Nachiket Karmakar – Sr. Performance Engineer - NVIDIA

S9884 USER EXPERIENCE IS KEY TO VDI SUCCESS, COLOR ACCURACY IS THE KEY TO USER EXPERIENCE

2

SESSION TARGET

• CITRIX PROTOCOL OVERVIEW

• PROTOCOL/CODEC USAGE SCENARIOS

• IMAGE QUALITY HUMAN EYE & SSIM MEASUREMENT FOR H.264

• BANDWIDTH COMPARISON FOR VIDEO USE CASE

• VDI ON SCALE TESTING

• WRAP-UP

Why is it key to choose the right protocol to get the best user experience

3

PROTOCOL & CODECS

Video Codec Policy Region Visual Quality CODECS USED HW ENC*

Do Not Use Region optimized MediumStatic: JPEG (90) + 2D/MDRLE

Video: Adaptive JPEG (10-65)No

For Entire Screen Entire Screen Medium H.264 4:2:0 Yes

For act. changing regions Region optimized MediumStatic: JPEG (90) + 2D/MDRLE

Video: H.264 4:2:0Yes

H.264+TextOptimization* Entire Screen Medium H.264 4:2:0 + Lossless Text No

For Entire Screen Entire Screen Build To LosslessH.264 4:2:0 during activity,

2D/MDRLE when stationaryYes

For Entire Screen Entire Screen Visual lossless: Medium H.264 4:4:4 Yes

For Entire Screen (H.265) Entire Screen Medium H.265 4:2:0 Yes

For act. changing regions

(H.265)Region optimized Medium

Static: JPEG (90) + 2D/MDRLE

Video: H.265 4:2:0Yes

For act. changing regions

(H.265)Entire Screen Build To Lossless

H.265 4:2:0 during activity,

2D/MDRLE when stationaryYes

Citrix XenDesktop 7.18

* videocodec (H.264/H.265) part via NVENC* no policy available for TextOpt

4

CODECS & USE CASE

Bitmap (JPG, RLE) H.264 H.265

• 2DRLE/MDRLE for text/crisp areas,

JPEG for photographic imagery

• „Build to Lossless“ and „Always

Lossless“ policies for pixel perfect

quality

• Many compression policies (Image

quality, color depth, etc.)

• Can utilize client side bitmap cache

• No hardware encoding (NVENC)

• Very bandwidth efficient for static

content

YUV 4:2:0• Good compression and visual quality

• Hardware encoding (NVENC)

• Chroma subsampling yields blurred text

• Bandwidth efficient for video/moving

images

YUV 4:4:4• Very good visual quality

• Hardware encoding (NVENC)

• No chroma subsampling

• Great for sharp graphics as well as text

• Increase in bandwidth

YUV 4:2:0• Better compression at same visual

quality or same quality at lower

bandwidth (compared to H.264)

• Requires hardware encoding (NVENC)

• No CPU encoding as it would be to cost

intensive (~8xCPU load compared to

H.264)

• Requires specific endpoint capabilities

to decode H.265. Use 3rd party tools

like DXVAChecker to see if your endpoint

is capable

What to use when...

Office VDI usage

3D VDI usage

3D VDI usage with high color accuracy requirements

3D VDI usage in low bandwidth

scenarios

5

CODECS & USE CASE

Mixed Mode (Video and Bitmap)

Adaptive Display / Selective H.264/H.265

• „Hybrid“: Use the best available codec for a specific screen „region“

• Leverages hardware encoding H.264/H.265 (NVENC) for video regions (a.k.a. „Selective H.264“). If HW encoding not available,

software H.264 encoding is used.

• Very good image quality for static content (Bitmap) and low bandwidth requirement for moving images/video (H.264/H.265)

H.264/H.265 / Build to Lossless (NEW with 7.18)

• Hardware encoding (NVENC) for video codec usage

• „Sharpening“ effect when changing from moving to static content but pixel perfect quality

• Chroma subsampling less problematic as it is used only for moving images/video

What to use when...

Office VDI usage with multimedia content

3D VDI usage with high color accuracy requirements and low bandwidth

6

IMAGE QUALITY COMPARISON

7

COMPARISON H.264YUV4:2:0 and YUV4:4:4 (Reference Image)

8

COMPARISON H.264YUV4:2:0 and YUV4:4:4

Citrix YUV420 Citrix YUV444

Citrix YUV420 Citrix YUV444

9

H.264 (STATIC TEXT)

YUV4:2:0 YUV4:4:4

11

IMAGE QUALITYStatic Text

H.264 YUV 4:2:0(Entire Screen)

H.264 YUV 4:4:4(Entire Screen)

Bitmap MDRLEH.264 YUV 4:2:0(Active Regions)

H.264 YUV 4:2:0(Entire Screen, VQ:

BTL)

H.264 YUV 4:2:0(TextOptimization)

H.265 YUV 4:2:0(Entire Screen)

H.265 YUV 4:2:0(Entire Screen, VQ:

BTL)

H.265 YUV 4:2:0(Active Regions)

SSIM (StaticText) 0.83086 0.98362 0.99995 0.99994 0.9999 0.99111 0.83118 0.99872 0.99993

0.5

0.55

0.6

0.65

0.7

0.75

0.8

0.85

0.9

0.95

1

SSIM

Image Quality (Static Text)

12

IMAGE QUALITYHeatmaps

H264 YUV 4:2:0(Entire Screen)

H264 YUV 4:2:0 (BTL)

H264 YUV 4:2:0 (TextOptimization)

H264 YUV 4:4:4: (Entire Screen)

H265 YUV 4:2:0(Entire Screen) Bitmap Encoding

(JPEG/RLE)

13

COMPARISON H.264YUV4:2:0 and YUV4:4:4 (Reference Image)

14

COMPARISON H.264YUV4:2:0 and YUV4:4:4

15

H.264 (WIREFRAME)

YUV4:2:0 YUV4:4:4

17

IMAGE QUALITYWireframe

H.264 YUV 4:2:0(Entire Screen)

H.264 YUV 4:4:4(Entire Screen)

Bitmap MDRLEH.264 YUV 4:2:0(Active Regions)

H.264 YUV 4:2:0(Entire Screen, VQ:

BTL)

H.264 YUV 4:2:0(TextOptimization)

H.265 YUV 4:2:0(Entire Screen)

H.265 YUV 4:2:0(Entire Screen, VQ:

BTL)

H.265 YUV 4:2:0(Active Regions)

SSIM (Wireframe) 0.99083 0.99738 0.99158 0.98559 0.99992 0.9915 0.99162 0.99994 0.99144

0.5

0.55

0.6

0.65

0.7

0.75

0.8

0.85

0.9

0.95

1

SSIM

Image Quality (Wireframe)

18

BANDWIDTH COMPARISON (VIDEO)

19

BANDWIDTH COMPARISONVideo playback scenario

141408x592 window size

2:30min duration

Win10 with 1920x1200 resolution, 2vCPUs@3.5GHz, P40-1B profile

20

BANDWIDTH COMPARISONVideo playback @ 30fps

CODECVisual

Quality

Encoder

CPUTotal FPS MB transfered

Bitmap JPG/RLE Medium 7% 3693 355MB

H.264 YUV420 Medium 2% 3736 220MB

H.264 YUV444 Medium 3% 3728 655MB

H.264/Bitmap* Medium 7% 3698 205MB

H.264 Build To lossless 5% 3642 195MB

H.264 TextOpt Medium 23% 3448 160MB

H.265 YUV420 Medium 2% 3766 180MB

H.265/Bitmap* Medium 8% 3721 185MB

H.265 Build To Lossless 5% 3796 175MB

*Adaptive Display (active changing regions)

21

BANDWIDTH COMPARISONVideo playback @ 30fps

CODECVisual

Quality

Encoder

CPUTotal FPS MB transfered

Bitmap JPG/RLE High 8% 3633 610MB

H.264 YUV420 High 2% 3719 210MB

H.264 YUV444 High 4% 3716 690MB

H.264/Bitmap* High 5% 3671 215MB

H.264 Build To lossless 5% 3642 195MB

H.264 TextOpt High 22% 3508 160MB

H.265 YUV420 High 3% 3780 185MB

H.265/Bitmap* High 7% 3627 175MB

H.265 Build To Lossless 5% 3796 175MB

*Adaptive Display (active changing regions)

22

VDI ON SCALE TESTING24 VMS ON 1 TESLA P40

23

TEST SYSTEMConfiguration Details

Host Configuration VDI Configuration

Cisco UCS C240 M5 vCPU - 4

Intel Xeon Gold 6154 @ 3.00 GHz vRAM – 4096 MB

VMware ESXi 6.7 NIC – 1 (E1000)

Number of CPUs: 36 (2 x 18) Hard Disk – 40 GB

Memory: 768 GB vGPU – P40-1B

Storage: All-Flash SAN (iSCSI) Virtual Hardware – vmx-14

Hyperthreading, Turbo boost FRL enabled - Yes

Power Setting: High Performance VDI agent – CITRIX XenDesktop 7.18

GPU: 1 x P40 CITRIX HDX

GPU Scheduling Policy – Best Effort Number of Screens - 2

NVIDIA vGPU Driver 6.2 390.72 Screen Resolution – 1920 x 1080

Cirrus Knowledge Worker Workload (Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Chrome, Media Player, PDF)

24

END USER LATENCY (CLICK TO PHOTON)

H.264 YUV4:2:0 (Entire

Screen)

H.264 YUV4:4:4 (Entire

Screen)

BitmapJPG/RLE

H.264 YUV4:2:0 (Active

Regions)

H.264 YUV4:2:0 (EntireScreen, VQ:

BTL)

H.264 YUV4:2:0

(TextOptimization)

H.265 YUV4:2:0 (Entire

Screen)

H.265 YUV4:2:0 (EntireScreen, VQ:

BTL)

H.265 YUV4:2:0 (Active

Regions)

End User Latency 115 166 199 199 116 132 115 132 201

0

50

100

150

200

250M

illis

eco

nd

s

End User Latency

25

TOTAL REMOTED FRAMES

H.264 YUV4:2:0 (Entire

Screen)

H.264 YUV4:4:4 (Entire

Screen)Bitmap MDRLE

H.264 YUV4:2:0 (Active

Regions)

H.264 YUV4:2:0 (EntireScreen, VQ:

BTL)

H.264 YUV4:2:0

(TextOptimization)

H.265 YUV4:2:0 (Entire

Screen)

H.265 YUV4:2:0 (EntireScreen, VQ:

BTL)

H.265 YUV4:2:0 (Active

Regions)

Total FPS 11684.33333 11799.08333 13347.625 13165.20833 20278.20833 11608.41667 11564.33333 20006.45833 13220.5

0

5000

10000

15000

20000

25000

Remoted Frames

26

BANDWIDTH H.264

0

5000

10000

15000

20000

25000

1

14

27

40

53

66

79

92

10

5

11

8

13

1

14

4

15

7

17

0

18

3

19

6

20

9

22

2

23

5

24

8

26

1

27

4

28

7

30

0

31

3

32

6

33

9

35

2

36

5

37

8

39

1

40

4

41

7

43

0

44

3

45

6

46

9

48

2

49

5

50

8

52

1

53

4

54

7

56

0

57

3

58

6

59

9

61

2

62

5

63

8

65

1

66

4

67

7

69

0

70

3

71

6

72

9

74

2

75

5

76

8

Mb

its

ESX Server - Transmitted Bandwidth (Cumulative Mbits)

H.264 YUV 4:2:0 (Entire Screen) H.264 YUV 4:4:4 (Entire Screen) Bitmap JPG/RLE H.264 YUV 4:2:0 (Active Regions) H.264 YUV 4:2:0 (Entire Screen, VQ: BTL)

27

BANDWIDTH H.265

0

5000

10000

15000

20000

25000

11

32

53

74

96

17

38

59

71

09

12

11

33

14

51

57

16

91

81

19

32

05

21

72

29

24

12

53

26

52

77

28

93

01

31

33

25

33

73

49

36

13

73

38

53

97

40

94

21

43

34

45

45

74

69

48

14

93

50

55

17

52

95

41

55

35

65

57

75

89

60

16

13

62

56

37

64

96

61

67

36

85

69

77

09

72

17

33

74

57

57

76

9

Mb

its

ESX Server - Transmitted Bandwidth (Cumulative Mbits)

Bitmap JPG/RLE H.265 YUV 4:2:0 (Entire Screen) H.265 YUV 4:2:0 (Entire Screen, VQ: BTL) H.265 YUV 4:2:0 (Active Regions)

28

WRAP-UP

• H.264 BTL is a very interesting addition for different use cases. If the users get used to the „sharpening“ effect in their session this is the best possible compromise between visual quality, performance and bandwidth consumption which finally leads to the best achievable USER EXPERIENCE

• Bitmap (Thinwire+) is still a good solution for pure office VDI use case, same applies to Mixed Mode(Adaptive Display)

• H.265 leads to slightly reduced bandwidth consumption and is therefore interesting for 3D use cases with limited bandwidth

Analyzing the data lead to the following...

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USEFUL TECHNICAL RESOURCES

• http://sschaber.de/blog/

• https://www.nvidia.com/object/better-ux.html

• https://www.nvidia.com/object/quantifying-impact-of-vgpu-whitepaper.html

• https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/design-visualization/solutions/virtualization/resources/

Blogs, white papers and everything vGPU

30

NVIDIA VIRTUAL GPU RESOURCES

Virtual GPU Test Drivehttps://www.nvidia.com/tryvgpu

NVIDIA Virtual GPU Websitewww.nvidia.com/virtualgpu

NVIDIA Virtual GPU YouTube Channelhttp://tinyurl.com/gridvideos

Questions? Ask on our Forumshttps://gridforums.nvidia.com

NVIDIA Virtual GPU on LinkedInhttp://linkd.in/QG4A6u

Follow us on Twitter@NVIDIAVirt

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Q & A