WoW Chinese distributor The9 dominates China's supercomputers
by Daniel Whitcomb 
Jul 3rd 2008 at 1:20PM
One thing that your average WoW player probably doesn't think about much is the sheer processing power that's needed to play the game. I don't mean your gaming rig personally. WoW's actually pretty forgiving on that front. I mean the server hardware over on Blizzard's end, the stuff that makes us miss some gaming every other Tuesday or so. Do we really stop to think about how powerful it is?
It turns out that it's powerful enough to dominate a list of China's top 100 supercomputers. The Register reports that 5 of the top 10 supercomputers in China are owned by The9, WoW's China distributor. Not only that, it also owns at least 12 of the top 100 overall, and perhaps more. That means that more than 10% of China's best supercomputing power is directed toward MMORPGs such as World of Warcraft.
It's not too surprising, from one angle. The9 has always boasted of the huge numbers they pull down on their games, such as the time they claimed 1 million concurrent connections to WoW, and this back that claim up quite nicely.
Regardless, the register seems a little bit shocked to see a gaming company up on the top of the list alongside business and scientific ventures. They caution that these numbers are from 2007, and may be skewed because the Chinese government often hides information on the computer power of its own government machines. In addition, China's computing infrastructure is still developing compared to other powerful nations, so weaker systems can get on the top 100 list, systems that would have no chance of competing elsewhere..
Still, maybe this will give you some idea of the power that goes into running those machines that pipe all that WoW goodness into your home every day. The next time you get a little steamed over scheduled maintenance, remember that the type of computers they run this stuff on are powerful enough to get on some pretty impressive lists. If they put out that much power, it isn't too surprising that they need a little bit of TLC every once in a while.
[Via Massively]
Filed under: Odds and ends, News items, Hardware
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
milsorgen Jul 3rd 2008 1:25PM
it never actually states the computers are used for running wow, instead merely that The9 owns some rigs on the list
Jay Jul 3rd 2008 1:58PM
Its in China, ofc they are used for WoW.
Lori Jul 3rd 2008 2:16PM
I really doubt they are using the super computers to run WoW.
Taradin Jul 3rd 2008 1:49PM
1950 cores on a single cluster server? Meh, I have this at home... :P
Sonmerlong Jul 3rd 2008 1:50PM
The other key thing to remember is that the vast majority of the R&D data crunching "super-computers" are still based in and built by US entities (and to some degree the european arena).
For the most part the only reason you find a super computer in the asian market is to serve a consumer niche or a government entitie. (this is starting to change, but due to infrastructure constraints it is a slow shjift)
And there is a "good" (read -no doubt-) that there are several super-computers in china that are not going to be talked about outside the government offices.
brnvndr Jul 3rd 2008 1:54PM
It would be interesting to see what blizzard in fact uses to run there servers. I don't doubt that the infrastructure costs are massive, but I question the logic that because of this there has to be 3-5 hours of downtime per week. I mean, would you accept this for your cell phone or credit card providers?
Lori Jul 3rd 2008 2:33PM
The phone network (and probably credit card verifiers) uses duplicate hardware to solve downtime issues. Thus they can take half the system down for maintenance while the other half keeps processing. Same if half develops a problem.
Such duplication can't be justified for a game.
John Jul 3rd 2008 1:53PM
I for one am glad that "10% of China's best supercomputing power is directed toward MMORPGs such as World of Warcraft." as opposed to nuclear weapons or military simulations or finding new ways to oppress the Chinese/Tibetan people.
imxiaozhu Jul 4th 2008 6:56AM
dude, you dont have to worry about that, because those are pretty much what the U.S. does, not the other countries.
Bob Jul 3rd 2008 2:12PM
As far as MMO Supercomputing power goes, I find EvE online most impressive. Rather than run multiple shards of the game (ie realms in Wow-speak) they have one massive supercomputer cluster that allows all subscribers to play in the same world. It's purported to be the largest supercomputer in the gaming industry. Their subscriber base is obviously much smaller than Wow, so I'm not suggesting Blizz could pull this off (or even should... can you imagine trying to farm primals with 30,000+ people online?), but its pretty cool.
http://pc.gamezone.com/news/09_08_06_11_30AM.htm
Taytayflan Jul 3rd 2008 2:24PM
Hmm, I wonder if a capitalistic game (such as WoW) can spark a revolution in China. There's a minimum of 1 million players there, turn them into an army!
grravie Jul 3rd 2008 3:48PM
ummmmmm.....remember tiananmen square?
billokruk Jul 5th 2008 9:10AM
WoW is no more capitalist than anything else in China. In the 70s and 80s with Deng Xiaping they pretty much got rid of communism. The official Chinese policy is basically "whatever economic policy, capitalist or communist, as long as it improves the economy, who cares." So unfortunatly no, China isn't in for a big revolution.
dart Jul 3rd 2008 3:28PM
Is it possible to include a post that even refers to China without any form of off-topic prejudice?
I've still been waiting.
grravie Jul 3rd 2008 3:47PM
what are they running? what does blizzard use in the us and euk? i really would like to know what hardware they are using....
Corazu Jul 3rd 2008 8:05PM
What I find interesting is that around 90% of those clusters are operating at only around 50-60% efficiency, with 2-3 of those (education clusters) operating at around 90% or more...some at around 80% as well.
Anyone have numbers for clusters in the states or europe..would be interesting to see the parallels in performance and efficiency.