I recently came across WiCi, a wireless GPU that connects to the host computer over WiFi. The host computer sees the wireless GPU as a native GPU connected to the computer and also shows up in the Windows Task Manager.
Demonstrations show it running DeepSeek and some graphics-intensive games. The GPU being shared over WiFi is an RTX 5090.
I wanted to dig deep into how WiFi as a protocol can be used for communicating with the GPU. In a normal situation, the GPU will communicate via PCIe with the CPU of the host computer, ensuring high-bandwidth data transfers. I found the following lines in a blog that WiCi has shared:
> So WiCi keeps the local-GPU contract while shrinking what actually crosses the link: cache stable facts, deduplicate repeated payloads, compress or stream large transfers, pipeline independent work, keep expensive state resident, and preserve true dependencies exactly.
What I feel is that WiCi has introduced an intermediate layer between the host and the GPU that facilitates communication. The commands intended for the GPU are first encoded in some intermediate language, passed through the network, and decoded back within the WiCi remote GPU (the external box holding the 5090) into commands that the CUDA driver understands.
WiCi does not seem to replace the physical PCIe protocol with IEEE 802.11 (WiFi) protocol over the physical medium. This is my assumption and I am not sure about it.
But if this product proves what it claims, then this would be a huge deal in my opinion. A shared GPU that different devices can use would be great for local LLMs.
ignoring the real reasons that necessitate a big thick link to these cards for most real work, at that cost I see no benefit to this over a mini-pc+full size gpu hosting these services with a well known non-custom backend; a normal computer + a gpu.
yeah yeah yeah "it's done for you" but that's way less of a selling point post-agentic AI.
Demonstrations show it running DeepSeek and some graphics-intensive games. The GPU being shared over WiFi is an RTX 5090.
I wanted to dig deep into how WiFi as a protocol can be used for communicating with the GPU. In a normal situation, the GPU will communicate via PCIe with the CPU of the host computer, ensuring high-bandwidth data transfers. I found the following lines in a blog that WiCi has shared:
> So WiCi keeps the local-GPU contract while shrinking what actually crosses the link: cache stable facts, deduplicate repeated payloads, compress or stream large transfers, pipeline independent work, keep expensive state resident, and preserve true dependencies exactly.
What I feel is that WiCi has introduced an intermediate layer between the host and the GPU that facilitates communication. The commands intended for the GPU are first encoded in some intermediate language, passed through the network, and decoded back within the WiCi remote GPU (the external box holding the 5090) into commands that the CUDA driver understands.
WiCi does not seem to replace the physical PCIe protocol with IEEE 802.11 (WiFi) protocol over the physical medium. This is my assumption and I am not sure about it.
But if this product proves what it claims, then this would be a huge deal in my opinion. A shared GPU that different devices can use would be great for local LLMs.
yeah yeah yeah "it's done for you" but that's way less of a selling point post-agentic AI.