Running a linux cluster with UT 2004?

[revelater]

hey everyone, i was wondering if i could run a linux cluster/parallel processing system (through network) over multiple machines to run unreal tournament 2004? (or any program for that matter)

[gwalters]

You could do that but I dont know how interactive it would be...I would think that there is some lag as info to be proccessed moves from one puter to another. Most shooter games are very interactive as I recall.

[revelater]

indeed they are, but i would like to know firstly if it can be done, secondly what i need to do it, and lastly how. then if it is dependent on the program to support this type of configuration or if the processor does it for you... and i would use this to allow several users to play at the same time, from the same system, so that the lag time comparativly wouldn't be a problem, (a few millaseconds), but i just want to know those things.

[RobCote]

I am interested in clustering as well, Good topic!

[revelater]

yah... but i don't hink many people know how to do it here...

[drakebasher]

There are a few HOWTOs at The Linux Documentation Project relating to clusters, like:
http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Cluster-HOWTO.html
http://tldp.org/HOWTO/openMosix-HOWTO/index.html
http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Parallel-Processing-HOWTO.html

[revelater]

yah, i went there and all, but it only gave me a headache... which is why i posted here... i was hoping someone could at least tell me if it was possible WITHOUT rewriting UT 2004.

[RobCote]

I looked through openMosix stuff and i appears that clustering and gaming won't do anything at all, and clustering is more like "real" hyper threading. so correct me if i'm wrong but clustering is only good for different simultaneous jobs, like say.. ripping a cd, jobs will get outsourced to other nodes and come back quicker than being in a queue on one machine.

[revelater]

it should do the same to gaming as anything else(how do you think gaming servers do it, and multi processors?), the problem is that it says the program has to be written for clustering.

[suryad]

Hi, first post at the forum. I stumbled upon it as I am in the search of hardware to build a cluster.

AFAIK the programs that are to be run on clusters should be massively parallel. So there is a lot of coding to be done to make the program to run as parallel as possible. I don't believe gaming servers regardless of all the cores in the world, contribute much to the performance of the game since most games are inherently not multithreaded applications. In fact games run a bit better if HT is turned off in Intel processors sometimes.