Honours Project Presentation
12
Hazel McKendrick Supervised by Henry Fortuna Distributing Virtual Worlds “How can the processing of autonomous characters in a real-time virtual environment benefit from parallelisation over multiple distributed computer systems?”
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Transcript of Honours Project Presentation
Hazel McKendrickSupervised by Henry Fortuna
Distributing Virtual Worlds
“How can the processing of autonomous characters in a real-time virtual environment benefit from parallelisation over multiple distributed computer systems?”
Project Overview. Processing virtual worlds Single server unsuitable Flexibility, scalability, redundancy
Distributed computing
Project Aim. Create a distributed system Divide a virtual world Update characters in it
Consider:• Processing power• Scalability, power and money saving• Flexibility
Simulation Design. World Maps Characters (thousands)
• A* Pathfinding
System Structure. Server & Worker Node architecture TCP-IP Message Passing
Node thread pool
World Division. Top-down vs Bottom-up
Microcells Smallest unit of world Nodes process several Distributed statically or
dynamically Contain and pass work
Distribution. Optimal assignment
• Can be solved with ILP - Complexity too high Two static approaches used Dynamic algorithm created
Distribution Results. Amdahl's Law 95% to 99% parallelised
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 110.000
50.000
100.000
150.000
200.000
250.000
300.000
350.000
400.000
450.000
Processing times with varying numbers of nodes
ServerNode 1Node 2Node 3Node 4Node 5Node 6Node 7Node 8Node 9
Number of computers
Proc
essi
ng ti
me
(ms)
0 1 2 3 4 5 60
0.5
1
1.5
2
2.5
3
3.5
4
Average deviation in processing times, over time
Time elapsed (minutes)
Aver
age
devi
atio
n(m
s)
Scaling Hardware. Virtual world load varies greatly Gustafson's Law Scale Hardware Improvedistribution!
(Simulated)
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 1400
500
1000
1500
2000
2500
3000
3500
4000
4500
5000
0
1
2
3
Minimising HardwareEntities Nodes on
Time (s)
Entit
ies
Nod
es
Evaluation. Scaling nodes Dynamic distribution algorithm
• Over time Microcells Reducing hardware
Conclusion. Reduce processing times Balance load Lower power and cooling costs
Further work• Redundancy• Inter-node communications• Scaling factors
Hazel McKendrickSupervised by Henry Fortuna
Distributing Virtual Worlds
“How can the processing of autonomous characters in a real-time virtual environment benefit from parallelisation over multiple distributed computer systems?”
