A gameframe is a hybrid computer system that was first used in the

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video game industry The video game industry encompasses the development, marketing, and monetization of video games. The industry encompasses dozens of job disciplines and thousands of jobs worldwide. The video game industry has grown from niches to mainstream. , ...

. It is an amalgamation of the different technologies and architectures for

supercomputer A supercomputer is a computer with a high level of performance as compared to a general-purpose computer. The performance of a supercomputer is commonly measured in floating-point operations per second ( FLOPS) instead of million instructions ...

s and mainframes, namely high computing power and high throughput.

History

In 2007, Hoplon and IBM jointly started the gameframe project in which they used an IBM System z mainframe computer with attached Cell/B.E. blades (the eight-core parallel-processing chips that power

Sony , commonly stylized as SONY, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. As a major technology company, it operates as one of the world's largest manufacturers of consumer and professional ...

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) to host their online game '' Taikodom''. The project was carried further by a co-operation between IBM and the

University of California, San Diego The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego or colloquially, UCSD) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in San Diego, California. Established in 1960 near the pre-existing Scripps Insti ...

in 2009. Although the Cell blades account for the required computing power, it's the high data throughput of the mainframe which is of particular interest. System z provides a high level of security and massive workload handling, assuring the execution of its administrative tasks and guaranteeing an enduring connectivity to a huge number of clients. Cell/B.E. takes over the most resource demanding calculations thus enabling the System z to fulfill its job. The combination is both an effective and financially attractive game server system, as the most computation-intensive tasks are offloaded from the expensive CPU cycles of System z and are carried out on the much more economical Cell blades. Without offloading, the server system required would end up costing too much and would not be financially feasible. The gameframe can handle the required transactions (e.g. keeping track of each user's spaceships, weapons, and virtual money even between the players) and the simulation (trajectory of objects and checking for collisions) in a unified and consistent fashion. Thus, it can host a few thousand users at a time and higher efficiency is experienced when more users are added. Games with numerous players like ''

World of Warcraft ''World of Warcraft'' (''WoW'') is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) released in 2004 by Blizzard Entertainment. Set in the ''Warcraft'' fantasy universe, ''World of Warcraft'' takes place within the world of Azeroth ...

'' have tackled this problem by splitting the work among multiple clusters, creating duplicate worlds that don't communicate. The Cell-augmented

mainframe A mainframe computer, informally called a mainframe or big iron, is a computer used primarily by large organizations for critical applications like bulk data processing for tasks such as censuses, industry and consumer statistics, enterprise ...

runs Hoplon's virtual-world

middleware Middleware is a type of computer software that provides services to software applications beyond those available from the operating system. It can be described as "software glue". Middleware makes it easier for software developers to implement co ...

, called ''bitVerse'', which uses IBM's WebSphere XD and DB2 software.IBM to wed game chip with mainframes
Apr 25, 2007 at ''news.cnet.com'' Around the gameframe, the

IBM Virtual Universe Community The Virtual Universe Community or VUC is the internal IBM interest group for Virtual Worlds.https://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/marketwire/0293959.htm Every IBMer that is present within any Virtual World or Virtual Universe must compl ...

has evolved.

References

External links

"To Probe Further: The Gameframe Guild"
Aug 2008 at ''ieee.org''
"Mainframes on the Cutting Edge of Technology: Hoplon Infotainment’s Gameframe"
Sept 11, 2008 at ''mainframezone.com''

Apr 26, 2007 at ''nytimes.com''

Videos

Hoplon Infotainment, Brazil startup and maker of Taikodom online video game
27 Apr 2009 at

YouTube YouTube is a global online video platform, online video sharing and social media, social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by ...

Brazil Trip -- Hoplon Infotainment
20 Sept 2007 at

Mainframes in Brazil
20 Sept 2007 at

{{Cell microprocessor segments Cell BE architecture IBM mainframe computers Massively multiplayer online role-playing games Server hardware Computing terminology Classes of computers