The analysis of VDI protocols examines the impact of codec architecture on infrastructure costs. The efficiency of a protocol is determined by its ability to manage CPU and GPU resources on physical servers, which directly affects user density per host.
Citrix Thinwire utilizes a multi-codec approach within a single frame, incorporating a content classifier and region detector. While this architecture requires more complex processing per frame compared to standard H.264 encoding, it offers significant resource savings.
Thinwire optimizes performance by applying H.264 only to dynamic video areas, while processing static text regions using the lossless MDRLE codec. This strategy reduces CPU load for typical office tasks like document editing and web browsing.
In contrast, full-frame H.264 encoding consumes more CPU cycles and bandwidth when displaying screens consisting of 80% static text and 20% video. Empirical data shows that Thinwire's selective encoding is more efficient than full-frame H.264 without vGPU.
