IBM stealing PS3′s heart for online gaming
With over 12 million active subscriptions worldwide, massive multiplayer online games (MMOGs) are increasingly becoming popular throughout the world; issues such as asymmetrical network bandwidth and CPU-hungry rendering engines leave implementing such a system a difficult task. IBM, while using the same processor located in the heart of the Playstation 3, has unveiled a solution to these problems by creating an environment that can seamlessly run such demanding applications.
IBM, in cooperation with with Hoplon Infotainment, will be integrating the PS3′s Cell Broadband Engine™ with its mainframe strictly for the purpose of creating a hybrid mainframe that will be aimed at the next generation of “virtual world” applications.
The Cell Broadband Engine™, jointly developed by IBM, Sony Corporation, Sony Computer Entertainment, and Toshiba in 2000, offers performance for computer entertainment and handhelds, virtual reality, wireless downloads, real-time video chat, interactive TV shows and other “image-hungry” computing environments.
While creating an environment that can seamlessly run demanding simulations, The hybrid will be extremely fast and powerful, and will capitalize on the IBM mainframe’s ability to speed up work via “specialty processors.”
The IBM mainframe is unique, in that it was initially designed to handle such ‘specialty processors.’; it is will this, that will allow the system to seamlessly integrate with the Cell Broadband Engine™.
The Brazilian online gaming company, Hoplon Infotainment, will initially test the capabilities of the new architecture, which allows ultra-fast communications between many online users simultaneously sharing a single online world.
The Cell Broadband Engine™ will handle the complex physics simulations, such as gravity; while the mainframe, combined with Hoplon’s industry-specific middleware, bitVerse, for virtual worlds, will run administrative tasks for software and user connectivity through PCs, gaming consoles, cell phones, music players, and TVs.
“As online environments increasingly incorporate aspects of virtual reality — including 3D graphics and lifelike, real-time interaction among many simultaneous users — companies of all types will need a computing platform that can handle a broad spectrum of demanding performance and security requirements,” said Jim Stallings, general manager, IBM System z. “To serve this market, the Cell/B.E. processor is the perfect complement to the mainframe, the only server designed to handle millions of simultaneous users.”
IBM’s mainframe notably achieved the highest level of security (Level 5) among the Common Criteria’s Evaluation Assurance Level (EAL) and recently achieved the world’s largest core banking benchmark by delivering a record 9,445 business transactions per second.
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