Cloudpaging is a new technology for migrating applications to the cloud.

Imagine that powerful and voracious desktop applications like Photoshop, AutoCAD or modern games could work as web applications - without a long download and installation, without being tied to a specific device, and at the same time they would work even if the connection was lost. The CloudPaging technology from the Numecent startup allows you to do just that. Cloudpaging combines three well-known technologies (application virtualization, dynamic loading of memory pages and cloud services) into something qualitatively new. Any Windows application is automatically virtualized and broken into small page fragments that can be downloaded from the server in any order. On the client side, the virtual memory management unit loads into RAM only those code fragments, libraries and resources that are needed at the moment, loading the rest from the server as needed. All pages received from the server are cached on disk, and if the connection is broken, the application will continue to work until it needs a page that does not exist in the cache.

As a rule, even a very heavy application takes only a few hundred megabytes to start, which at current Internet speeds can be downloaded in a couple of minutes. Applications run in virtual sandboxes without requiring installation. The server doesn’t care about the content of the pages it gives, so you can, for example, distribute Adobe Photoshop from an Android smartphone, if such a desire arises.


Numecent intends to create on the basis of its technology several companies aimed at different market segments. The first project in this series is Approxy gaming cloud service. Unlike OnLive , it does not require powerful servers with modern graphics accelerators, nor a wide channel for broadcasting a variety of video streams. All that is required from the game server is to distribute pages. Moreover, clients can exchange the missing pages among themselves through the P2P network, further reducing the load on the server. Resolution, FPS and network lags depend entirely on the capabilities of the client hardware, since the game runs on the user's computer.

The server constantly collects and analyzes statistics of page loads and can give the client the necessary pages in advance, which greatly reduces the likelihood of the program hanging during the load time of the new page. In addition, such statistics - an invaluable source of information for developers.
')
Cloudpaging has a large commercial potential, since all pages are stored and transmitted over the network in an encrypted form - it is extremely difficult to assemble a working pirate distribution kit from them. At the same time, users have the opportunity for very little money to work even with powerful and expensive professional packages on an hourly basis, which reduces the demand for pirated software. Microsoft and Citrix have already agreed to license some Numecent patents.

Is headed by Numecent Osman Kent (Osman Kent) - co-founder of 3Dlabs. Cloudpaging technology itself was created by Endeavors Technologies. Numecent has already managed to attract $ 17.5 million of investment. According to Kent, Numecent intends to “become the same for programs as Dropbox has become for data.”