[MUD-Dev] Is database access a bottleneck?

[Amanda Walker]

On 12/17/02 5:55 AM, Chris Holko <cholko at mindspring.com> wrote:

> Its isn't the "Relational DB" that is the problem, its the
> hardware.  Considering the amount of money that MMORPGs cost to
> develop and the money they can bring in you would think the
> industry would move to minis and get off PC style hardware.  Most
> minis run circles around PC style server farms, and are many times
> more reliable to boot.

That depends greatly upon the particular hardware and software in
question.

A modern 2-CPU rackmount server-class PC (64-bit/66MHz slots, U160
SCSI RAID or a 3Ware Escalade, a couple gigabit Ethernet ports) will
smoke most "minis" out there for I/O bound tasks.  A cluster of them
will smoke a supercomputer at compute bound tasks...

... depending on the problem at hand.

The big advantage of commodity hardware is the relentless
application of Moore's Law by vendors, and sheer economies of scale.
I was at the SC 2002 show a couple weeks ago in Baltimore, and I was
amazed at how fast things are moving to "clusters of commodity
elements" for computing and I/O and way from traditional "mainframe"
and "supercomputer" architectures.  I'd seen this in the commercial
arena, but it's happening in academia as well.

Amanda Walker


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