Another application for grid computing.
Belinda =============================================================== Sony Is Venturing Into Online Games for Multitudes February 27, 2003 By STEVE LOHR Grid computing, a concept that originated in supercomputing centers, is taking a step toward the mainstream: Sony will announce today that it will use the technology to accelerate its push into the emerging market for online games with thousands of players at a time. Sony is teaming up with I.B.M. and Butterfly.net Inc., a software start-up that will build the grid for players who use Sony's PlayStation 2 video game consoles. The companies plan to demonstrate the technology next week at the annual Game Developers Conference in San Jose, Calif. The move is an endorsement of grid technology, which links many computers over the Internet to make greater computing power reliably available to individuals. In the last few years, scientists have used grid technology in fields that often require immense amounts of computing, like particle physics and genome research. Some companies have begun experimenting with grid computing for tasks like designing new drugs. The collaboration of Sony, I.B.M. and Butterfly.net promises to pull this rarefied technology firmly into a consumer market. "This is a formal validation that grid is ready," said Scott Penberthy, an I.B.M. vice president. "Grid has arrived." Games with great numbers of players present daunting computing challenges. The market is just beginning to emerge, and the game environments are frequently bedeviled by technical glitches - sluggish graphics and long delays for users who want to play. For online game enthusiasts, grid technology could deliver the ideal of letting thousands of simultaneous users enjoy fast, realistic graphics, and letting them play either alone or with friends in teams without having to wait. Sony and its technology partners regard their approach to these games as a distinctly different path from that adopted by Microsoft, the company that Sony and I.B.M. regard as their principal rival. Developers working on new multiplayer games for PlayStation 2 can use a layer of software that was created by Butterfly.net and is based on an open-source software standard called Open Grid Services Architecture. That software layer, the Butterfly Grid for PlayStation 2, runs on I.B.M. server computers running Linux, an operating system that is the best-known example of open-source software, which means that code is distributed free and is steadily improved by a community of programmers. Microsoft has identified Linux as a threat to its flagship product, the Windows operating system. Microsoft has begun offering online technology for its Xbox video game console, called Xbox Live. Like Sony, Microsoft is trying to woo developers to write ambitious games for many players using its technology - from programming tools to computers running Microsoft software - as the engine room for such Xbox games. "Microsoft is taking a very different path: it's their technology all the way down," said David Levine, chief executive of Butterfly.net, which is based in Martinsburg, W. Va., and Los Angeles. The leading multiplayer games, like Everquest, have initially grown up on personal computer technology. But that is beginning to change as video game consoles become increasingly powerful computers in their own right and their numbers rise rapidly. Everquest, for example, has just introduced a version for PlayStation 2. Beginning last summer, a number of multiplayer versions of popular PlayStation 2 games have been introduced, including Socom: U.S. Navy Seals, Madden Football and Game Day 2003. Yet so far, most of these have been what are called session-based games, accommodating only up to a dozen players in teams, with the size of the teams limited by space on a server. Grid technology allows many clusters of computers to be linked together as if they were a single machine, making it easier for players to roam widely within a game's virtual environment. The other thing Sony and its technology partners hope to do with the grid model is reduce the costs for developers to make and support multiplayer games for PlayStation 2, the leading game console. Such games have been costly, bespoke projects. The game developer or publisher has had to set up and support expensive computer server and host systems for each game. The grid model presented by Butterfly.net and I.B.M. could sharply reduce costs, according to some developers. For a fee, those two companies - or others - can supply the platform software and computing engine-room services, freeing up game developers to work on new features. "This will standardize the industry and put everyone on a more equal footing," said Curt Benefield, chief executive of Sherman 3D, maker of a multiplayer science fiction game called VibeForce. For Sony, the collaboration with I.B.M. and Butterfly.net is a way to try to encourage developers to design such games for PlayStation 2 - a market that has just begun to emerge, the company says, but is expected to grow rapidly over the next few years. "This is building a foundation for developers to work on," said Monica Wik, a spokeswoman for Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/27/technology/27GRID.html?ex=1047356201&ei=1& en=86957451d6693ce9 HOW TO ADVERTISE --------------------------------- For information on advertising in e-mail newsletters or other creative advertising opportunities with The New York Times on the Web, please contact [hidden email] or visit our online media kit at http://www.nytimes.com/adinfo For general information about NYTimes.com, write to [hidden email]. Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company |
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