One of the biggest pitfalls of portable gaming machines is their relative lack of portability; even if you can put up with the bulk of a gaming laptop, discrete graphics cards don't sip power -- they chug it. LucidLogix can't make gaming laptops any skinnier, but the company's "Lucid Virtu" GPU virtualization technology can help with energy efficiency and battery life by powering discrete GPUs down to zero watts and switching the workload over to the CPU's integrated graphics when extra processing heft isn't necessary.
Wait, isn't that what Nvidia's Optimus and AMD's Enduro graphics switching do already? Indeed it is, but those solutions are limited to GPUs offered by the respective companies and they only work if the graphics card you buy has the switching technology enabled. LucidLogix's Lucid Virtu is licensed directly by motherboard manufacturers and works with both AMD and Nvidia graphics. You can find a full list of compatible motherboards here.
LucidLogix says dynamically switching the GPU workload also helps heat and noise levels down during less intensive tasks. The potential benefit to portable gaming is obvious. Unfortunately, only a handful of chipsets are supported right now and Virtu-enabled motherboards are desktop-only.
Lucid Virtu has been around for over a year, but today the company announced the technology is now compatible with the OpenGL API. Earlier this week, the Khronos Group announced several major updates to OpenGL, including the release of the new OpenGL 4.3 and OpenGL ES 3.0 specifications, which bring a big boost to texture functionality, amongst other things.
In the same press release, LucidLogix announced that the company's GPU switching technology is now available in select Fujitsu workstations and desktops, as well.
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