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."

Comments

Re:well...

[Da Fokka]

It's always easy to bash Microsoft on slashdot but I have to say that the X-box is a pretty decent product. Technologically it beats the crap out of the PS2 although the game line-up could be better. But it's improving.

XOL provides a lot of people with an easy way to play games without the annoyances of cheaters/abuse. I'm not a fan of Microsoft but they're doing pretty well with de X-Box.

The PS2 Linux dev-kit is pretty sweet though :)

I didn't know what a "grid" was

[Amsterdam Vallon]

... 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.

Re:I didn't know what a "grid" was

[lovebyte]

So, this project would essentially create one of the above distributed systems using simple, low-cost console gaming systems.
No. This project will create some clusters or grids so that game consoles can connect to them to play multi-user games. AFAIK, they do not intend to grid/cluster PS2's.

from 99 dollar American gaming devices.
When you are an american, everything looks American. Even Japonese game consoles.

This is cool stuff IMHO

[Chitlenz]

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:

http://otn.oracle.com/products/oracle9i/grid_com pu ting/content.html

Re:I'm excited

[jstott]

about the implications that this could have for other applications. As an example, consider IBM's Deep Blue chess playing program that defeated Kasparov in 1997. It used a massively parallel grid for evaluating positions using custom-built hardware costing millions. Now imagine if the same thing could be achieved over a grid on top of the internet. You have a world champion beating chessplayer right on your desktop!

What's the bandwidth of your network? What's the latency of your network?

What's the bandwidth of Deep Blue's internal bus? What's the latency of Deep Blue's internal bus?

That's why Deep Blue cost millions.

-JS

Re:About time...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ding... welcome to reality...

Sony has the PS2 online for MUCH longer than the X box.

PS2 online gaming is FREE for most games.. and is a per-month for only the subscription games.

Oh did I mention that I play the halo killer Tribes-2 Arial assult FREE online? as well as twisted metal black online for FREE and several other games for FREE online..

A major selling point against the X box is that the PS2 online gaming is for the most part FREE.

put that in your X box and smoke it.

I cant believe how the X box owners are completely oblivious.. I had one tell me yesterday that there were more games for the X box than the PS2. So I pulled up a list for both and asked this person again what did they mean.. they said "Oh I mean the PS1"... HAHAHAHAHAHA! NOTHING has more games than the PS1.. not even the Atari 2600.

Oh well... X box will still reside as the number 3 gaming console... with Sony at the top and nintendo in the middle.

Oh wait .... there's only 3 players in the console game?? sorry MS...

Re:What's so special about the grid?

[Anonymous Coward]

ARPANET was about creating a network that was resiliant to bad things.

No, it wasn't. This myth is till being purpetuated, even though it has been debunked by the original developers of ARAPNET themselves many times over.

ARPANET was designed to link together a whole bunch of very expensive, DoD funded computing centers. It turned out that packet switching was a really great way to do this efficiently. Now, while early packet switching research at RAND in the 50's was concerned with building a survivable communications network, it was irrelvent for as applied to ARPANET.

I recomend the book Where Wizards Stay Up Late for more information.

What is Grid Computing?

[pridkett]

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).

Console breakdown, reality crashes in...

[CTD]

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.

Re:Console breakdown, reality crashes in...

[deemah]

There's more to this debate than pure numbers. The PS2 and the GameCube have radically different architectures to the Xbox.

In fact, in your list, the only numbers that can actually be used as a measure of performance are those of the PC-like Xbox.

If I were to describe the PS2 as having three processors working in parallel, each with their own on board memory and two of them able to operate on vectors directly, you might start to see how it differs from a PC concept.

Similarly with vRAM. The PS2 has a 'measly' 4Mb of video ram but it also has the ability to stream textures in and out of it faster than a frame can be drawn. This gives you a much larger 'virtual' vRAM.

This is the difference...

[Manic Miner]

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.

To all the XBox naysayers!!!!!

[Fig, formerly A.C.]

I own all 3 systems, they are identically connected via S-video to a Trinitron TV. I own at least one game that spans all 3 platforms.

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.