A Supercomputing Cluster For FPS Gaming

Paul E writes: " An atlanta company seems to have developed (modified?) a linux clustering platform that is very conducive to FPS games. These guys apparently have built a cluster that will be pushing 2 TerraFlops, which would easily put it between Blue Pacific and Blue Mountain . Interesting that the same time the .mil starts making FPS's, FPS platforms are outperforming some of the top defense labs."

Comments

Why do I get this feeling...

[handsomepete]

that they'll still try and overclock it?

Boewulf cluster of PS2s?

[line-bundle]

What about a boewulf cluster of playstation 2s?

:-)

Re:Boewulf cluster of PS2s?

[pi_rules]

Talk to Saddam Husein about that one... anybody else remember a fairly large amount of PS2's being bought by Iraq when they were first released?

Now, I don't know if it ws their government doing it or not... but I found it interesting. The US doesn't allow high-end computers to be shipped over there, but the PS2's weren't restricted by the US export regulations.

While I really like the idea of porting Linux to everything I think it's kind of odd that porting Linux the PS2 might actually help the Iraqi government build a super computer.

Food for though?

Re:Boewulf cluster of PS2s?

[Ryan Amos]

You seem to think that Iraq cannot get a supercomputer any other way. The US is not the entire world, hell, most of the rest of the world thinks the embargo has served its purpose and should be removed. Then there are technologically advanced countries which never participated in the first place, such as China. Besides, it wouldn't be too hard to smuggle American computer parts into Iraq if they really wanted to. I'm sure the Iraqi government could drive a truck to Kuwait/Saudi Arabia, buy a bunch of Athlon XP boxes and drive the truck back. It's not rocket science. Just because they're not allowed to buy them doesn't mean they can't.

Re:Boewulf cluster of PS2s?

[line-bundle]

Now, I don't know if it ws their government doing it or not... but I found it interesting. The US doesn't allow high-end computers to be shipped over there, but the PS2's weren't restricted by the US export regulations.

The PS2 is also made in Japan. As far as I know, the US does not have much say in what Japan can and can't export, despite some people's fantasies.

Re:Boewulf cluster of PS2s?

[fferreres]

What you have to think is that life is smarter that simple regulations. The Iraki already has access to every damn (consumer) CPU in the world and in the quantity they need and can afford.

No regulation will ban their having off all the cryptosystems and computer power they feel like having.

Re:Boewulf cluster of PS2s?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

It was all a hoax. The origin of the story was some marketing fluff about how powerful they were that got PS2's marked as restricted exports in the USA - as in you could import them from Japan where they were made, but once in the USA you couldn't export them because they had too many theoretical FLOPS. It was only a short hop from that to Saddam has already bought a bunch to build a COW supercomputer to design nukes with. All just media hype and rumours.

Imagine...

[ColGraff]

...a beowulf cluster of -

Ah crap, it really is useless now. I've lost my purpose in life! *sobs*

FPS server only, not client

[Papineau]

At first I thought they had the client partof Q3A or UT or whatever other FPS running on a cluster of computers (along the lines of those x nodes control the graphics, those y nodes control the physics, etc.). But after readding their FAQ, the're only hosting servers on a farm of servers. It's a lot less appealing that way.

Re:FPS server only, not client

[Lux]

Not really.

The client needs to run fast, but most of the problems it's solving scale well. The server needs to do things like collision detection that tend to grow O(nlogn)on large datasets (and you only get that if you're really clever.) Clustering your server gives rise to the possibility of hosting many more players with more diverse projectile possibilities.

The client is a relatively 'dumb' rendering terminal in many FPS games. Unless you're talking about trying to make the cluster do the things the graphics card does, but I suspect that the latencies involved would inherently rule anything like that out.

TerraFlops?

[Alan Partridge]

TerrorFlops?

TERAFLOPS!

No they haven't

[Dynedain]

They haven't built a gaming supercomputer...they have only created a linux server farm for hosting gaming servers. Just like Verio hosting web sites, but for game servers instead.

Whoopdeedoo.....

Re:No they haven't

[Provocateur]

No, no you have it all wrong

They read the README for DOOM3's minimum hardware requirements...

Old School

[Kizzle]

I think they should run somthing on it like Doom1. They could have half of the world playing at once.

of course not.

[rebelcool]

the military has been using simulations for a long time now. it's how most 3D environment work got developed in the 70s and 80s.

Re:Console Warrior

[ComaVN]

Better yet, let all soldiers compete in some huge MMORPG. The only problem is, how do you convince the losing country to hand over all it's land and women.

.mil game info

[jcsehak]

The military's new FPS is called America's Army, and was showcased just recently at e3. What's really interesting is that apparently it's free! Here's the blurb where I got my info from:

4. Americas Army

Seriously, who better to make a military squad based shooter than the fucking military? This game not only looked good but it had the features to back it up. Finally a game gives you the opportunity to use silent hand commands to communicate with your team. Realistic objectives, weapons, movement, and locations, everything in this game is as real as you can get. Each weapon operates just as it would in real life. Stand to close to a flash back and say good buy to your hearing for while. Shoot to many of your teammates and end up in jail. Try and use a sniper rifle without going prone and watch as your view bobs up and down with your breathing. You also get twenty some odd maps with expansive real world environments and kick ass objectives. Oh and then there's the fact that it's FREE!

from Penny Arcade (original article)

Re:.mil game info

[cybermage]

This is the real reason they are giving it away... the law says they have to.

But, that makes this game a version of open source/free software. Some IP lawyer would have to rearch more to find out if the source code would have to be released also under the non-copyright/full disclosure laws.


I like your reasoning, but the government is allowed to keep secrets from us. They even have levels of secrecy (e.g. classified, secret, etc.)

I'd bet that all military information is treated as classified by default until someone decides it's ok to de-classify it.

Also, although you're right that the government cannot hold copyrights/patents, the government can license the IP of others. Doing that doesn't give Joe Citizen a de facto license. For example, there are many cities in the US that have licensed their Municipal Code from companies and are heavily restricted interms of redistribution.

NASA, on the other hand, is a nice example of what you'd like to see. Where would we be without Velcro? Of course, not everything they do makes as much sense. NASA spent tons of cash to make a zero-G usable pen. The Russians used pencils. Duh.

Re:.mil game info

[Ziviyr]

NASA spent tons of cash to make a zero-G usable pen. The Russians used pencils. Duh.

Thankfully graphite is nonconductive and doesn't generate lots of tiny fragments in zero g which might float around and be breathed or infest critical switches/circuits. Otherwise the Russian space program would have been a disaster. :-)

MAXIMUM 32 PLAYERS == LAME!

[Anonymous Coward]

Go to their site and "order" a server. Most games are limited to only 32 players - not exactly a "supercomputing" breakthrough...

Re:MAXIMUM 32 PLAYERS == LAME!

[GutBomb]

that is a limitation of the games, not the server themselves. most games hardcode a limit of 32 players

Re:Console Warrior

[Boone^]

Stargate SG-1 had an ep like that as well... some offshoot of humans decided they wanted thier own Hitler-esque crusade so the purebred people hid underground and gassed the rest of the planet. They used drones linked directly to the brain to fight air wars miles above their current position.

Terraflops

[svara]

Wow! I wonder where that Terraflop will bring these guys! Is that some kind of new scale for supercomputers: Measure how many "terra"'s they power? (The earth had 1 Terraflop in Douglas Adam's books).

They are NOT out performing the national labs

[nufsaid]

Just to put things in perspective. Pacific Blue
is an antique and dog slow and is now two generations/iterations behind the current facilities at the national labs.

What a fucking waste of money

[Billly Gates]

I really feel sorry for the investors of this company. There is absolutely no value for this what so ever. Sure games are fun but is it worth $50 million dollars of corporate or even investor sponsored money? If its not to make more money then at least it should be used for valueable research like protein folding or climate simulations. If you want to play games then go spend your own money and play them but not others.

Re:whoops... here's the official game site

[MsGeek]

The discrimination factor comes from the high end of the age spectrum mentioned, not the low end.

I think this probably has something to do with 34 being the high-end of where people can be recruited for the Army, but don't quote me on that. Then again, Grace Hopper was in her 50s when she entered the US Navy.

This is pissing me off though...I'm over 34 and I'd love to have a copy. Am I going to have to bribe a younger cousin to download this for me? [sigh]

My experience w/ military FPS....

[steppin_razor_LA]

When I was a grad student, I spent some time working on a force feedback system for one of the Army's distributed VR combat systems.

The system itself was sort of cool -- all sorts of different vehicles / soldiers could interact within the world. I remember that there was a serious lack of standards due to all of the proprietary BS -- so if you didn't have the various servers synched up with each other's databases, your A-10 might look like a flying tank!

I also remember that the "clients" were Indigo Impacts (the purple ones) -- at the time, these boxes provided the most bang for the buck in terms of high end 3D processing -- the next best thing were the Onyx (sp?) which were $500K - $1M. I remember being really disappointed with the quality / FPS of the simulations compared to what quake would do on my Riva 128 card (if my memory serves)..

I know that the Quake engine had its share of cheats that allowed it to gain the performance advantages it did, but I thought it was funny that a $2K PC was seriously outperforming a $40K workstation.

I remember writing a proposal for a better version of the system that would be java based where each of the vehicles would be an object/thread running in the environment (i.e. like those old programming contests where everyone would write C code that would fight each other). That way you could program intelligence into the vehicles and just pass the object around -- no need to have huge synchronized databases describing the vehicles properties .. they would just be properties of the object .. I proposed that they use VRML or something like that to allow the objects to describe themselves..

Go Army - it's a recruiting tool

[Animats]

You can't download the thing; you have to give them enough info that a recruiter can call you, and someday maybe they send you a CD.

Great concept. I'll have to try to get one, although my military service lies far behind me.

Totally Opinionated Response

[TheMonkeyDepartment]

IMO, FPS games are the least creative thing you can possibly develop on a computer these days. The genre has been totally overexplored. Anything you could classify as a "First Person Shooter" has already been done -- just a glorified CPU exerciser. No creativity is needed (and none is being used) generating new versions of this tired, overused and completely uninspired form of gameplay. Please, Big Game Developers, find something new to develop. I beg you.

FPS platforms are outperforming

[Torgo's Pizza]

...some of the top defense labs

That you *know* about.

What's needed now

[Rhinobird]

Whats needed now are full body suits and stripper MODs...heh heh... FPS=First Person Stripper...

200 TFlops ...theoretically

[dario_moreno]

I doubt the interconnection network is as good as the one of true supercomputers. So 200 Tflops would be the theoretical peak power ; in practice, on Linpack benchmarks, (even if they tend to be embarrasingly parallel nowadays with the amount of memory available on each node, the size of the problem being free) since I suppose there is only a fast ethernet on not-too-expensive switches to link everything together, I doubt they could get more than 1 Tflops in sustained double precision performance on Linpack.