In cloud gaming, servers perform remote rendering on behalf of thin clients. Such a server must deliver sufficient frame rate (at least 30fps) to each of its clients. At the same time, each client desires an immersive experience, and therefore the server should also provide the best graphics quality possible to each client. Statically provisioning time slices of the server GPU for each client suffers from severe underutilization because clients can come and go, and scenes that the clients need rendered can vary greatly in terms of GPU resource usage over time.

Gaming on phones, tablets and laptops is very popular. Cloud gaming - where remote servers perform game execution and rendering on behalf of thin clients that simply send input and display output frames - promises any device the ability to play any game any time. Unfortunately, the reality is that wide-area network latencies are often prohibitive; cellular, Wi-Fi and even wired residential end host round trip times (RTTs) can exceed 100ms, a threshold above which many gamers tend to deem responsiveness unacceptable.