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IBM Testing New Grid Technology with Quake 2

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the advances-in-fragging-technology dept.

boschmorden writes "In conjunction with IBM, a group of college students from the University of Wisconsin developed GameGrid, a derivative of IBM's OptimalGrid effort. The students adapted the open-source version of id Software's Quake 2 first-person shooter, and attempted to scale it across the grid to stress the system." IBM is also planning on developing Quake 2 bots to take advantage of the system.

8 of 188 comments (clear)

  1. sounds like nascent skynet by lingqi · · Score: 2, Interesting

    bots that runs on distributed clusters, designed to take out humans in a simulated environment... hmmmm

    if we arm them (the programs) with paintball guns we can do simulated battles from the terminator universe.

    or until they get a hold of some real firepower and this becomes a real version of the terminator universe...

    Either way I for one look forward to a beowulf cluster of these steel and wire overlords, yeah?

    --

    My life in the land of the rising sun.

  2. not a completely new idea by jackb_guppy · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I know of large company that install quake servers 6 years ago to help balance 3 T3 lines. The quake servers (w/ players) gave a continous load that was easy to define and route, which helped in supporting a very large website.

    1. Re:not a completely new idea by tolan-b · · Score: 2, Interesting

      actually on win95 when you can't work out whether you have no connection or whether the install is screwed it's suprising how often quake would work when no other network software would..

  3. Re:The Rights of Software ? by Gherald · · Score: 2, Interesting

    > At what point do you have a responsibility to the code that you spawned

    Obviously a troll, but I'd say my criteria is "self awareness." That's all that is important.

    --
    The unofficial /. digest
  4. Acid test by Zog+The+Undeniable · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Line all the players up and have one of them fire a railgun through the remainder [1]. Allegedly someone tried this at a LAN with 64 players and the server crashed. The problem is that the server has to send 4,032 death messages instantaneously. With 250 players it would have to do 62,250.

    [1] for the uninitiated, a Quake 2 railgun slug keeps going through any number of targets until it hits a wall or other part of the scenery.

    --
    When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
    1. Re:Acid test by llamalicious · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Easier, you want to lag the thing?

      Setup a server and don't limit the number of projectiles used by the hyperblaster.

      Give every player an HB and unlimited ammo. Tell them to run around shooting those all over... that'll lag the grid.

      Of course, some of that is bandwidth driven... but, a good test nonetheless.

  5. Re:A Test? Riiiight. by sperling · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Chess software just requires massive processing. The whole point with this grid is to be able to do real-time simulations, and any decent game is exactly that.
    They got a point though, this is more suited for MMORPGs, I'd believe any modern MMORPG would use some sort of clustering solution. The response times they mention seem decent, but I can't help but wonder what they'll look like in a real scenario with a few thousand players and a limited hardware budget.

    We're doing something similar here at work, but I'd be fired in an instant if I spent 8 servers to sustain 80 users...

    --
    The next great MMORPG.
  6. 50 microseconds.. yeah! by MikeHunt69 · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Sounded good, until I got to this bit:

    When doing so, IBM's GameGrid software typically operated with latencies of 50 microseconds or less, according to Hammer.

    I hope thats a typo..