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.

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.

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.

.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)

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..