PS4 Architect Mark Cerny: Cloud won't work well to boost graphics

[blerk]

That's actually rendering in the remote render farm. It's not assisting realtime, game time, local rendering. But it is neat.

When you tell me the cloud can help my local execution of Skyrim or Bioshock get more FPS from a cloud connection, then we're talking improving local real time rendering and fill rate. But no one, not even Microsoft has alluded to that. People are just reading that into it. It can however, pre-render such a huge world maybe, and download as much of that in the background as possible, allowing richer worlds while allowing the CPU/GPU to focus on real time local events.

Also, there's an indie Win 8 game, Zombie HQ that has events occurring when you're not playing that affect the game (in a real minor way, with a modern ui notification). I thought while implemented in a rudimentary fashion, this is very exciting. If a local game occurs in a world in which the cloud evolves, these events can make the world much more realistic as those evolutions are downloaded and effect your world every time you play. Perhaps your actions cause NPCs to do certain things and you are notified offline, etc. That seems very cool.

PS: Zombie HQ has Xbox controller gamepad support, Halo: Spartan must wait for a patch, what's up with that?

 

I missed the "real-time" part of your original post (shoulda figured since the entire thread is on that topic...)  :s

 

The cloud-render-compute-background-thingy examples you give are all things that I hope eventually occur in games, not that I have any idea how they'll be implemented  :D

[GotBored]

To the quote in bold: Shows you have no technical knowledge on the subject. This is a lot more complicated than a couple of servers behind a load balancer. I love that people think Azure is just some servers sat listening to requests behind a load balancer, its cute. Azure servers can build themselves instantly, they can spread applications across servers which get computed in parallel. Its a very, very techy thing to be talking about hence why there's such a confusion regarding "cloud".

 

Also server farming is a thing, and has been for a very long time. Google it....

 

Server Farming, Cluster Computing, etc etc.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_farm

 

Is just a fancy name for load balancing.

 

What you also try to explain is load balancing, its uses multiple servers to split the load between multiple streams in parallel.(If it was done in series it would be pointless).

 

The benefit of Azure system to Xbox One is when a game publisher creates a game it can rent dedicated servers (Azure) at a discounted rate and also because Azure is charged by server usage it can adapt to server load. 

So if 100 people are playing it can run say 5 servers with 20 people each and the publisher gets charged for 5 servers only, but then a surge of players join the game and it needs 50 servers to support 1000 players Azure just loads up the game data on addition servers and away you go. The old method was either p2p, which is the cheapest method for game publishers (Most common method on ps3 and x360) and normal dedicated servers. For normal dedicated servers you had to pay for a set amount of servers and it didn't matter if only 5% of them were being used or 100%. The Azure system is a big improvement over this because if a game publisher expects a game to sell well and orders tons of servers, but then the game doesn't do so well its wasted money. Or if a game is a lot more successful than they expected server load could make it constantly crash or just not allow more players on until they payed for more dedicated servers which takes time and also time to setup. The Azure 'cloud' can scale based on usage, this is its benefit not all the 'cloud' hype.

[JonnyLH]

Server Farming, Cluster Computing, etc etc.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_farm

 

Is just a fancy name for load balancing.

 

What you also try to explain is load balancing, its uses multiple servers to split the load between multiple streams in parallel.(If it was done in series it would be pointless).

 

The benefit of Azure system to Xbox One is when a game publisher creates a game it can rent dedicated servers (Azure) at a discounted rate and also because Azure is charged by server usage it can adapt to server load. 

So if 100 people are playing it can run say 5 servers with 20 people each and the publisher gets charged for 5 servers only, but then a surge of players join the game and it needs 50 servers to support 1000 players Azure just loads up the game data on addition servers and away you go. The old method was either p2p, which is the cheapest method for game publishers (Most common method on ps3 and x360) and normal dedicated servers. For normal dedicated servers you had to pay for a set amount of servers and it didn't matter if only 5% of them were being used or 100%. The Azure system is a big improvement over this because if a game publisher expects a game to sell well and orders tons of servers, but then the game doesn't do so well its wasted money. Or if a game is a lot more successful than they expected server load could make it constantly crash or just not allow more players on until they payed for more dedicated servers which takes time and also time to setup. The Azure 'cloud' can scale based on usage, this is its benefit not all the 'cloud' hype.

It definitely fits under the term load-balancing but there's a different between session balancing and resource balancing. The two have different methodologies, implementations and technology behind them. Stop generalizing terms, its a horrible problem in the IT world. Its why people get so confused with "cloud".

 

Your thinking in the ideology that companies rent servers from Azure, like MS are literally just being a data center with racked servers for rent. That's completely not how it works. Azure works completely on HyperVM instances and has the ability to build and construct these images with your application in seconds. These images can spread across various physical boxes which balance the actual load (CPU Time, RAM Allowance) accordingly. So for example, if you have a dedicated server which starts off with 10 people, the image will only get assigned resources for that current time. If it jumps to 128 players, the image could be given a shared ram allowance, with shared CPU time from multiple boxes. Azure is priced on the resources you use, because it's dynamic.

 

A huge difference compared to a box which sits in front of a group of servers and literally just picks a server to send the request to.

[GotBored]

It definitely fits under the term load-balancing but there's a different between session balancing and resource balancing. The two have different methodologies, implementations and technology behind them. Stop generalizing terms, its a horrible problem in the IT world. Its why people get so confused with "cloud".

 

Your thinking in the ideology that companies rent servers from Azure, like MS are literally just being a data center with racked servers for rent. That's completely not how it works. Azure works completely on HyperVM instances and has the ability to build and construct these images with your application in seconds. These images can spread across various physical boxes which balance the actual load (CPU Time, RAM Allowance) accordingly.

 

Azure is a data-center so you do rent servers (or scale-able usage of servers). session and resource balancing both come under load balancing and yes there is a difference one scales processes and other scales storage for example and the competitors of Azure like Amazon do both still.

 

I've worked in a technical field for over 12yrs and can tell you now, when people try to over-complicate things it's usually because they don't know what they are talking about, its simple how its utilized, Also trying to use HyperVM as a strong point in your argument... lol. I can own one physical server and make 10,000 Virtual Servers from it, it doesn't make it any faster.

[JonnyLH]

Azure is a data-center so you do rent servers (or scale-able usage of servers). session and resource balancing both come under load balancing and yes there is a difference one scales processes and other scales storage for example and the competitors of Azure like Amazon do both still.

 

I've worked in a technical field for over 12yrs and can tell you now, when people try to over-complicate things it's usually because they don't know what they are talking about, its simple how its utilized, Also trying to use HyperVM as a strong point in your argument... lol. I can own one physical server and make 10,000 Virtual Servers from it, it doesn't make it any faster.

I've been and still am an Infrastructure Engineer for the top 3 ISP's in the UK. I'm not trying to correct you in any of your statements or even give an argument, I'm just providing technical information about Azure's implementation. Regarding the over-complication statement, I definitely agree with you there.

 

I accept they both come under the term load balancing, but they're completely different technologies. One doesn't scale processes and the other doesn't scale storage, so both your definitions are wrong. Amazon's implementation wasn't designed to run low level mathematical code. With VM's I'm not referring to it being faster, I'm simply referring to the design of the system and how it scales. If you don't have virtual images, and the code is ran local to the OS the servers are running, then there's no way to expand that process beyond the machine it sits on. Hence why images are involved due to their ability to be destroyed/built so fast.

[vcfan]

 

 

Amazons Web Services servers are direct competition to Microsoft's Azure servers, they do the same thing.

 

It also has various other competitors who also do the same thing and I always see a guy posting that the Azure servers do 'server farming?' that's not a thing, I think you mean load balancing which all of them do that. (Not Burst Mode either)

 

 

Yeah its true, AWS and Azure are direct competitors, but these servers for number crunching are not the same ones you can rent from AWS and MS. These 2 services are for web based products. Ive had the highest configuration servers with both AWS and Azure, and the performance of the CPU and I/O is easily beat by an cheapo dedicated server that costs nothing. Microsoft will integrate these number crunchers into their Azure infrastructure,for the benefits of cloud such as elastic computing,for things like easy scaling. Make no mistake about it,their servers for Xbox Live are a custom solution.

[GotBored]

I've been and still am an Infrastructure Engineer for the top 3 ISP's in the UK. I'm not trying to correct you in any of your statements or even give an argument, I'm just providing technical information about Azure's implementation. Regarding the over-complication statement, I definitely agree with you there.

 

I accept they both come under the term load balancing, but they're completely different technologies. One doesn't scale processes and the other doesn't scale storage, so both your definitions are wrong. Amazon's implementation wasn't designed to run low level mathematical code. With VM's I'm not referring to it being faster, I'm simply referring to the design of the system and how it scales. If you don't have virtual images, and the code is ran local to the OS the servers are running, then there's no way to expand that process beyond the machine it sits on. Hence why images are involved due to their ability to be destroyed/built so fast.

 

To me Session Balancing is the network load processes and resource balancing is scaling the available physical hardware to meet demands. (CPU, Storage, etc), what is your definition of them?

 

The scale-ability factor of the Azure system (And HyperVM) is the advantage of the Microsoft system as I mentioned earlier, I'm happy to confirm and state this, but the main argument was the ability to offload graphics processing to improve graphics which isn't a viable option nor have Microsoft officially stated it. They created a 'cloud' buzz and people made up the rest.

 

 

Yeah its true, AWS and Azure are direct competitors, but these servers for number crunching are not the same ones you can rent from AWS and MS. These 2 services are for web based products. Ive had the highest configuration servers with both AWS and Azure, and the performance of the CPU and I/O is easily beat by an cheapo dedicated server that costs nothing. Microsoft will integrate these number crunchers into their Azure infrastructure,for the benefits of cloud such as elastic computing,for things like easy scaling. Make no mistake about it,their servers for Xbox Live are a custom solution.

 

Yes, The scaling is the major benefit of the Xbox 'cloud', I did mention it multiple times.

[vcfan]

Yes, The scaling is the major benefit of the Xbox 'cloud', I did mention it multiple times.

 

i know you did.just because aws and azure are compared,i just want to explain that even if we compare these two services,its pretty pointless,as neither AWS nor Azure give you the computing power to do this kind of thing. They are only good for web based applications,not large scale data processing. For that,it has to be a custom solution,that can be tied to AWS or Azure infrastructure. It isnt an easy task,and isnt as simple as renting server time. They are good for scaling,but you pay a premium for that,and performance is not key.

[JonnyLH]

 

To me Session Balancing is the network load processes and resource balancing is scaling the available physical hardware to meet demands. (CPU, Storage, etc), what is your definition of them?

 

The scale-ability factor of the Azure system (And HyperVM) is the advantage of the Microsoft system as I mentioned earlier, I'm happy to confirm and state this, but the main argument was the ability to offload graphics processing to improve graphics which isn't a viable option nor have Microsoft officially stated it. They created a 'cloud' buzz and people made up the rest.

 

When I refer to session balancing, I'm referring to the balancing of TCP sessions which come through. This could be HTTP, FTP, whatever. So, when there's a public facing load-balancer which sits in front of say 6 servers which listen on port 80 that load balancer will share those sessions equally across those 6 machines and remember which TCP session is on which box.  When I refer to resource balancing, its the balancing of physical hardware resources across processes in that server farm. 

 

To be honest, I don't even think MS know the scale of how this is going to be used and what for. The thing about this feature is that you'll only reep the benefits if its developed in a way to do so. There could be bad ways to implement cloud, and good ways. I hope a lot of companies sit down and think of the ways they can use it fully.

[Zidane]

To me Session Balancing is the network load processes and resource balancing is scaling the available physical hardware to meet demands. (CPU, Storage, etc), what is your definition of them?

 

The scale-ability factor of the Azure system (And HyperVM) is the advantage of the Microsoft system as I mentioned earlier, I'm happy to confirm and state this, but the main argument was the ability to offload graphics processing to improve graphics which isn't a viable option nor have Microsoft officially stated it. They created a 'cloud' buzz and people made up the rest.

 

It is a perfectly viable option so long as they offload textures they know they need in advance. If I have a static map (environment) which will be the same for everyone who traverses it, I can have the cloud render it once and send it ahead of the player entering it (prediction). I can then let the local console's GPU become a dynamics component and at the least a fallback (if the texture wasn't sent in time due to slow connections).

 

That fact alone greatly increases the scalability of the console and even offers the possibility of older games getting a "graphical refresh".

[Athernar]

Go home Athernar you're drunk.

 

Azure uses a mark-up language as a wrapper for graphical data sets now does it? And how much do you know? Seriously, I nearly just chocked on my glass of OJ.

 

Also, to everyone saying Sony can rent a bunch of EC2 servers and you get the same platform. What are you going on about? Amazon EC2 is primarily a platform for the dynamic deployment of large scalling web applications. Totally different kettle of fish. Sony would need money and resources they don't have, simple enough. People underestimate how tight they are with finances right now.

 

Cloud is the most general term in IT, not everything in the cloud is the same. It could range from an Apache server on someones home machine, to encryption ran parallel across 10 servers. So don't compare a web application to Azure.

 

It was glaringly obvious the markup reference was tied into the analogy that was being made on the same paragraph, I'm not sure how you managed turn that into the guff above, are you on psychotropic medication?

 

You demonstrate you haven't understood a single word that has been said thus far. Yes, the "cloud" is an incredibly broad buzzword in use today but it's quite clear in context that "cloud" refers to a highly and easily scalable compute platform. Ultimately if it's serving HTTP, game servers, or game engine compute workloads doesn't matter. The infrastructure for allocation, scaling and distribution is already there, the internet connectivity is already there - all you need to "leverage the power of the cloud" is to have a client that communicates with server software.

 

This is incredibly simple stuff, and it astounds me you struggle to comprehend this.

[JonnyLH]

It was glaringly obvious the markup reference was tied into the analogy that was being made on the same paragraph, I'm not sure how you managed turn that into the guff above, are you on psychotropic medication?

 

You demonstrate you haven't understood a single word that has been said thus far. Yes, the "cloud" is an incredibly broad buzzword in use today but it's quite clear in context that "cloud" refers to a highly and easily scalable compute platform. Ultimately if it's serving HTTP, game servers, or game engine compute workloads doesn't matter. The infrastructure for allocation, scaling and distribution is already there, the internet connectivity is already there - all you need to "leverage the power of the cloud" is to have a client that communicates with server software.

 

This is incredibly simple stuff, and it astounds me you struggle to comprehend this.

I struggle with what? You're just in your own bubble.

 

Obviously you've never studied anything to do with networking because cloud means you don't know what's in there. The internet is often referred as a "cloud" on topology diagrams, its why they use the term cloud for these things. Hello basic networking class.

[Athernar]

I struggle with what? You're just in your own bubble.

 

Obviously you've never studied anything to do with networking because cloud means you don't know what's in there. The internet is often referred as a "cloud" on topology diagrams, its why they use the term cloud for these things. Hello basic networking class.

 

Cute, the best you can respond with is to argue irrelevant semantics because you've got nothing to say on the technical side.

 

Go home JonnyLH, you're drunk.

[JonnyLH]

Cute, the best you can respond with is to argue irrelevant semantics because you've got nothing to say on the technical side.

 

Go homy JonnyLH, you're drunk.

Dude what the hell, you just write a paragraph stating what cloud means, which was wrong. I correct you, then I've got nothing to say technically? I've been passing information of the technicals of Azure all this thread. Give me a constructive discussion back, and I'll talk to you.

[Athernar]

Dude what the hell, you just write a paragraph stating what cloud means, which was wrong. I correct you, then I've got nothing to say technically? I've been passing information of the technicals of Azure all this thread. Give me a constructive discussion back, and I'll talk to you.

 

Did you even read what I wrote? I quite clearly said that cloud is a very vague, diluted buzzword - but it was clear with the thread/discussion context that the term has been used thus far to refer to Azure-like compute services.

[M_Lyons10]

He is absolutely right (But in classic Sony fashion a bit misleading)...

 

Graphics rendering (Or using the cloud to directly improve graphics quality) is absolutely not something that works well in the cloud...

 

However, data calculations, math, and logic is (Which is what the XBox One is designed to be able to do)...  Now, it shouldn't be a hard stretch to understand that if the console itself doesn't need to do these other (Data intensive) calculations, it will be freed up to focus more on graphics rendering. 

 

Hence, indirectly allowing for improved graphics...

 

At no time did Microsoft (Or anyone) suggest that they were actually rendering graphics elements in the cloud.  LOL  In fact, they were quite clear (One of the few things they explained) on what was going to be offloaded to the cloud (If the developer chooses to).

[spudtrooper]

He is absolutely right (But in classic Sony fashion a bit misleading)...

 

Graphics rendering (Or using the cloud to directly improve graphics quality) is absolutely not something that works well in the cloud...

 

However, data calculations, math, and logic is (Which is what the XBox One is designed to be able to do)...  Now, it shouldn't be a hard stretch to understand that if the console itself doesn't need to do these other (Data intensive) calculations, it will be freed up to focus more on graphics rendering. 

 

Hence, indirectly allowing for improved graphics...

 

At no time did Microsoft (Or anyone) suggest that they were actually rendering graphics elements in the cloud.  LOL  In fact, they were quite clear (One of the few things they explained) on what was going to be offloaded to the cloud (If the developer chooses to).

 

the only thing i've seen mentioned and beat like a dead horse is

 

"While latency-sensitive actions will be handled by a user's Xbox One console, Microsoft claims its cloud architecture can pre-calculate elements like lighting and physics modeling, leading to increased in-game performance."

 

Of course there is lots of robustness on interactive worlds and dynamic / changing conditions based upon near real time user interacticity.

 

lighting and physics modeling can be terribly expensive and if you "cloud" enable that, that certainly does open up lots of opportunity to do other things with the always finite local resources.

 

I'm still not sure how sony doesn't see that as viable/possible or apparently not worthwhile.  The only safe thing to assume is that Sony didn't engineer for such  at all while Microsoft did and it will be up to the developers to prove the concept out.

 

All that being said, the "Cloud" is a huge enabler - an opportunity for people to challenge the status quo. It certainly isn't a hinderence.

[trooper11]

Considering flamebait/FUD/trolling on Neowin seems to be anything that is critical of the Xbox One, sure.

 

 

Unfortunately, it works both ways. I've seen people on both sides troll and flamebait the other side. Why does there have to be a side at all?

 

The worst thing we could do is try to claim its only coming from one side.

 

 

Regardless, thanks for posting that interview. Mark is a smart guy and its good to hear his insights regarding the inner workings of the Sony architecture.

 

I'm not sure why you chose to pick out that one line as the thread title, but based on your opening post, I guess the point was to show this as evidence against MS strategy. On the surface, I agree that the cloud won't improve graphics as Mark pointed out. The problem with using this against MS is that they have said the exact same thing. In fact, I don't think Mark intended to invalidate any use for cloud computing. MS made it clear they don't see this as a way to improve graphics and have laid out the areas where it can make sense.

 

You guys should be well aware of MS' statements on this, so why does it have to be an argument? I guess 'stocking the fire' is more fun.

[Brandon Live Veteran]

Games have already been doing the things you mention for many years, except they were using their own servers rather than Microsoft's (in general). So this is likely to only benefit smaller game developers/publishers who would otherwise not have access to a large server farm. This is cool, mind you, but not as revolutionary as E3 marketing had put it.

 

I wouldn't consider Bungie / 343 / MS Studios to be a "smaller" game developer. Halo games always run the multiplayer off of one player's box. Cost was one reason but surely not the only one. It's difficult to have centralized servers set up in a way that offers low-latency connections around the world. Unless you have something like Azure, with datacenters already running around the world, with things like the Azure Traffic Manager to route traffic to the nearest / lowest latency server.

 

The main things I think Microsoft are pushing here consist of:

• They have infrastructure at a scale only one or two others in the world have available (i.e. Amazon).
• They're certainly working on code and tools to help game developers take the most advantage of it.
  • I would guess this also includes facilitating access between a game's cloud services and Xbox Live.
• It sounds like they may be offering to foot the bill for some of this? That part I'm not at all clear on.

[Brandon Live Veteran]

It was glaringly obvious the markup reference was tied into the analogy that was being made on the same paragraph, I'm not sure how you managed turn that into the guff above, are you on psychotropic medication?

 

You demonstrate you haven't understood a single word that has been said thus far. Yes, the "cloud" is an incredibly broad buzzword in use today but it's quite clear in context that "cloud" refers to a highly and easily scalable compute platform. Ultimately if it's serving HTTP, game servers, or game engine compute workloads doesn't matter. The infrastructure for allocation, scaling and distribution is already there, the internet connectivity is already there - all you need to "leverage the power of the cloud" is to have a client that communicates with server software.

 

This is incredibly simple stuff, and it astounds me you struggle to comprehend this.

 

You're greatly oversimplifying things. And yes, they could just give a bunch of Azure resources to developers (or let them get those resources themselves via traditional means). But surely they're doing more than that here.

[Athernar]

You're greatly oversimplifying things. And yes, they could just give a bunch of Azure resources to developers (or let them get those resources themselves via traditional means). But surely they're doing more than that here.

 

Oh I fully agree, I am vastly simplifying things and I don't want to diminsh the effort that must have gone it to create Azure.

 

But at the same time, there isn't a fundamental difference or sorcery required with on a game system application that some people claimed there "must" be.

[Yogurtmaster]

What that must say then for the people who get emotionally riled up then if I'm petty...

 

It's not that your only petty but you are wrong a lot of the time.  

[Yogurtmaster]

Quoting this brilliant post in it's entirety as it needs to be seen.

 

There is a great deal of blind fanboyism behind this Xbox cloud nonsense, and it needs to stop before people get critically disappointed at the reality of the situation.

 

If it was possible to do what people are claiming in this thread, then why bother with the Xbox One in the first place? It would be far more economical to use the "power of the cloud" to extend the life of the 360 even further.

 

With having a lot more memory, more power, lower latency controller and having hardware that is dedicated towards server processing that is a huge difference.   The LZ-77 part of the "move" hardware actually compress and decompress data (including 3D mesh assets) from and to the server on-the-fly in hardware and in the background and then if needed can inject this directly into the GPU memory.  The Xbox 360, doesn't have features like what I listed.   That is a big deal.

 

So, it's not non sense at all.  You just have to have some understanding about what Microsoft is trying to do.

[Athernar]

With having a lot more memory, more power, lower latency controller and having hardware that is dedicated towards server processing that is a huge difference.   The LZ-77 part of the "move" hardware actually compress and decompress data (including 3D mesh assets) from and to the server on-the-fly in hardware and in the background and then if needed can inject this directly into the GPU memory.  The Xbox 360, doesn't have features like what I listed.   That is a big deal.

 

So, it's not non sense at all.  You just have to have some understanding about what Microsoft is trying to do.

 

That's all very nice and all but it doesn't change anything, you're just saving yourself a few cycles on an expected workload. It's not a fundamental requirement of using the tech.

[GotBored]

At no time did Microsoft (Or anyone) suggest that they were actually rendering graphics elements in the cloud.  LOL  In fact, they were quite clear (One of the few things they explained) on what was going to be offloaded to the cloud (If the developer chooses to).

 

Yes but that doesn't stop people from saying it does, I feel sorry for anyone who falls for the 'cloud' hype and eventually becomes disappointed with the end result.