ClearCube blade PCs work at long distance

ClearCube Technology launched a long-distance version of its thin client PC system on Monday, hoping to win over users who have complained they have to keep their desktop clients too close to the back-room PC blades.

ClearCube’s new I9420, I9440, and C7420 user ports all connect to centralized storage and processing via TCP/IP (transmission control protocol/Internet protocol) and an Ethernet or fiber network instead of using a combination of analog and digital signals over standard Cat5 cables. The new design means users can access the centralized blades from desks thousands of miles away, instead of the standard maximum distance of 200 meters.

“You could run a user port on a trading floor in Manhattan off a PC blade in New Jersey, no problem, but coast-to-coast would probably be closer to 100 milliseconds latency,” said Tom Josefy, director of product management at ClearCube. At latency delays under 70 milliseconds, most users can’t tell the difference between a desktop PC and a thin client, he said.

“If you had a data center in Dallas or Kansas City, you could probably have your desktop anywhere in the continental U.S., but I wouldn’t suggest you run it from Maine to Alaska,” Josefy said.

The new units also have ASIC chips dedicated to displaying graphics on up to four monitors at once, a key selling point for ClearCube’s core user base of stock traders and financial service brokers, as well as vertical industry segments in government and health care.

A centralized computing network using thin clients and PC blades can afford greater disaster recovery, better information security, and lower IT management costs than traditional desktop PCs, the company said. However, that’s the same sales pitch that companies hear from ClearCube’s competitors, like Hewlett-Packard and IBM. ClearCube hopes its new long-distance capabilities will separate it from the herd.

Both the ClearCube desktop user ports and the back-room blades run on a PC-over-IP ASIC (application specific integrated circuit) made by Teradici, replacing the FPGA (field programmable gate array) processor in previous models. The PC blades on the back end run on more powerful Intel processors, either Core 2 Quad, Core 2 Duo, Xeon, or Pentium 4, depending on the type of applications and the number of monitors.

ClearCube will begin shipping the new PC blade systems by the end of the third quarter, but has not yet announced prices.