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More on Grid Computing and Gaming
securitas writes "Sony, IBM and Butterfly.net will announce and demonstrate a new grid computing network for PS2 online gaming at the Game Developers Conference next week. The network is based on Linux and the Open Grid Services Architecture (OGSA) and is designed to support millions of players. This is believed to be the first major consumer application of grid technology. Read the details at the NY Times, CNET and the Washington Post."
And here I thought the network interface for my PS2 I purchased was just a fancy means of colecting dust samples from the sournding area. You mean some one may release soem software for it after all this time?
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
...I really DON'T think this'll come cheap.
Machine9dotNet
X-Box online is a Major selling point for the X-Box right now. I'm surprised Sony didn't come up with anything similar earlier.
I've read a few Grid papers, and still do not understand what is so original about the "grid" idea. Isn't it essentially the idea of ARPANET, except with better funding? :)
"Butterfly uses a "grid computing" approach, in which multiple servers work together as a virtual supercomputer, seamlessly shifting processing tasks among individual machines."
How is this different from Parallel computing?
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
is there really a major selling-point for the Xbox?!?
We're gonna need grid computering soon to keep up with the hardware requirements for these new games.
There's no way I can keep up with the current hardware/game arms race thats going on.
"Things that you own end up owning you" - Tyler Durden (via Diogenes of Sinope).
...a beowolf cluster of these!
Oh, wait...
Does anyone know how such a grid could be heated up and poored down one's pants?
support millions of players
That's gonna be crowded on the GranTurisma race tracks...
I want my karma, and I want it now!
Sounds like MSN 8... Hope Sony's not going to get sued by MS for trademark infringement.
Flying is easy, just throw yourself at the ground and miss. -Douglas Adams
It's not! As far as I can discern the only difference is in the length (and quantity) of the connections. Parallel computing normal involves a local cluster of computers (LAN, eg a Beowulf type project) whilst the Grid works on the SETI type system of enlisting processing power across the internet (WAN) - ie many more processors separated by greater differences. Note these are comparative terms so you decide what's a Grid and what's an MPP
Whatis says: Grid computing requires the use of software that can divide and farm out pieces of a program to as many as several thousand computers. Grid computing can be thought of as distributed and large-scale cluster computing and as a form of network-distributed parallel processing. It can be confined to the network of computer workstations within a corporation or it can be a public collaboration (in which case it is also sometimes known as a form of peer-to-peer computing).
pbhj
It seems to me that the more technology these companies throw at games, the less I feel the desire to play them. Don't get me wrong: I love excellent graphics and sound. I just think the playability suffers when a game developer spends so much effort on the technology. I'm glad we have such a scalable platform for online gaming. I just haven't seen games that are as compelling as they used to be to take advantage of the platform. Am I getting too old for video games?
For those who are too lazy, here is
Butterfly.net
"Welcome to Butterfly.net! Our fully-distributed server technology is pioneering the use of open grid computing protocols in large-scale immersive game networks that support unlimited numbers of players and require the most demanding levels of service."
If it's different Butterfly, sorry for that, thanks for Karma.
you get what you pay&pay&pay.... for?
elmer fudd has more litigatory footing in this cesspool than ANY of those Godless deceptive greed/fear based stock markup felons. execrable is as close a synonym as is available, buy our reasearch.
Another application would be in natural language processors. They require huge databases and computing power to process them. A grid would be a perfect way to build such a system.
Mind you, these applications are equally commercially viable. You could charge say $1000 per game against the world champion chess program, or $100 for 30 minutes of conservation with the most intelligent bot ever, and so on.
...is it powerful enough to withstand a good ol' /.ing?
Butterfly is not a Sony product, it's a company name.
They developed a grid computing architecture, backed by IBM.
Sony is a customer in this case.
Take a look at this press release:
IBM and Butterfly unveil Linux-based computing grid for gaming
I'd rather be sailing...
... so I looked up some simple details.
"Grid is a type of parallel and distributed system that enables the sharing, selection, and aggregation of resources distributed across "multiple" administrative domains based on their (resources) availability, capability, performance, cost, and users' quality-of-service requirements."
So, this project would essentially create one of the above distributed systems using simple, low-cost console gaming systems.
I remember reading awhile ago that Iraq wanted Playstations in order to grid them together and create supercomputers from 99 dollar American gaming devices.
Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate. Ex-O'Reilly/MIT employee, now a full-time Google employee.
Hopefully the Lindows ordeal will make Microsoft less eager to challenge the use of "butterfly" in a domain name of a competitor. I do not know if Microsoft has a copyright on "butterfly" in regards to MSN, but they have spent a bit on advertising their "Friendly but Tough Butterfly" mascot for their internet service.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
Oracle has published a toolkit and several white papers about this technology. It is NOT just for games, and I've been watching this evolve along with their (Oracle's, not the globus project's)RAC technology as a cost efffective way to replace more our more expensive SUN hardware when we outgrow it. In particular, the idea of dispersing large ERP and data warehousing queries to perhaps several groups of inexpensive internal clusters (read: on our LAN) is very appealing, since you could in theory offset new hardware purchases by sharing time between systems. For those interested in perhaps theoretical distributed database applications (for the moment), Oracle has a site here:
m pu ting/content.html
http://otn.oracle.com/products/oracle9i/grid_co
Imagination is the silver lining of Intelligence.
Thanks for the link, but I know about it already. That was supposed to be funny, not interesting, but I guess I didn't phrase it well.
Flying is easy, just throw yourself at the ground and miss. -Douglas Adams
OK, mod me off-topic, but I'm genuinely interested in any news about GameCube online games coming out this year, about which I've heard ZERO. Any takers?
OK, to stay on-topic... IBM made the processor for the GameCube, and IBM makes the hardware and software behind Butterfly.net. So why isn't this demo coming out with GameCube games instead of PS2 games?
MORTAR COMBAT!
However no one I've spoken to has the slightest clue as to how they plan on using this Grid stuff. Does anyone know any details? All I see are people saying 'no bandwidth, latency', etc.... I still can't figure out what it's supposed to do. Which is maybe on purpose.
If you look at the chess pieces on the board, so to speak... MS with Xbox, MSN, flavours of XP with media/TV style abilities... then Sony, aligned with IBM for a new chip and a radical new network... not to mention the Cell sharing some tech with IBM's forthcoming Power derivatives for Apple...
Strange things are afoot at the Circle K...
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
The OGSA stuff is not necessarily about distributed computing, although the emphasis is certainly placed on this aspect in their docs.
:-)
The basic service a Grid infrastructure can provide to gamers is "peer groups": you can discover groups of people willing to share a game online, and join their group, and chat and play with them, without having to log on to a central server.
You could then imaging sharing add-ons and various other files with your peer group, again without using any central server.
The next step would of course be sharing the actual CPU time of all the devices, for example to keep your characters "alive" even when your console is switched off. And then you'll receive an SMS whenever he gets attacked
Imagine a beowulf cluster of ... uh ... nevermind.
grid computing is unfeasible over long distances. maybe they mean when you take your ps3 to your friends house and network them. otherwise this grid computing sounds like sony's little internet.
I know you are psychotic, but please make an effort.
I've seen a ton of questions asking what Grid computing is. The most common one being how does it differ from parallel/distributed computing?
First off, I highly suggest reading The anatomy of the Grid by Ian Foster et. al. It provides a pretty good overview into this whole Grid thing.
But for the lazy, here's a little bit. The Grid is more than parallel computing. Typically with parallel/distributed computing the problem or resources are static or both. Grid allows both of these to change. In a nutshell, Grid computing means not having to worry about where the compute resources are. Just start a calculation and it gets done. Just like how you don't worry where your power comes from, you just plug in.
The core of the Grid is virtual organizations. Under a VO, I could get together with a few friends and pool our resources. We could set up a registry and some factories (I'm speaking OGSA here, but whatever) and create some certificates. Then, we could submit jobs to the Grid and not have to worry about the resources that they're running on.
GSI provides some really nifty security features (based on X.509 I believe). Basically you provide a mapping that allows other authorized users to run commands on your computer. When you're on the Grid you create a proxy for your certificate that is passed to the process that you run on this other computer. Then if that computer needs more resources, it can create another proxy certificate and delegate to another server.
Also, Grid computing is more than just computing. There is data storage and instrumentation sharing also. You might want to check out PPDG, GriPhyN and TeraGrid for examples of these systems.
If you're interested in playing with the GRID, you can go download Globus Toolkit 3.0 Alpha or the Java CoG Kit which is a pure Java implementation of Globus 2.x (it's much easier to install than the regular Globus 2.2.x).
My Slashdot account is old enough to drink...
Here is where I pulled the data. You may search to cross verify it. I'm only going to pull the basics, the link has a great chart with complete breakdowns on PS2, GC, Xbox, and DC. Worth a look if you really want to know. You should probably ignore it if you want to continue to personally think that the big three don't have indisputable power differences..
PlayStation 2
CPU: 295 MHz
Video: 150 MHz
Polygon Count: 66 Million
RAM: 32 MB
GameCube
CPU: 485 MHz
Video: 202.5 MHz
Polygon Count: 6 - 12 Million
RAM: 43 MB
Xbox
CPU: 733 MHz
Video: 300 MHz
Polygon Count: 125 Million
RAM: 64 MB
Listed from weakest to most powerful. When presented with the facts, it's clear which machine is superior and which machine is using latent technology. The only quirk point is the poly count on GC, but it's still deserving of second fiddle due to the dominance over PS2 in the other categories.
That has nothing to do with how the power is used. Currently the Xbox has the most power, but the least utility. Granted DOA Beach Volleyball is impressive graphically, but nobody has really pushed the box to it's limits in a game. When that happens, the PS2 and GC will look like N64 in comparison.
Grimwell - old, cranky, mean, obsessive
You're right except for the really bad comparison.
;-) Even though, as you mention, it typically _looks_ better on the PC.
There IS no version of Vice City for PC, it's a PS2 ONLY game.
If you're looking for the proper comparison, it's GTA3 on PC vs GTA3 on PS2.
But, the playability factor is the major one as you mentioned. I thoroughly enjoy playing GTA3 on the console over the PC, it just feels better. (Besides the comfort factor of being able to lounge on the couch
No Comment.
Shamelessly stolen from www.gridcomputing.com...
What is a Grid?In June, I attended the Grid Computing Planet conference in San Jose, California and I was suprised to learn that people even call cluster as grid. I believe that it is a marketing hype. Here is my definition of the Grid, which is based on my presentation as part of the "Understanding the Grid" panel:
Grid is a type of parallel and distributed system that enables the sharing, selection, and aggregation of resources distributed across "multiple" administrative domains based on their (resources) availability, capability, performance, cost, and users' quality-of-service requirements.
If distributed resources happen to be managed by a single, global centralised scheduling system, then it is a cluster. In cluster, all nodes work cooperatively with common goal and objective as the resource allocation is performed by a centralised, global resource manager. In Grid, each node has its own resource manager and allocation policy. Some of these points are being highlighted in my panel presentation at P2P 2002 conference.
Note: "multiple" administrative domains can exist within a single organisation. For example, two clusters managed by their own resource managers within an university can form a grid.
If you ever drop your keys into a river of molten lava, let'em go, because, man, they're gone.
Oups, sorry for the misinterpretation, happens to me all the time...
I really think that what is missing when "chatting" online is the "voice intonation".
Maybe we should create a nomenclature for writing
things and expressing feelings at the same time.
Kind of like building/extending on the smillee concept.
I'd rather be sailing...
Uh, that's "commercially viable" in a sense only dot-commers would appreciate. There may be a few people who'd pay a grand to play against a fantastic computer "player," but you'd have lots better luck selling games against Kasparov. Would you rather pay $100 to converse with the most intelligent Eliza ever, or the movie star of your choice? Stephen Hawking?
Most people can already lose handily to $10, bargain-bin Chessmaster. They're already fooled by the original Eliza when someone uses it on chat boards. I doubt there's a market for high-end versions of those experiences.
(Plus, when the most intelligent bot ever answers you with "42," how'll you take it?)
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
I thought the MSN mascotte was a Moth?
Or the ultimate WAN party. Have the guys at G4 planned the first event yet?
Ruger
Also there is the following from
http://www.forbes.com/2002/12/18/cx_ld_1218sony
More clues can be found here:
http://net4tv.com/voice/story.cfm?storyid=3744
Also look at my own prediction number two in the following post:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=48171&cid=4
Finally, from the front page on
Perhaps something like on-demand interactive games/video/internet/email delivered over broadband and stored/run in your Sony media/dvd set top box and then played/displayed on any TV, PC, or laptop/tablet screen in your house either through wires or wirelessly?
Many of these devices (at least the ones from Sony) will be running an version of embedded Linux.
The grid part allows content to be stored and streamed from close to where it is being requested , reducing bandwidth bottlenecks and allowing content providers to place thier material on the grid (for a fee?) without having to invest in thier own streaming servers and internet pipes.
Perhaps the grid will then track viewership of a product and kick a percent back to the developers and advertisers.
Expect a huge uproar with tails of piracy and armagaden to come (you know congress will be involved) once the networks and greedywood see independent "internet radio" type video programing start to gain market share.
Every wrong attempt discarded is a step forward - T. Edison
Sort of off-topic but Nintendo is expected to announce games with online capabilities at E3... Nintendo could clean house with just one simple phrase:
- MarioKart Online -
And this IBM grid computing solution would be a great way to implement it.
'nuff said.
Nosce te Ipsum
I'm just taking a guess here. They brought the world EverCra^H^H^HQuest. It's hugely popular. Then they brought it to the Playstation 2. Sort of a proof of concept. Can we get regular home consumers to play EverQuest in their living room?. Now we have the head of the Playstation projects complaining that they're not going to have the technology to do what they want to do in the next generation of Playstation.
So they have to resort to grid computing. I'm not talking about parallel computing, where all these computers work together to accomplish tasks in a linear fashion cut up over different computers.
They've proved that online works with consoles (as have others, but anyways...). More and more people are getting broadband. Hard drives are a must to hold data, as a memory card is for game saves, not for world contents.
This leads me to my next idea. Everybody gets a PS3, and it supports grid computing. You put the game in, and you plug YOUR WORLD into the online grid. People can visit your world. Take a game like The Sims (god forbid -- I haven't played EverQuest so I'll use The Sims). Everyone has a different house, and the connections are transparent. There is no central repository where everybody meets. Instead of people meeting at one place, they all go their separate ways and meet up with disparate lands housed mostly on a single person's PS2. You plug into the grid, your world, your contributions, your skills, your "power" (as in electricity, as an analogy) is fed to the entire grid, and everyone can benefit from it.
No more arranging rendezvous points. You want to play with a friend, you go to his console online. Strangers walk by, and they aren't fed data from the server -- they're fed data from you. The server manages the protocols and game updates, but everyone who has the game contributes a piece of the puzzle. If one of your friends unplugs his machine from the grid, you lose a core piece of your game. No more lands stored on disc. They're all on the hard drive, and are created and grown by you to give to other people in an online experience.
Or I could be full of shit. I know I'm going to regret not posting AC...
While I'm sure that MMORPGs will benefit from this technology, I can't help but wonder if the real agenda at Sony is better game AI.
From what I know (and I'm not a programmer), good AI is a real sticking point in games right now, and the computations are suited to parallell/grid computing.
A console with across-the-board better AI and Sony's market share would be unstoppable.
Jon Acheson
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
Hmm, are they really going for OGSA? Wonder if they'll write their own implementation or build on the Globus toolkit like everybody else.
Problem is, Globus 2 is notoriously buggy, and Globus 3, which supports OGSA, is written in Java and is really slow.
Somehow I don't see millions of users on a platform like that.
When you are an american, everything looks American. Even Japonese game consoles.
The troll was just Karma whoring, they are always stating the obivous, making shit up, and like the last part seeing what they can get away with.
It also shows how stupid the mods are, people bitch and cry about the site runners making shit up or saying something wrong and those comments get +5. But it is ok when they do it and ok to mod up stuff like this.
All numbers and specs aside, the XBox looks better (to me, YMMV) and is smoother, followed closely by the 'Cube and the PS2 brings up the rear.
The ability to use custom soundtracks and never needing a memory card is a plus over both the Cube and the PS2. Also, the only real competitor in the graphics department (the Cube) doesn't play DVD's. You might need to buy a remote for it, but at you can use the money you saved by NOT having to buy a seperate braodband adapter.
The XBox live service is nice too. One fee, one login, all my games. The Sony and Nintendo plans will not be so simple or convenient, requiring a different fee for each game you want to play. I doubt I'll even bother getting online with those platforms.
I despise Microsoft's business practices, dislike the Windows OS more and more each day, and think BillG is a weenie in Geek's clothing; that doesn't seem to stop me from admitting that they got the XBox right.
Murphy was an optimist.
It's easy to make too much of this, given the part that Grid promises to play in PS3. Butterfly's technology advantage is primarily that smaller developers can share processor power among their servers. Hence, it's cheaper for them to get into. It won't make games run better than they do as optimized on conventional servers by major publishers.
Planned Obselescence... what an interesting concept.
Thanx, but no thanx. I'll stick to games that don't force me to keep buying new stuff. Like nethack, or StarCraft.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
I've read only a little on Grid computing (the draft of the spec mainly), and I was wondering how a number of insidious situations are handled.
From what I understand of the model of the grid service, requests recieved (be they for interfaces or references) may be handled locally by the service or forwarded to another service for handling.What happens if a ring of grid services forms in which requests are endlessly forwarded? I'll bet the dogma says that is an implementation problem, so I'll just say "ok", and move on.
The Grid specification purposely separates interfaces from implementations. That being the case, any Joe could concievably author their own implementation. If any Joe should be an evil Joe, what's to stop malicious Joe from purposely creating malfunctioning interface implementations? In such a situation, a distributed calculation could certainly go awry. In fact, they way I see it, malicious Joe has free license to introduce "bugs" into a distributed application. Before you say, "security and authentication layers, blah blah" remember malicious Joe can take a valid node implementation, and insert his own execute code any damn place he pleases.
Here's the main problem as I see it... by running a distributed application, you run the inherent risk that code is being run on a foreign system, and there is no practical way to guarantee that system is friendly. Outside of requiring a "web of trust" certificate scheme (specifically designed to exclude ALL untrusted nodes), I don't see how such a system could survive against malicious attack. To achieve some of the pipe dreams laid out in this thread of creating world-wide natural language processors and the like, you'd need a critical mass of *trusted* nodes. So, who can you trust?
If this thought is flawed, please flame it. I'm emotionally detached.
Think about the types of systems that a game has.
1) World, Avatar, and Prop Rendering - The grid is not helpful at ALL here. 0 of 10
2) Network communications - The grid could possiblely help with more secure P2P communications - Low score here. 1 of 10
3) AI - The one possilbe place where it could be helpful, but ONLY in limited cases. I would propose two types of AI.
A) Realtime - These are things that you are interacting with, due to possilbe lag and job scheduling delays, I dont see much opportunity here. - 1 of 10
B) Near Realtime - This would be a good fit. The character that no one is interacting with could do smart things, BUT who cares! You are not interacting with them! 3 of 10
4) P2P resource distribution - Another possible target, but no one does this now, and the possability of getting copyrighted materials on your machine will discourage most folks I think.
4 of 10
5) General Instruction Processing - WAY too Slow!
Total score as I see it for the usefulness of grid computing in games 10 of 50. DO NOT DEPLOY at this time!
The home of the 3D Socialization and Interaction Engine
>Typically with parallel/distributed computing the problem or resources are static or both.
Please prove that computing where neither problem or resource are static is not parallel/distributed.
How would you feel finding yourself stuck in a traffic jam on the "Swiss Alps" race track on the Gran Turismo???? Engine idling, you would just sit back and start switching over radio stations. Very lifelike.
I just think the playability suffers when a game developer spends so much effort on the technology.
Amen! (And yes, I've played GameCube games, and XBox games. I have a Playstation for Gran Turismo, which is excellent for what it does -- racing -- but even I'll admit it's not very innovative as games go.)
Anybody remember "Robot Odyssey"? Now that was a great game! I've never seen another game like it, yet everybody I know who's played it loves it.
I'll preface this with the statement that I don't know anymore concrete details of Sony's plan than the rest of you, but here's my insights, be they valuable or not:
"Grid" computing, at least in games, isn't so much of a distributed computing system, since the latency and bandwidth over the internet (or any network) wouldn't be sufficient to take care of any really critical game processing. As far as I can tell, it's more like a massive peer-to-peer multiplayer setup, as opposed to client-server: each ps2 takes some of the load of hosting the game, so that instead of being on the norrath4 server or whatever, you're on your ps2 plus the ones of those in your immediate area. You'd still need a significant overhead to run the entire system efficiently (a la napster's master servers) but the bulk of the workload would be taken on by the participants.
Picture the old Unreal links (a super-cool idea that wasn't really ready for primetime), or the server links in Neverwinter Nights, but a little more seamless.
Pretty smart way to run a MMORPG if you ask me.
---------
Get back to me when my brain starts working.
The Grid Bug hits! The Grid Bug hits! The Grid Bug hits!
--More--
You are frozen in the clutches of the DRM....
--More--
The Grid Bug Hits! The Gid Bug hits! The Grid Bug hits
--More--
you die...
--More--
You died on p2p Grid level 12 with 72 mp3s
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
The posts here are so full of shite its hard to believe they can use a computer enough to type.
.. how u think its got only 1 chip is beyond me or any normal perception of reality.
The xbox has a dedicated graphics chip and a dedicated cpu.. this makes at lest 2 chips (other than the hard disk controller the audio chip and the networking chip)
Cross platform games such as robotech battle cry all run fastest on the xbox. The gamecube isnt as good as the xbox which is why no gamecube game runs as fast as the xbox version.
The proofs in the games buddy.
PS2 has crap versions of cross platform games
Gamecube has few titles and dropping
XBOx has awesome exlusives and the best versions of cross platform games and the best PC games.
Counter strike, UPGRADE (not downgraded like ps2 version) of RTCW, Max payne (60 fps high textures and pixel fx compared to ps2 crummy 30 fps no pixel fx and low res textures)
Nether the gamecube or PS2 has anything like XBOX live.
There are about double the amount of ppl online on xbox live compared to the ps2. Any company wanting to sell their online game to "the biggest selling online console" would of course now chose xbox not ps2.
cya ps2
... Linux und seine Programme sind damit so etwas wie ein real existierender ...
Sozialismus der besseren Art
-- Christian Seel in der Berliner Morgenpost v. 9.3.1997
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