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IBM helps launch massive gaming grid
Thursday, May 09 2002
by Andrew McLindon


Computer giant IBM has co-created a global network that it claims is capable of
supporting more than one million on-line game players at a time.  



IBM said on Thursday that along with US-based development studio, Butterfly.net,
it had developed the "Butterfly Grid," which will be rented to major video
game publishers and allow their customers to engage in games over the Internet
with potentially millions of other players. 

 



Currently, the leading multiplayer on-line games can support hundreds of
thousands of users, but are usually unable to support millions of simultaneous
players. However, IBM and Butterfly.net said that its system would make this
possible as long as the games were built correctly. 

 



Another problem with mass on-line gaming is that it is susceptible to
interruption if a server goes down or patches are being installed. Again, the two
companies claimed that such difficulties would be a thing of the past thanks to
their platform. 

 



The "Butterfly Grid" is the first major commercial application by IBM of its
concept of grid computing, which, according to the company, sees distant
computers being linked by open-source software to create computer networks
capable of handling millions of users. Under the arrangement, Butterfly will
provide the software, while IBM will provide the operating hardware.

 



Butterfly's software for Massively-Multiplayer Games (MMGs), Lightening BugT,
allows MMG worlds to increase in size and scale. It does this, said Butterfly, by
allocating communications and computing resources to the most populated areas and
most popular games. 

 

According to Butterfly, the problem with previous MMGs is that they segmented
players onto separate servers, which limited the number of players and also led
to games coming to a halt if one of the servers went down. Under Butterfly's
system, rack-mounted servers running on a Linux platform allow the system's
servers to work together and to be replaced or added to without game play being
interrupted. 

 



IBM and Butterfly said that the platform, which has been in development for the
last two years, will also reduce the costs of developing games for the Web. Game
publishers will have to pay Butterfly a percentage of the fee they collect from
on-line gaming if they sign up to the system. 



 

IBM has high hopes for grid computing and on Wednesday its vice- president of
technology and strategy, Irving Wladawsky-Berger, said that over time it will
make e-business as accessible as flipping a switch. 



"The Internet is now on the verge of becoming a global virtual computer with
resources available almost on demand," Wladawsky-Berger said. "It's happening
through the growing adoption of open Web services and grid protocols that allow
processing power, storage, data and applications to be shared even though they
may be a world away from the user."