For those who came in late, thin clients are quasi-intelligent terminals which draw most of their processing power from servers. At various times in IT history they have been touted as the next big thing and always disappointed. With the rise of the cloud, thin clients are again being touted as important again.

Now AMD has announced that it has achieved a number one market share position for thin clients based on its thin-client shipments.

According to its unit sales to thin client customers last year, AMD has more than half of that market, with 53 percent market share.

AMD has its Embedded G-Series which can offer reasonable graphics in single- or multi-display configurations in the enterprise.

Recent design wins with HP, Fujitsu, and Samsung validate that AMD APUs provide compelling value with horsepower for data movement, encryption/decryption of central server data, and even video encode/decode for video conferencing or multimedia streaming.

AMD’s corporate vice president and general manager Scott Aylor, said that AMD Embedded G-Series SoC couples high performance compute and graphics capability in a highly integrated low power design.

“These processors provide compelling performance per dollar per watt, strong security, sophisticated power management, and superior graphics performance. The product lineup includes an unparalleled range of pin- and software-compatible offerings, helping to address multiple needs of our customers.”

He said that the surge of innovation in the desktop virtualization market has created new opportunities for powerful thin clients that are now capable of executing demanding tasks including computer-aided design and 3D modeling.

Customers are also using AMD thin client solutions in financial and government services, call centers, kiosks, and hospitals, “smart” monitors and other multi-user, virtualised installations, he said.

The AMD G-Series SoC also features enhanced security for enterprise IT operations, enabling security between the thin client and the server, and allowing only software approved by an enterprise’s IT organization to run on the thin client device. It also supports enhanced power management technology to help manage energy costs and environmental impact across large deployments.