Butterfly and IBM to Introduce First Computing Grid for Video Game Industry; Breakthrough "Butterfly Grid" To be Demonstrated at E3 Expo in Los Angeles.Business and Technology Editors E3Expo 2002 LOS ANGELES--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 9, 2002 Butterfly.net, Inc., and IBM (International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY, www.ibm.com) The world's largest computer company. IBM's product lines include the S/390 mainframes (zSeries), AS/400 midrange business systems (iSeries), RS/6000 workstations and servers (pSeries), Intel-based servers (xSeries) announced today the deployment of the first-ever custom commercial grid for the online video gaming video gaming n. 1. Gambling by means of interactive games of chance played on a video screen. 2. The playing of video games. market. The Butterfly Grid(TM) could enable online video game providers to support a massive number of players within the same game by allocating computing resources to the most populated areas and most popular games. Butterfly.net, a development studio and infrastructure provider to the online video game market, will demonstrate the Butterfly Grid system to members of the video gaming industry at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) 2002 show beginning May 21 in Los Angeles Los Angeles (lôs ăn`jələs, lŏs, ăn`jəlēz'), city (1990 pop. 3,485,398), seat of Los Angeles co., S Calif.; inc. 1850. . The Grid was built by Butterfly.net over the last two years using IBM e-business infrastructure technology that distributes the processing of video game interaction across a network of server farms, enabling Butterfly.net to support a massive number of video gamers playing simultaneously over the Internet. The Grid is a secure system built on customized software See custom software. operating on the private network of Butterfly.net. Video game providers can access the Grid to support their online products by including the Butterfly Grid client software libraries in the games they distribute. These software libraries, along with sample code for connecting mobile devices, PCs and video game consoles This is a list of video game consoles by the era they appeared in. Eras are named based on the dominant console type of the era (even though not all consoles of those eras are of the same type). Some eras are referred to based on how many bits a major console could process. to the Grid, are available for download from www.butterfly.net. "We selected IBM as the infrastructure provider for our Grid because of their unparalleled support for the Linux operating system operating system (OS) Software that controls the operation of a computer, directs the input and output of data, keeps track of files, and controls the processing of computer programs. and grid computing grid computing, the concurrent application of the processing and data storage resources of many computers in a network to a single problem. It also can be used for load balancing as well as high availability by employing multiple computers—typically personal , their understanding of the unique processing and communication requirements of video games See video game console. , their carrier-independent collocation centers and their commitment to developing this market opportunity with us as a true partner," said David Levine, CEO (1) (Chief Executive Officer) The highest individual in command of an organization. Typically the president of the company, the CEO reports to the Chairman of the Board. of Butterfly.net. The Butterfly Grid is powered by rack-mounted Linux-based IBM eServer This article is about the IBM family of computer servers. For the open access electronic text archive, see EServer.org. IBM eServer was a family of computer servers from IBM Corporation. xSeries systems hosted by IBM and running on internal fiber-optic networks for optimal use of computing and communications resources. The grid design offers the potential to support over one million simultaneous players from each facility in a 24/7 environment with automatic fail over capability. "The Butterfly Grid is an innovative Grid system with the capability of processing online video games across a multicast network of server farms, allowing efficient utilization of computing resources for high-performance 3D immersive game-worlds," said Scott Penberthy, vice president of Business Development, IBM Global Services IBM Global Services is the world's largest business and technology services provider. It is the fastest growing part of IBM, with over 190,000 professionals serving customers in more than 160 countries. . "We believe the Butterfly Grid is a breakthrough platform that will help entertainment, media and game companies reduce costs and better deploy their entertainment properties online." Online video games have historically segmented players onto separate servers, limiting the number that could interact and creating reliability and support obstacles. In the first generation of games, when one server is down, or patches are being installed, game-play comes to a halt. Butterfly's second-generation grid technology enables online video game providers to reliably deliver fast-paced, cutting edge games to millions at the same time. The server interaction is completely transparent and seamless to the user - delivering a resilient gaming infrastructure where servers can be added, or replaced, without interrupting game-play. Globus Project co-leader Dr. Ian Foster Ian Foster is the Senior Scientist (Associate Division Director) in the Mathematics and Computer Science Division at Argonne National Laboratory, where he leads the Distributed Systems Laboratory, and he is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of of Argonne National Laboratory Argonne National Laboratory, research center, based in Argonne, Ill., 27 mi (43 km) SW of downtown Chicago, with other facilities at the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory, 50 mi (80 km) W of Idaho Falls, Idaho. Founded in 1946 by the U.S. and the University of Chicago noted, "The Butterfly Grid approach to building scalable, reliable gaming infrastructure is a wonderful example of how Grid and Globus Toolkit The Globus Toolkit, currently at version 4, is an open source toolkit for building computing grids developed and provided by the Globus Alliance. Standards implementation The Globus Toolkit is an implementation of the following standards: The new Butterfly Grid is the industry's first to provide support for: - Massive numbers of players within one persistent-state world. - Before the Butterfly Grid, online video games have been divided into "shards" that provide copies of the game world on separate servers, limiting the number of players that can interact. The Butterfly Grid provides "cross-server sentinels" that could potentially support the interaction of millions of players in one true world, with server boundaries invisible to players. - Distributed Artificial Intelligence Distributed artificial intelligence (DAI) was a subfield of Artificial intelligence research dedicated to the development of distributed solutions for complex problems regarded as requiring intelligence. These days DAI has been largely supplanted by the field of Multi-Agent Systems. - Butterfly.net provides a "daemon controller" for advanced interactions between players and non-player characters through a simple, standard Python interface. - Game genre's - Developers can build innovative action, strategy, role-playing, simulation and adventure games, combine genres and invent new ones. - Multiple, concurrent games - With multiple online video games on one computing grid, publishers can allocate resources to more popular games, launch new games with less risk, and offer flexible and innovative subscription plans to drive revenue growth. - Connected devices - Butterfly.net connects PCs, PocketPCs, Palm-compatible handhelds, and dedicated video-game consoles in massively-multiplayer online games. An innovative packet-transport protocol provides fast, balanced game-play over broadband, dial-up and mobile Internet Refers to gaining access to the Internet using a lightweight, handheld device. See Mobile IP, PDA, smartphone and mobile TV. connections for unique multi-channel interactions - Hot-swappable components. - Once an online video game is launched, it doesn't need to be constantly taken off line for patches or maintenance. When grid components are unavailable, connections are redirected to available resources for continuous gameplay. - 3D engine support - Game developers working on the Butterfly Grid can exploit fully integrated, industry-standard 3D engines out of the box. - Shared-source developer sandbox A restricted environment in which certain functions are prohibited. For example, deleting files and modifying system information such as Registry settings and other control panel functions may be prohibited. .- Unique license program allows for real-time prototyping on live server grid with full bandwidth and simulation/load testing. An emerging model of computing, Grids are built with clusters of servers joined together over the Internet, using protocols provided by the Globus open source community and other open technologies, including Linux(R). Like the World Wide Web enables people to share content over standard, open protocols, Grid protocols emerging from the Globus open source community are enabling organizations to create virtual organizations sharing applications, data and computing power over the Internet to collaborate, tackle large problems and lower the cost of computing Butterfly.net is working with Globus to ensure that any video game developed according to according to prep. 1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians. 2. In keeping with: according to instructions. 3. publicly-available specifications and Internet open standards Specifications for hardware and software that are developed by a standards organization or a consortium involved in supporting a standard. Available to the public for developing compliant products, open standards imply "open systems;" that an existing component in a system can be replaced can draw resources-on-demand from the Butterfly Grid. The Globus Toolkit, available by download from www.globus.org, provides authorization and accounting functions, allocates hardware resources, configures game-specific logic and monitors performance on the Butterfly Grid. IBM is the industry's leading supplier of Grid systems and services to the scientific and technical community and is working with the Globus open source community and others to extend Grid computing into commercial environments. In addition to working with many of the world's leading labs and research organizations in the development of Grid projects, IBM Research IBM Research, a division of IBM, is a research and advanced development organization and currently consists of eight locations throughout the world and hundreds of projects. used Globus technologies to build its own Grid -- a geographically distributed supercomputer linking IBM research and development labs in the United States United States, officially United States of America, republic (2005 est. pop. 295,734,000), 3,539,227 sq mi (9,166,598 sq km), North America. The United States is the world's third largest country in population and the fourth largest country in area. , Israel, Switzerland, Japan and England. IBM's Global Services organization offers the complete range of IT skills needed to build, run and maintain Grids. About Butterfly.net: Butterfly.net, Inc., based in Shepherdstown, WV and Los Angeles, CA, is a development studio, online publisher and infrastructure provider for Massively-Multiplayer Games that connect players on PCs, consoles and mobile devices. Butterfly.net(TM)and Butterfly Grid(TM)are trademarks of Butterfly.net, Inc. For more information about Butterfly.net, visit http://www.butterfly.net/. About IBM: IBM is the world's largest information technology company, with 80 years of leadership in helping businesses innovate. Drawing on resources from across IBM and key Business Partners, IBM offers a wide range of services, solutions and technologies that enable customers, large and small, to take full advantage of the new era of e-business. For more information about IBM, visit http://www.ibm.com. About the Globus Project(TM) The Globus Project is a multi-institutional research and development effort creating fundamental technologies for computational grids. Grids are persistent environments that enable software applications to integrate instruments, displays, computational and information resources (1) The data and information assets of an organization, department or unit. See data administration. (2) Another name for the Information Systems (IS) or Information Technology (IT) department. See IT. that are managed by diverse organizations in widespread locations. A primary product of the Globus Project is the open source Globus Toolkit(TM), which is being used in numerous large Grid deployment and application projects in the United States, Europe, and around the world. The Globus Project is based at Argonne National Laboratory and the University of Southern California's Information Sciences Institute. For more information, visit the Globus Project web site at www.globus.org. The IBM eServer brand consists of the established IBM e-business logo with the following descriptive term "server" following it. The following are either trademarks or registered of International Business Machines Corporation in the United States or other countries or both: IBM and the IBM e-business logo. |
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