Teradici Corporation was a privately held software company founded in 2004, which was acquired by

HP Inc. HP Inc. is an American multinational information technology company with its headquarters in Palo Alto, California, that develops personal computers (PCs), printers and related supplies, as well as 3D printing services. It is the world's s ...

in October 2021. Teradici initially developed a protocol (

PCoIP Teradici Corporation was a privately held software company founded in 2004, which was acquired by HP Inc. in October 2021. Teradici initially developed a protocol ( PCoIP) for compressing and decompressing images and sound when remotely accessin ...

) for compressing and decompressing images and sound when remotely accessing

blade server A blade server is a stripped-down server computer with a modular design optimized to minimize the use of physical space and energy. Blade servers have many components removed to save space, minimize power consumption and other considerations, wh ...

s, and implemented it in hardware. This technology was later expanded to

thin clients In computer networking, a thin client, sometimes called slim client or lean client, is a simple (low-Computer performance, performance) computer that has been Program optimization, optimized for Remote desktop, establishing a remote connectio ...

zero client In computer networking, a thin client, sometimes called slim client or lean client, is a simple (low-performance) computer that has been optimized for establishing a remote connection with a server-based computing environment. They are some ...

s for general

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure Desktop virtualization is a software technology that separates the desktop environment and associated application software from the physical client device that is used to access it. Desktop virtualization can be used in conjunction with applicati ...

. Teradici's protocol or hardware is used by HP,

Dell Dell Inc. is an American technology company that develops, sells, repairs, and supports personal computers (PCs), Server (computing), servers, data storage devices, network switches, software, computer peripherals including printers and webcam ...

subsidiary

Wyse Wyse Technology, Inc., or simply Wyse, was an independent American manufacturer of cloud computing systems. Wyse are best remembered for their video terminal line introduced in the 1980s, which competed with the market-leading Digital. They a ...

Amulet Hotkey An amulet, also known as a good luck charm or phylactery, is an object believed to confer protection upon its possessor. The word "amulet" comes from the Latin word , which Pliny's ''Natural History'' describes as "an object that protects a perso ...

Samsung Samsung Group (; stylised as SΛMSUNG) is a South Korean Multinational corporation, multinational manufacturing Conglomerate (company), conglomerate headquartered in the Samsung Town office complex in Seoul. The group consists of numerous a ...

Amazon Web Services Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS) is a subsidiary of Amazon.com, Amazon that provides Software as a service, on-demand cloud computing computing platform, platforms and Application programming interface, APIs to individuals, companies, and gover ...

, Fujitsu, and VMware. On 27 July 2021,

HP Inc HP Inc. is an American Multinational corporation, multinational information technology, information technology company with its headquarters in Palo Alto, California, that develops personal computers (PCs), printer (computing), printers and re ...

announced that it had signed a definitive agreement to acquire Teradici on undisclosed terms, with the deal set to close in calendar Q4, 2021.

History

Teradici was founded in 2004 by Dan Cordingley, Dave Hobbs, Ken Unger and Maher Fahmi. It operated in

stealth mode In business, stealth mode is a company's temporary state of secretiveness, either in total stealth mode when everything about the company is kept secret, or in-company stealth mode which is usually undertaken to avoid alerting competitors to a pen ...

until 2007 when they announced their first products, a

card and a small

hockey puck A hockey puck is either an open or closed disk used in a variety of sports and games. There are designs made for use on an ice surface, such as in ice hockey, and others for the different variants of floor hockey which includes the wheeled skat ...

shaped client, using a proprietary chip which implemented the

protocol. In 2008, VMware announced it was licensing Teradici's PCoIP protocol. Teradici developed a software implementation of PCoIP, which VMware started shipping in VMware View 4. The Teradici name originated from a previous company the founders were incubating. That company's product involved a 100-

gigabit The bit is the most basic unit of information in computing and digital communication. The name is a portmanteau of binary digit. The bit represents a logical state with one of two possible values. These values are most commonly represented as ...

data center A data center is a building, a dedicated space within a building, or a group of buildings used to house computer systems and associated components, such as telecommunications and storage systems. Since IT operations are crucial for busines ...

networking device. One-tenth of a tera is a deci, but "Teradeci" didn't roll off the tongue. "Teradici" was unique, sounded better and the domain name was available at the time.

PCoIP Protocol

PC-over-IP (PCoIP) is a proprietary remote display protocol developed by Teradici. The protocol is available in hardware and in software. In 2008, VMware licensed Teradici's

protocol, and supports it in

VMware Horizon View Omnissa Horizon (formerly called VMware Horizon, VMware Horizon View, VMware View) is a commercial desktop and app virtualization product originally developed by VMware, Inc for Microsoft Windows, Linux and macOS operating systems. It was fir ...

. In 2013

Amazon Amazon most often refers to: * Amazon River, in South America * Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin * Amazon (company), an American multinational technology company * Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek myth ...

licensed the

protocol for use in AWS

Amazon Workspaces Amazon most often refers to: * Amazon River, in South America * Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin * Amazon (company), an American multinational technology company * Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek mytho ...

. PCoIP is a UDP-based protocol that is host rendered, multi-codec and dynamically adaptive. Images rendered on the

server Server may refer to: Computing *Server (computing), a computer program or a device that provides requested information for other programs or devices, called clients. Role * Waiting staff, those who work at a restaurant or a bar attending custome ...

are captured as pixels, compressed and encoded and then sent to the client for decryption and decompression. Depending on the image, different

codec A codec is a computer hardware or software component that encodes or decodes a data stream or signal. ''Codec'' is a portmanteau of coder/decoder. In electronic communications, an endec is a device that acts as both an encoder and a decoder o ...

s are used to encode the pixels sent since techniques to compress video images differ in effectiveness compared to those for text. The protocol also dynamically adapts its encoding based on the available bandwidth. In low-bandwidth environments it uses

lossy compression In information technology, lossy compression or irreversible compression is the class of data compression methods that uses inexact approximations and partial data discarding to represent the content. These techniques are used to reduce data size ...

where a highly compressed image is quickly delivered, followed by additional data to refine that image, a process termed "build to perceptually lossless". The default is to use

lossless compression Lossless compression is a class of data compression that allows the original data to be perfectly reconstructed from the compressed data with no loss of information. Lossless compression is possible because most real-world data exhibits statisti ...

which is used when there is minimal network congestion or when explicitly configured, as might be required for scenarios where image fidelity is more important than conserving bandwidth, e.g. for medical imaging.

Comparing PCoIP vs RDP

* Using PCoIP and RDP as a VPN: both PCoIP and RDP protocols can be used in place of a company’s

Virtual Private Network Virtual private network (VPN) is a network architecture for virtually extending a private network (i.e. any computer network which is not the public Internet) across one or multiple other networks which are either untrusted (as they are not con ...

, when a corporate firewall is not available or is deactivated. * High Security and Encryption Level in Connections: using a corporate DMZ, the users can make secure and encrypted connections to Access Points or servers via either PCoIP or

RDP RDP may refer to: Computing * Ramer–Douglas–Peucker algorithm, an algorithm for polygonal simplification * Recombination detection program, for analysing genetic recombination * Recursive descent parser, a type of top-down parser * Remote Desk ...

. * Security with AES: Both PCoIP and RDP support Advanced Encryption Standard 128-bit by default, adding an extra layer of security in connections. Although, you can change the encryption key cipher to AES-256 in PCoIP. *

Bandwidth Bandwidth commonly refers to: * Bandwidth (signal processing) or ''analog bandwidth'', ''frequency bandwidth'', or ''radio bandwidth'', a measure of the width of a frequency range * Bandwidth (computing), the rate of data transfer, bit rate or thr ...

Reduction: This capability is available on PCoIP protocol in order to optimize the bandwidth usage on WAN and LAN to increase its speed. Bandwidth will be evaluated by Remote Desktop Commander to track the RDP number which depends on your setting (color, depth, etc.).

Products & Solutions

OEM products

* PCoIP Zero Client

SoC SOC, SoC, Soc, may refer to: Science and technology * Information security operations center, in an organization, a centralized unit that deals with computer security issues * Selectable output control * Separation of concerns, a program design pr ...

(System on a Chip): SoCs for OEMs to implement Zero clients either with the Teradici-developed Tera1 or Tera2 chip, which implement the

protocol. * PCoIP Workstation 1:1 host

(System on a Chip): An SoC allowing an OEM to implement a

PCIe PCI Express (Peripheral Component Interconnect Express), officially abbreviated as PCIe, is a high-speed standard used to connect hardware components inside computers. It is designed to replace older expansion bus standards such as Peripher ...

card which plugs into a workstation (typically a

blade computer A blade server is a stripped-down server computer with a modular design optimized to minimize the use of physical space and energy. Blade servers have many components removed to save space, minimize power consumption and other considerations, whil ...

), allowing it to be remoted and controlled by a client device, either a PCoIP Zero Client or PCoIP Software Client. The connection is 1:1, meaning one host system to one remote user; it is not virtualized or shared and can capture the output from a

GPU A graphics processing unit (GPU) is a specialized electronic circuit designed for digital image processing and to accelerate computer graphics, being present either as a discrete video card or embedded on motherboards, mobile phones, personal ...

for

full HD 1080p (1920 × 1080 progressively displayed pixels; also known as Full HD or FHD, and BT.709) is a set of HDTV high-definition video modes characterized by 1,920 pixels displayed across the screen horizontally and 1,080 pixels down the scre ...

and 2K remoting along with redirecting audio and

USB Universal Serial Bus (USB) is an industry standard, developed by USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF), for digital data transmission and power delivery between many types of electronics. It specifies the architecture, in particular the physical ...

peripherals. * PCoIP software clients: Software implementation of the PCoIP protocol for flexible client device support. Select OEMs include this in their products for

x86 x86 (also known as 80x86 or the 8086 family) is a family of complex instruction set computer (CISC) instruction set architectures initially developed by Intel, based on the 8086 microprocessor and its 8-bit-external-bus variant, the 8088. Th ...

and

ARM In human anatomy, the arm refers to the upper limb in common usage, although academically the term specifically means the upper arm between the glenohumeral joint (shoulder joint) and the elbow joint. The distal part of the upper limb between ...

-based

thin client In computer networking, a thin client, sometimes called slim client or lean client, is a simple (low-Computer performance, performance) computer that has been Program optimization, optimized for Remote desktop, establishing a remote connectio ...

s. This is also the basis for the VMware and AWS

software clients for Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS and Android which use Teradici-developed core PCoIP protocol and decoding technology.

Direct Products

* Teradici APEX 2800 server offload card: A

coprocessor A coprocessor is a computer processor used to supplement the functions of the primary processor (the CPU). Operations performed by the coprocessor may be floating-point arithmetic, graphics, signal processing, string processing, cryptography or ...

for VMWare Horizon offloading the compression and encryption of graphics and audio to Horizon Software Client or PCoIP Zero Client improving server consolidation in a VDI environment. * PCoIP management console: A web-based management tool for administrative control of PCoIP Zero Client devices from a central console. * Workstation Access Software: Enables remote access via PCoIP Software Client or PCoIP Zero Client to a physical Windows PC or Virtual Machine in the Cloud. * Host Card.

References

{{Vancouver Corporations Canadian companies established in 2004 Virtualization software Remote desktop protocols Software companies established in 2004 Companies based in Burnaby Thin clients Software companies of Canada 2004 establishments in British Columbia 2021 mergers and acquisitions Hewlett-Packard acquisitions Canadian subsidiaries of foreign companies