutes. Because again, it's auto scaled out that compiling to several in this case 16 C5a large instances, which essentially reduces all that time for the artist freeing them up to do more stuff. >> And the more creativity is just the classic use case of the clouds, beautiful thing. It's just reminds me of how good this is, because, when you think about what you guys are doing, pushing the envelope for cloud with the creators. gaming is such a state-of-the-art pressure point to make high performance come better. It really is putting a lot of pressure on AMD and everyone else's to get faster and stronger because, it truly is pushing state-of-the-art in general. It's always been that way. If you look at the gaming world. This is a whole 'nother level. I mean, you starting to see that. What's your view on that? If you look at the gaming as a tail sign for the trends and the tech side, better, faster, cheaper processors and speeds and feeds, and how codes work in between processes GPU's and CPU's, all this is cool. All kind of new, if you will. New patterns, new usage, what's your view on that? >> Well certainly, cloud gaming is a really exciting topic and, we believe that cloud gaming with the introduction of various key elements are reading revolutionalize the way that some people are actually using their complaint gamings and interacting with games. And what I mean by this is like, today we can do cloud gaming, it's a fantastic experience. You're usually hardwired, using a broadband connection to actually play those games. And you tend to try and be close to an actual data sensors, to try to reduce that latency. However this is only going to get better with the introduction of 5G coverage and also just, as important edge computing. And because of these two elements, what we're going to be seeing is very high speeds wirelessly, and more importantly, low latency. And this is very important for, that very dynamic cinematic gaming experiences. But not only this, what it can actually do is bring, 4k, 8K gaming to people wirelessly. It can also bring VR and AR experiences wirelessly, and also it can access, these new emerging technologies that are making higher fidelity gaming experiences like hardware retraces. All this can be done with these new technologies. And it's incredibly incredibly exciting. But more importantly, what's really great about this is, from a game publisher perspective, because it's actually helping them simplify their business processes, particularly from a game development standpoint. And actually what I mean by this is, if we take a typical example of what a game developer has to do for a mobile game, there's certain considerations that they need to think about when they actually comes to developing and validate. First off they'll have to understand what type of OS to account for. And actually what type of version of that OS to account for. What type of IPA they're going to be building on. And also finally, what type of resources, are actually on that end point device. So there's a lot of considerations here, and a lot of testing. So ultimately a lot of work to get that game out, to those gamers who might be on a couple of these different mobile platforms. However, when it comes to game streaming, it really does kind of change all this because ultimately what the game developer is actually doing is that they're developing and they're validating on one source. And that is going to be the server that is essentially pairing that game streaming service. Because how game streaming works is that we essentially trans code the actual game via H.264 to a software client on any end point device. So this could be those mobile devices I just mentioned. It can also be TVs, it could be consoles, it can be even low powered laptops. And what's very exciting is that, from an end user perspective, they're getting the ultimate in gaming experiences and usually these types of solutions are traditionally subscription-based. So you're actually reducing the requirement of this kind of high-end thousands of dollars gaming solution or simply a high-end next gen console. All of this is actually been given to you and delivered as part of a game streaming service. So it's very very exciting and, certainly we can see the adoption on both the game development side, as well as the gamer's side. That's a great way to put an end to this awesome segment. I think that business model innovation around making it easier, and making it better to develop environment, that's just how they work. So that's good, check. But really the business model here, the gaming as a service, you're making it possible for the developer and the artist to see an outcome faster. That's the cloud way. >> Thank you >> And they doubled down on success and they could do that. So again, this is all new and exciting and certainly the edge and having data being processed at the edge as well. Again, all this is coming in to create more good choice. Thank you so much for coming on and sharing that insight with us from the AMD perspective. And again, more power, more speed, we always say, no one's going to complain, they get more compute, that's what I always. >> Absolutely absolutely. >> Thanks for coming I appreciate it. >> Thank you. >> theCUBE coverage here at AWS re:Invent 2021. I'm John Furrier host of theCUBE. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)