MultiSeat Desktop Virtualization

MultiSeat Desktop Virtualization is a method by which a common desktop PC, with extra keyboards, mice, and video screens directly attached to it, can be used to install, load, and concurrently run multiple operating systems. These operating systems can be the same across all "seats" or they can be different. It is similar to server based computing only in the fact that one mainframe is supporting multiple users. On the other hand, it is different because the "terminals" are composed of nothing more than the regular keyboard, monitor and mouse, and these devices are plugged directly into the PC. USB hubs can be used for cable management of the keyboards and mice, and extra video cards (typically dual or quad output) may need to be installed to handle the multiple monitors.

It is commonly known that modern day PC's are extremely powerful and have substantial excess CPU processing power. Server based computing has been around for a long time specifically to take advantage of this excess CPU power and allow multiple users to share it. However, the typical problem with this type of system is that it is dependent upon one operating system and one set of applications and there are many software titles that are not allowed to be shared among multiple users.

Virtualization is a type of server based computing. It is a method by which the "guest" operating system runs on top of, while being separated from the hardware, and can solve some of these problems. This means that multiple "guest" operating systems can be run, solving the problem of single user applications not being able to be launched for multiple, concurrent users.

Multiseat desktop virtualization is an entirely new methodology which combines the cost saving benefits and ease of maintenance of server based computing, the time savings of hardware agnostic cloning, and the capabilities of desktop virtualization, with the performance capabilities of real PC functionality. It takes advantage of multiple cores in present day CPUs to enable ordinary users to install a multiseat PC giving 2 "seats" with a dual-core CPU or 4 "seats" with a quad-core CPU. The operating system of this PC is initially installed just like a regular PC. Regular PC users can install and use this type of product without having to install servers, or know how to manage complicated, server based computing or server based virtualization products.

Type	Standard server/TCP-IP based computing	Virtualized server/TCP-IP based computing	MultiSeat Desktop Virtualization
Can run all single user applications	No	Yes	Yes
Can run multimedia without buffering	No	No	Yes
Easy to install	No	No	Yes
Each "seat" has their own IP and MAC address	No	Yes	Yes
Each "seat" cloned image is hardware agnostic across different sets of hardware	No	Yes	Yes