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Warhawk server cluster  (Source: Blog.us.playstation)

Warhawk server cluster close-up  (Source: blog.us.playstation)
Warhawk server clusters spread around the world to ensure ranked server availability for gamers

Online games have fast become the preference of many gamers over tolling through a single player game alone. Now gamers can hop online and frag guys from across town or around the world from their PCs and game consoles.

One of the most anticipated games coming for the PS3 is Warhawk, which will support vast multiple player online matches. To reduce ping time and ensure that there are always enough servers for Warhawk, the game developers used a method called Integrated Game Server (IGS).

IGS allows each Warhawk player to run a server on their own PS3 rather than having to connect to Sony servers to play. This will be a great feature for clans looking for some private practice.

Those who prefer to play on ranked servers will be able to as well. Sony has set up Warhawk server clusters around the world. The server cluster pictured on the right has 90 PS3s running in a rack mount environment. That’s about $45,000 worth of PS3 hardware in s single Warhawk server cluster.

Playing on dedicated Warhawk servers provided by Sony will allow players to rank up and win unlocks similar to the way you rank up and unlock in Battlefield 2142. Players wanting to host a server on their own PS3 can have 32-player dedicated servers for things like practice or 24-player play servers for actual games.

It would be interesting to know whether the ranked server clusters contributed to the 135% PS3 sales growth since the price drop.

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bandwidth?
By omnicronx on 8/13/2007 3:38:24 PM , Rating: 2
Doesnt anyone have any idea how this works? if the server is client side would that not mean you would needs tons of bandwidth to run a >24 person server? let alone a small 16 player server? And why the hell did they choose to use ps3's as servers? unless theres a really good reason, it seems like the biggest waste of .5 million dollars to me.




RE: bandwidth?
By AnnihilatorX on 8/13/2007 3:46:11 PM , Rating: 3
I can answer your last question

Since it's a PS3 exclusive game, the game source code would be written and designed for PS3 from the ground up; hence any server codes are likely to be best to run by PS3s


RE: bandwidth?
By MonkeyPaw on 8/13/2007 5:37:45 PM , Rating: 3
That might make sense, except from what I gather, the game developer is making the server:

quote:
the game developers used a method called Integrated Game Server (IGS).


Unless they are completely inept, they shouldn't have any problems porting their networking code to a legitimate server, maybe even one running on Cell/BE. I'd have to think that a dedicated server would be far more efficient than a cluster of 90 PS3s--each running on its own power supply. I guess maintenance will be easier, if a PS3 breaks, just replace it. However, this seems more like a college dormitory solution than a legitimate online hosting service. Each PS3 is just providing a host machine, something any user should be able to do (for their clan) with their PS3 already.

Also, as criticized as MS's Live service is for costing users money, it may prove to be necessary. If a game developer is resorting to building their own PS3 server farm (which makes more money for Sony), then it certainly suggests that Sony's own free server network might not be good enough. Will other games see such dedication to the user's online experience? I dunno, I guess this seems more like a publicity stunt than a practical solution to a real problem.


RE: bandwidth?
By kamel5547 on 8/13/2007 6:10:24 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
If a game developer is resorting to building their own PS3 server farm (which makes more money for Sony),


Actually Sony will lose MORE money because of this... they are not selling the consoles at a profit.

All being said if the devloper knows what their doing (I assume they do as they developed a working game), then they shouldn't need to run on any specific platform. Code will execute as written, and it is easy to abstract the platform from anything.

Simplified but:
1. Send request to server, wait for acknowledgement
2. transmit data to port xxx
3. recieve data on port xxx

None of which is platform dependent. The code should be easy to port to a PC cluster running Linux and be done with... in todays age devlopers should think of multi-player during development, the only excuse I can think of is that Sony prevents them from using anything but a PS3 through it license agreement.


RE: bandwidth?
By Tsuwamono on 8/13/2007 6:53:38 PM , Rating: 2
i think by "which makes more money for sony" he means more money for sony to try and grab as it flys out of its ass at high velocity. as in they will lose more..


RE: bandwidth?
By walk2k on 8/13/2007 7:48:32 PM , Rating: 2
RE: bandwidth?
By mircea on 8/14/2007 1:36:06 AM , Rating: 3
Why don't you stop with the loosing money talk and think a little before you do. Sony already made the PS3's right?? Than it means that it already lost the $700+ or more it costs them to build a PS3. So selling each system means they are recovering some of the costs, not making profit, but recovering. The only way for them not to lose money is to stop making them not stop selling them.


RE: bandwidth?
By doctat on 8/13/2007 6:40:01 PM , Rating: 2
why would you bother to port your server to some other platform? the PS3 is obviously more than capable of pulling off the task, there's no $$ to port the code, and $499 a pop is pretty fricken cheap, even when compared with cheap ass 1U linux boxes.

sounds to me like this is the best all-around solution for this particular task.


RE: bandwidth?
By afkrotch on 8/14/2007 11:52:14 AM , Rating: 2
[quote]Unless they are completely inept, they shouldn't have any problems porting their networking code to a legitimate server, maybe even one running on Cell/BE. I'd have to think that a dedicated server would be far more efficient than a cluster of 90 PS3s--each running on its own power supply. I guess maintenance will be easier, if a PS3 breaks, just replace it. However, this seems more like a college dormitory solution than a legitimate online hosting service. Each PS3 is just providing a host machine, something any user should be able to do (for their clan) with their PS3 already.[/quote]

It's really all about ease and cost. A PS3 is cheaper and smaller than a server, while using less power. It's a big savings to build the cluster and to power it for the coming years. In the future, if they need to upgrade, they can simply add more PS3s to the cluster. They even have the possibility to move over to actual Cell servers, as everything is already coded for the machines.

If they already know how to code for the machine, then it's an extremely cheaper alternative to an actual server cluster.

[quote]Also, as criticized as MS's Live service is for costing users money, it may prove to be necessary. If a game developer is resorting to building their own PS3 server farm (which makes more money for Sony), then it certainly suggests that Sony's own free server network might not be good enough. Will other games see such dedication to the user's online experience? I dunno, I guess this seems more like a publicity stunt than a practical solution to a real problem. [/quote]

Playstation Network isn't a game server. Just like how Xbox Live isn't completely a game server. Take for example, EA. No EA game uses Xbox Live as their game server. They simply use it as an interface to their own game servers. Sometimes this is more cost efficient for the company. EA already has their own game servers and why not use them, instead of paying Microsoft a fat lump of cash to use theirs.

I'm sure Sony will setup game servers for your smaller companies. If it's one thing Sony has, it's plenty of servers. I mean, how many MMORPGs does Sony run? Many of them are losing members, which ends up freeing up a server to be used for other stuff. I think EQ (not 2) dropped to only using one server.


RE: bandwidth?
By Anosh on 8/13/2007 3:50:59 PM , Rating: 2
Pure speculation but...

the server software they use for ranked servers is the same as the one built-in the average ps3 hence they cannot run it on other platform.

If true, I guess they figured they would save a buck or two. Or they saw this solution as the easiest one.

Again, pure speculation.


RE: bandwidth?
By Anosh on 8/13/2007 3:55:34 PM , Rating: 2
Perhaps I should clarify a bit..

I'm in no way speaking of any software built-in the ps3, that was bad choice of words. I meant the server code on the DVD/Blue-ray game disk is the same one as on the ranked servers.


RE: bandwidth?
By omnicronx on 8/13/2007 4:03:12 PM , Rating: 2
i fully understand that probably the 'server code on the DVD/Blue-ray game disk is the same one as on the ranked servers. ' but theres no reason why this had to be done this way. I just dont see how running a bunch of ps3's in series is a better solution than a bunch of rackmount servers, wether or not they did not want to write different code or not, chances of this being a better system is kind of slim, seems like more of a workaround, and a way for sony to get rid of a bunch of ps3's.


RE: bandwidth?
By cochy on 8/13/2007 4:20:33 PM , Rating: 2
Whats the difference? The code runs on the Cell, the PS3 has the Cell whats the big deal if it's a cluster of PS3s or 1U servers?

I believe Yellowdog sells small PS3 clusters. We know the PS3 is a viable computing platform.

Plus since Sony makes these they should save some $.


RE: bandwidth?
By killerroach on 8/13/2007 3:51:23 PM , Rating: 5
Something tells me we just partly figured out how Sony cleared the 20GB PS3 out of American channels :)


RE: bandwidth?
By Thmstec on 8/13/2007 4:04:02 PM , Rating: 2
Those aren't 20giggers, those are the 60GB or 80GB ps3s. 20gb ps3s don't have the chrome accents. But that raises another question, why the bigger hard drive? Is it to store rank data? That doesn't make sense either though, either 20gb is enough room to hold rank data, or 60gb isn't enough and they have bigger than normal drives, like 160gb drives.

And whats up with the USB ports being taken up? The only thing I can thing is they might use the usb ports to power fans????


RE: bandwidth?
By isorfir on 8/13/2007 4:29:10 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
And whats up with the USB ports being taken up? The only thing I can thing is they might use the usb ports to power fans????


I would guess it's to control the PS3's with some sort of SIXAXIS KVM switch. They still need access to them and using the bluetooth wireless probably wasn't a good idea.

I wonder if they still utilize the motion sensors...


RE: bandwidth?
By daftrok on 8/13/2007 5:11:34 PM , Rating: 2
I'm sure they do because flying in Warhawk is done by moving the SIXAXIS controller.


RE: bandwidth?
By isorfir on 8/13/2007 5:19:28 PM , Rating: 2
Maybe I wasn't clear, but I was joking about controlling the PS3's as servers with motion.

Ya know, shake up and down to reboot?


RE: bandwidth?
By UMUJU on 8/13/2007 4:01:46 PM , Rating: 2
I would think that if the developers were able to write software to take advantage of all of the cells in the PS3's processor, it would be an excellent server. Especially since the games are all optimized to run on that system. My only concern would be the memory since a traditional PS3 only has 256MB of system RAM and 256MB of video Ram.


RE: bandwidth?
By AndreasM on 8/13/2007 4:17:11 PM , Rating: 3
Servers mostly just handle game logic, and things like physics simulation and graphics are done client-side. The cell is very poorly suited for that kind of code, and the GPU in this case would be just dead weight.

As the publisher is Sony, I think this is nothing more than a PR stunt. I would also guess that these are custom-made, without unnecessary components like a blu-ray drive. Even so, they will not be cost effective at all.


RE: bandwidth?