The idea
What if the computer on your desk wasn't really there? This thesis replaces the CPU, RAM, and GPU in your home or office with a cheap FPGA board and moves all the actual computing to a server in the cloud — while your keyboard, mouse, and monitor stay exactly where they are.
The FPGA acts as a thin client: it captures keyboard and mouse events, streams them over Ethernet to the server, and receives back the display and audio output in real time. From the user's perspective, it's just a computer.
Architecture
- FPGA Captures peripheral input (keyboard, mouse) and drives display/audio output. Acts as the hardware bridge at the user's end.
- Ethernet Bidirectional channel. Input events travel to the server; rendered frames and audio travel back.
- Cloud server C# application that simulates the incoming peripheral events and streams the resulting display output back to the FPGA.
Why it matters
- Eliminates expensive general-purpose hardware at the endpoint
- FPGA is purpose-built for I/O — efficient, low-latency, low-power
- Cloud hardware can be upgraded without touching the client device
- Applicable to IoT, embedded systems, and thin-client infrastructure
- Hardware-software co-design: C# on the server, RTL/HDL on the FPGA
Context
Final-year thesis for a B.Eng. in Electronic & Computer Engineering at the Technical University of Crete. The project spans embedded systems, real-time networking, hardware description languages, and systems programming.