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IBM Testing New Grid Technology with Quake 2 188
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.
Can you? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Can you? (Score:3, Funny)
quick someone think of something new and witty.
S
Re:Can you? (Score:2, Funny)
In SOVIET RUSSIA Natillie Portman grits you!
No?
Re:Can you? (Score:1)
In SOVIET RUSSIA Natalie Portman GRInDS you.
Re:Can you? (Score:3, Funny)
you're new round here, aren't you?
Bugger, that's no good either!
Re:Can you? (Score:2, Funny)
The funniest thing is that this reply is also one of the oldest way to get an instant +5 funny moderation.
Really not new and witty! O the irony hehe
Re:Can you? (Score:2)
Worst chaingun evar
tits, thats out of date as well..
S
Re:Can you? (Score:2, Funny)
No? Damn...
Re:Can you? (Score:3, Funny)
"I'm going to have to put you on the GameGrid."
I.V.
got it! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Can you? (Score:2)
IBM wants stress testing ? (Score:5, Funny)
I'd have hosted Slashdot instead. Or updates.microsoft.com.
Re:IBM wants stress testing ? (Score:3, Funny)
I find your assumption that people update windows machines amusing.
Oh, wait. People don't. Viruses do it nowadays :)
Re:IBM wants stress testing ? (Score:2, Offtopic)
OK, I know, I am a looser.
Re:IBM wants stress testing ? (Score:3, Insightful)
S
Re:IBM wants stress testing ? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll have some of whatever you are having.
Well, (Score:2, Insightful)
in terms of actual pages served up? obviously slashdot serves more pages than it's membership goes off site to read
in terms of bytes? slashdot is rather low bandwidth-
99 %text NO photograph complex jpgs.. no avi's or mpegs..
it's quite possible that /. server does not have requirements nearly as intense as some sites that /. manages to swamp
Re:IBM wants stress testing ? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:IBM wants stress testing ? (Score:2)
Re:IBM wants stress testing ? (Score:2)
The Rights of Software ? (Score:1, Interesting)
As Dr. Chandra said in 2010, we're all life forms, whether silicon or carbon based it makes no difference.
Re:The Rights of Software ? (Score:3, Interesting)
Obviously a troll, but I'd say my criteria is "self awareness." That's all that is important.
Re:The Rights of Software ? (Score:2)
Re:The Rights of Software ? (Score:2)
Re:The Rights of Software ? (Score:2)
except (Score:2)
Re:The Rights of Software ? (Score:2)
Re:The Rights of Software ? (Score:4, Funny)
Easy - when it starts complaining. That's the most reliable Turing test there is.
On a related note, I would suggest you watch a little less scifi, and maybe take a programming class or something.
All bots are now (Score:5, Funny)
Re:All bots are now (Score:3, Funny)
And SCO is a puny little cockroach who tried to take them down.
I knew it! I knew it! (Score:2)
sounds like nascent skynet (Score:3, Interesting)
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?
Re:sounds like nascent skynet (Score:3, Funny)
As a trusted Slashdot-personality I can help them with rounding up others to toil in their CPU-fabs.
Yes but (Score:5, Funny)
How many fps were they getting ?
Re:Yes but (Score:2, Insightful)
FPS are overrated. I once saw a person claiming he could tell the difference between 500 and 1000 FPS on a 100Hz monitor, yeah right. More FPS than your monitor can display is simply waste. When you can render enough FPS, the only improvement left to make is better timing. That requires help from the gfx hardware, nothing difficult though, the Amiga could do it 15-20 years ago or something like that.
Re:Yes but (Score:3, Insightful)
Right, because we will never want better image quality than Quake 2.
Timing? Yeah, it's called vertical synchronization and double or triple buffering, and every graphics card in existence has it.
Re:Yes but (Score:2)
not a completely new idea (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:not a completely new idea (Score:5, Funny)
Ahh, the memories... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:not a completely new idea (Score:2, Interesting)
80 Users (Score:1)
Re:80 Users (Score:3, Funny)
Re:80 Users (Score:2)
1) The cluster committing suicide hoping that the next level of existence doesn't have 1337 |-|4>0rZ
or
2) Realize it is better for us, and well you know, go skynet on our weak flesh hides.
Re: 80 User Limit!! (Score:1)
The problem with Q2 for a stress test is that it has hard coded limits for players and entities. Changing these values means the entire protocol has to be redesigned... So, in effect, you can't get more than 80 bots without a lot of work!
Maybe they should have chosen an Open Source MMOG engine like NeL?
Re: 80 User Limit!! (Score:1)
Old news.... (Score:5, Funny)
Acid test (Score:5, Interesting)
[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.
Re:Acid test (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Re:Acid test (Score:1, Interesting)
We also managed to run a deathmatch with 123 people in it... had to write a quick and dirty mod to reduce gibs and a few other details but the server still crashed eventually.
Would be much easier with today's beefier hardware.
Re:Acid test (Score:3, Insightful)
Server: 4032 x 44 = 177408 = 173.25k that has to be sent out in a timely manner ("instantaneously" is a bit misleading). That's a lot to have to transmit quickly, but any server running on a decent pipeline should be able to manage it in 5 seconds or so.
Clients: 63 x 44 = 2772 = 2.7k. Even 56k
Re:Acid test (Score:2)
Quake 2 uses UDP packets, not TCP, so there is no assured delivery - perhaps it's a state issue.
What it probably does is overload the outbound buffer on the server though, most events don't come all at once.
Re:Acid test (Score:2, Insightful)
Personally, I'd be more concerned with the 63 loads of gibbed players the remaining one has to draw on screen at once, but there you go.
Re:headhunter? (Score:2)
Re:Acid test (Score:2, Informative)
Each players death has to be reported to each player. So each player will receive 63 death messages (presumably one for each of the other 62 dead players, and one for themself, except the shooter who gets 63 death messages). 63 x 64 = 4032.
Re:Acid test (Score:3, Funny)
"Col. Mustard got bored with life, with the candlestick, in the ballroom..."
Re:Acid test (Score:2)
Quad damage + AIX (Score:1)
50 microseconds.. yeah! (Score:2, Interesting)
When doing so, IBM's GameGrid software typically operated with latencies of 50 microseconds or less, according to Hammer.
I hope thats a typo..
Re:50 microseconds.. yeah! (Score:2, Informative)
Re:50 microseconds.. yeah! (Score:3, Informative)
I hope thats a typo..
Why? A microsecond is a millionth of a second [essex1.com], fifty should't be that long
Re:50 microseconds.. yeah! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:50 microseconds.. yeah! (Score:3, Informative)
John Bethencourt (one of the developers of GameGrid)
Re:50 microseconds.. yeah! (Score:2)
Also, how are the bots handles? If they move to another sector, is the AI handed off to that server too? Or is that what's being re-written in the bot code?
Now for suitable visuals... (Score:1)
Re:Now for suitable visuals... (Score:2)
UDP/TCP (Score:5, Informative)
Data-critical processes - that's most real-world applications - have to use TCP to ensure completeness of transmission, so maybe this isn't the best test for the grid?
Re:UDP/TCP + SCTP (Score:1)
Interesting and shameless plug:
SCTP is another transport protocol that is in the works. It allows for multiple streams of data between multihomed computers. The streams may be in order or out of order which allows for related data to be transported reliably without head of line blocking. If a strictly ordered stream is necessary, that may be bundled in with the out of order streams.
Quite a nifty protocol. Quite beast to try and write [sourceforge.net] ;-). It might make the grid more easily usable in many situations
server/server vs. client/server (Score:2)
I would not be surprised if most clustering technologies use UDP with something above it to handle the possibilities of loss, since they rely so much on low-latency communications.
Re:server/server vs. client/server (Score:2, Informative)
Re:UDP/TCP (Score:2)
The article mentioned that IBM was looking into multi-media applicaitons. UDP is just fine for this. With VoIP or other streaming-type apps, you don't really want a completely loss-less protocol. UDP, without the error detection/correction overhead of TCP is fast, but lossy.
Using TCP would create skips and delays while the packets were re-transmitted. In a real-time app, you want (subjective) game time to keep on going, even if you drop a few packets.
The same priciple goes for videoconferencing and
MMORPG - Mass Murdering Online RPG?!? (Score:1, Interesting)
Now, forget Quake2 and imagine this system running Battlefield 1942!! I already can see the Omaha Beach Battle with 500 players online, that's would be awesome!
Slasdot them (Score:4, Insightful)
Mmmm, deep bot (Score:2, Funny)
Come on. If they are even going to do it as a sort of pet project IBM seems to have an abudance of geeks doing oddbal stuff for this to become one lethal bot.
In other related news IBM invested 2 billion dollars in cybernetic research.
In yet other future news McBride is kinda puzzeled why his house seems to be surrounded by skiny blue robots.
Re:Mmmm, deep bot (Score:2)
By the company that brought you Deep Blue and Deep Bot, SCO has been chosen to beta test Deep Shit.
Re:Mmmm, deep bot (Score:2)
Having trouble generating a load? (Score:2, Insightful)
If that really was a problem they should've just hooked it up to the internet and put an invitation up on some game sites. Surely IBM can foot the bandwidth bill that would result from it.
Lame Matrix Reference (Score:3, Funny)
Dont't they mean "agents".
"The Internet is a fad" -WB
Being done by interns... (Score:2)
Re:Being done by interns... (Score:2)
Also, not all the projects are as exciting as Game Grid. For example, I was working a few cubicles down from the Game Grid guys on a project for automatically generating high level U
In related news... (Score:2, Funny)
http://www.vertigosoftware.com/Quake2.htm
or
Great technology for implementing The Matrix (Score:2)
Yay! IBM has started the Matrix project (Score:2)
Certainly it would become boring killing people ad-infinitum, so I imagine it's just a matter of time before someone plugs in non-death oriented action into the Doom engines (and their kin). I myself would like to see a Half-Live/StockExchange!
More Details (Score:5, Informative)
Extreme Blue is a program where IBM hires three CS college students and one MBA student to work on exciting new technologies. The official party line is that Extreme Blue is IBM's incubator for talent, technology, and business innovation.
Lots of cool things come out of Extreme Blue. They ran an IBM-wide test of this Quake2 grid thing. It was pretty cool...
Shared-world development? (Score:4, Insightful)
Anyway, would it be feasible to run such a thing using a grid? Currently, the size of such a shared world is limited by the power of the server on which it is hosted. Alphaworld, [activeworlds.com] the largest world in the Active Worlds universe, is only about the size of California. But if you were using a grid, you could then theoretically expand the world by adding more nodes to handle more real estate. (Or virtual estate, rather.)
If you could find a situation with low enough latency, individuals could even provide their own nodes, adding new territory to the fringes of an existing world. Neaaaat.
Re:Shared-world development? (Score:2)
At least that's the way that Matt and John (the two main developer
Play is Slow (Score:3, Informative)
Anyway, this is the feedback he gave me after he tried it. I didn't have time to try it myself during the short play-testing phase they had.
Re:A Test? Riiiight. (Score:5, Interesting)
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...
Re:A Test? Riiiight. (Score:1)
Nothing stresses a system like a CPU and memory intensive simulation that grinds out gigabytes of data every second. How about some serious physics like evaluating quantum wave-functions of complex systems using path integrals or the configuration interaction formalism.
Re:A Test? Riiiight. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:A Test? Riiiight. (Score:1)
Re:A Test? Riiiight. (Score:2, Insightful)
This wouldn't test the system - the whole point, and unfortunately this was buried near the bottom of the article, is that the grid could repartition the map to ensure that no one node got swamped. The grid also has to move date between the nodes so that the game state was consistent between nodes - something that a chess analysis problem wouldn't need to do.
It might well be the case that this is a solution waiting for a problem.
Re:Don't understand (Score:1)
It's about game servers, not clients. Apparently a normal Quake server can only cope with a small number of simultaneous players.
Can those people that modded me up as insightful please mod me down again?
Re:Don't understand (Score:1)
Re:Don't understand (Score:2)
Re:Don't understand (Score:2)
Re:ARRRGGHH M$ is here (Score:1)
S
Re:Why Quake2? (Score:2)
Probably because it was easier to get Q2 to have 80 simultaneous players than Q1
Re:Why Quake2? (Score:2)
I can't remember the exact number of people on the server... but at the time it was done, the hardware couldn't handle it, and things ran to a crawl! Clients couldn't take all of the models on the screen at one time. The server couldn't handle the bandwidth requirements.
After that little experiment, people starte
Re:U.Winsconsin Url for the project? (Score:2)
If you want to know more about the grid technology they used, Optimal Grid [ibm.com], you can get it at alphaWorks [ibm.com].