 | This article'stone or style may not reflect theencyclopedic tone used on Wikipedia. See Wikipedia'sguide to writing better articles for suggestions.(November 2018) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
AGameframe is ahybrid computer system that was first used in theonlinevideo game industry. It is a combination of the technologies and architectures forsupercomputers andmainframes, namely high computing power and high throughput.
In 2007, Hoplon andIBM jointly started the gameframe project, in which they used anIBM System z mainframe computer with attachedCell/B.E. blades (the eight-core parallel-processing chips that powerSony'sPlayStation 3) to host[1] their online gameTaikodom.The project was carried further by a co-operation betweenIBM and theUniversity of California, San Diego in 2009.[2]
System z provides a high level of security and massive workload handling, ensuring the execution of its administrative tasks and guaranteeing an enduring connectivity to a huge number of clients.[3] Cell/B.E. takes over the most resource demanding calculations thus enablingSystem z to fulfill its job.
The combination is both an effective and financially attractive game server system, as the most computation-intensive tasks are offloaded from the expensive CPU cycles of System z and carried out on the more economical Cell blades. Without offloading, the server system required would not be financially feasible.[4]
The gameframe can handle the required transactions (e.g., keeping track of each user's spaceships, weapons, and virtual money even between the players) and the simulation (trajectory of objects and checking for collisions) in a unified and consistent fashion.Thus, it can host a few thousand users at a time, and higher efficiency is experienced when more users are added.
Games with numerous players likeWorld of Warcraft, have tackled this problem by splitting the work among multipleclusters, creating duplicate worlds that don't communicate.[5]
The Cell-augmentedmainframe runs Hoplon's virtual-worldmiddleware, calledbitVerse, which uses IBM'sWebSphere XD andDB2 software.[6]
Around the gameframe, theIBM Virtual Universe Community has evolved.