IBM & Butterfly.net to Introduce Grid Tools for PS2 Online Games
Online game developers will soon have a new tool to play with, thanks to an agreement announced by IBM and Grid pionner - Butterfly.net which will be providing technology and networking resources to the PlayStation 2.
In essence, the new tools will allow game developers to ensure their games will always be available online and operate at peak performance by engineering their games directly on a live computing grid. Registered developers will receive a software development kit with sample games, client libraries, server software, documentation and technical support. Developers can access the Grid by registering at www.butterfly.net.
"We've enjoyed very rapid progress and outstanding performance while developing and testing VibeForce on the Butterfly Grid," said Curt Benefield, Chief Executive Officer of Sherman3D, a video game developer with offices in Malaysia and the United States. "The Grid has allowed us to build the bulk of our game logic, our motion models and our artificial intelligence systems with familiar tools and standard interfaces. Our engineers can get close to the metal on the client, the servers and over the network to bring the action-backed, richly-rewarding console experience online."
The Butterfly Grid takes advantage of the Open Grid Services Architecture (OGSA), an important new standard for high-performance, ultra-reliable computing. OGSA supports several of the most critical functions of successful online games: availability, security and performance. The Grid's OGSA-compliant software monitors the processing load on Linux-based IBM BladeCenters populated with 14 Blades, each with two Intel Xeon processors. When the Grid determines there are too many players connected to any particular server, the Grid automatically reconfigures underutilized Blades to support the most popular game-play and seamlessly transfers players to these Blades.
<b>The Butterfly Grid for PlayStation2 Online Gaming</b>
The Butterfly Grid is a new network gaming environment for Sony Computer Entertainment Inc.'s PlayStation 2 that enables online video game providers to reliably deliver state-of-the-art games to millions of concurrent users. Traditionally, online video games have segmented players onto separate servers, limiting the number that could interact and creating reliability and support obstacles. In the first generation of online games, when one server is down, overloaded, or patches are being installed, game-play comes to a halt. With Butterfly's breakthrough grid technology, the server interaction is completely transparent and seamless to the user - delivering a resilient gaming infrastructure where servers can be added, or replaced, without interrupting game-play.
Hosted by IBM and powered by IBM Dual Xeon Blade Servers running Linux, the Butterfly Grid is an example of an Enterprise Optimization Grid, one of the five Grid focus areas recently announced by IBM. IBM's WebSphere and DB2 software, along with Butterfly.net's game servers, gateways, networking software and artificial intelligence systems provide an integrated platform for online game development, deployment and ongoing operations. The Butterfly Grid's OGSA-compliant, XML-based Game Configuration Specification allows service providers to extend the Butterfly Grid out to the edge of the network, enabling dedicated gaming services and networks, voice communications and single sign-on across multiple titles for potentially lucrative new subscription revenue streams. The grid design is ultra-resilient, offering the potential to support over one million simultaneous players from each facility in a 24/7 environment with automatic fail over capability.
<b>Computing Grids</b>
An emerging model of computing, Grids are built with clusters of servers joined together over the Internet, using protocols provided by the Globus open source community and other open technologies, including Linux and Python. Like the World Wide Web enables people to share content over standard, open protocols, Grid protocols emerging from the Globus open source community are enabling organizations to create virtual organizations sharing applications, data and computing power over the Internet to collaborate, tackle large problems and lower the cost of computing.
Butterfly.net is working with the Global Grid Forum to ensure that any video game developed according to publicly available specifications and Internet open standards can draw resources-on-demand from the Butterfly Grid. The Globus Toolkit, available by download from www.globus.org, provides authorization and accounting functions, allocates hardware resources, configures game-specific logic and monitors performance on the Butterfly Grid.
IBM is the world's leading supplier of Grid systems and services and is working with the Globus open source community and others to extend Grid computing into commercial environments. IBM Global Services offers the complete range of IT skills needed to build, run and maintain Computing Grids.
<size="1">Source: Press Release</size>
