IBM Launching Gaming Grid
from the games-always-lead-the-way dept
For a while now there’s been a lot of talk about “grid computing” with IBM leading the way. So, now that they’re finally offering something, they’re starting with one area that tends to lead the way in technology innovation: gaming. That’s right, they’ve launched a video gaming grid system along with Butterfly.net. It can support millions of players, and they’re offering development kits to game publishers to create games that will run on the grid. Of course, based on the article, I’m not exactly sure how this “grid” differs from “a bunch of servers”. I had thought the big deal about grid computing was the ability to make use of spare cycles on all sorts of computers. This doesn’t seem like that. It appears to just be a bunch of servers, like any data center – except that they’re not all in the same room. What am I missing?
