Gaming in the cloud: Now, the configuration of your mobile, tablet won’t matter

If you are a gaming lover, you will no longer need to look for a powerful desktop PC to play that most complex game which requires powerful computing and gaming processors. You can soon play your favourite, complex games on your smartphone, tablet or Chromebook.

The stumbling block for game developers is the ability to play streaming graphics-rich games on configuration-poor devices, particularly mobile phones and tablets. Not any more.

Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), which completed 50 years of existence, will tap a wider gaming ecosystem globally by letting them play on a variety of devices.

“People can play games on their phones or notebooks, while the actual complex computing and graphics processing take place in the cloud servers. It doesn’t need to be a high-end system (device) to play games,” Andrej Zdravkovic, Corporate Vice-President - Software, at AMD, told BusinessLine .

It is a kind of second coming for the chip-maker, which is very popular among the gaming community for its advanced graphics processors, into the mobile space after a gap of nearly 10 years.

Asked whether AMD is late in tapping into the mobile opportunity, Andrej contended, “We are not late.”

Andrej was here recently in connection with GameOn, the annual event that it holds here as part of its connect with the gaming ecosystem. Besides showcasing its latest products and technologies on the sidelines of ComicCon, the chip-maker allows game developers and enthusiasts to play on high-end systems.

Most gamers now play games on their mobile devices but limit themselves to not-so-professional games due to the challenges of battery-life and requirement of complex processing.

Earlier this year, AMD signed two agreements with Google and Samsung. While the former will let gamers connect their devices to the cloud to play high-end games without having to bother about the configuration on their devices, the latter addresses the aspirations of gamers who seek to play high-end games on mobiles without having to worry about battery consumption.

Google is using AMD’s Radeon data centre GPUs for its Vulkan and Linux-based Google Stadia, a cloud gaming service. This will let the users get connected to the cloud, which happens in the background, to play complex games that require very high processing power.

AMD is jointly working with Samsung to extend the reach of its high-performance Radeon graphics into the mobile market. AMD will license its custom graphics IP, based on the recently announced scalable RDNA graphics architecture, to Samsung for use in mobile devices, including smartphones, and other products that complement AMD’s product offerings.

Besides offering a good gaming experience, it will also address the issue of power, such that gamers won’t need to fear running out of battery charge while playing.

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