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Intel Salivates Over Virtual World Processing Demands

Posted by Zonk on from the put-your-tongue-back-in-your-mouth dept.

CNet has up an article looking at the lucrative virtual world market for processor companies. An Intel developer forum held in San Francisco this week highlighted the opportunities for selling hardware to both consumers and vendors in the VW marketplace. "[Chief Technology Officer Justin Rattner] showed statistics that indicated a PC's processor bumps up to 20 percent utilization while browsing the Web, while its graphics processor doesn't even break above 1 percent. But running Second Life--even with today's coarse graphics--pushes those to 70 percent for the main processor and 35 to 70 percent for the graphics processor, he said. The Google Maps Web site and Google Earth software pose intermediate demands. Running a virtual worlds server is vastly more computationally challenging, though, when compared with 2D Web sites and even massively multiplayer online games such as Eve Online. An Eve Online server can handle 34,420 users at a time, but Second Life maxes a server out with just 160 users."

4 of 52 comments (clear)

  1. What really stiffens their niplples... by jollyreaper · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ...is the lack of optimization in the code. "Yes," says Br'er Intel. "Please throw more processors at the problem! Optimization is for pussies!"

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    1. Re:What really stiffens their niplples... by BlowHole666 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Well you do not know what type of background processing Eve is doing and what type of background procession Second Life is doing. If the server for Eve is just recording your position and health while Second Life is recording, position, heath, money, surroundings, friends online etc, one is doing more processing then the other. Optimization can only fix so much. While the problems get harder you have to increase the number of processors and speed. Just like you can not run Fedora 6 in a GUI on a computer with 64mb of ram and 800mhz. Maybe Fedora should optimize their code?

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    2. Re:What really stiffens their niplples... by Unoti · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Users can create objects, and put scripts into those objects. They routinely do this. All those scripts run concurrently. So while it might not really be 'necessary' to run those scripts, they make the world what it is. Say I have a dragon avatar. It might seem silly to have 80 scripts running on my avatar's body at a time, but those scripts let me move like a dragon, blow smoke rings out of my nose at regular intervals, and so on. The content is created by the users, so that reduces the kind of optimization that can be done. But it also opens up a tremendous world of possibility.

  2. Kohls spooges over real world clothing demands by Sciros · · Score: 3, Insightful

    from the put-your-cock-back-in-your-pants department

    The other day Kohls ... business peoples.. got together and talked about how people wear way more clothes when they go outside than when they stay at home. "This whole 'real world' is frigging nuts as far as how much clothing the average person needs to wear when being active in it." Turns out that performing simple tasks like scratching one's belly or sitting around doing jack squat requires no more than a pair of shorts. But demanding real world tasks like walking outside and buying groceries requires no less than 200% more clothing. "We are gonna make a killing with this new realization," said a Kohls business dude to a hobo on the street pretending to be a news correspondent.

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