The idea
What if the computer on your desk wasn't really there?
This thesis replaces the CPU, RAM and GPU on your desk with a cheap FPGA board, and moves all the actual computing to a server in the cloud. 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 the display output back in real time. From the user's side, it's just a computer.
Architecture
FPGACaptures keyboard and mouse input and drives the display. The hardware bridge on the user's desk, written in VHDL.
EthernetTwo-way channel. Input events travel to the server; rendered frames travel back.
Cloud serverA C# application that replays the incoming input events and streams the resulting display back.
Why it matters
- No expensive general-purpose hardware at the endpoint
- FPGAs are built for I/O: efficient, low-latency, low-power
- Upgrade the cloud hardware without touching the client device
- Applies to IoT, embedded systems and thin-client infrastructure
- Hardware-software co-design: VHDL on the FPGA, C# on the server
Context
Final-year thesis for a B.Eng. in Electronic & Computer Engineering at the Technical University of Crete, spanning embedded systems, real-time networking, hardware description languages and systems programming.