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Comment by listic | Hacker News Reader

I wonder if any MMO has tried using specialized hardware accelerators like ASIC or FPGA boards for acceleration of e.g. voxel based physics?

If anything, it's easier to justify running exotic hardware on a server, where its cost will amortize among thousands of players, than it is to expect users to install it on the client. And the game industry has tried physics accelerators for clients (PhysX).

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I suspect H1Z1 to run its server-side phisics simulation on GPUs. Definately not ASIC / FPGA, but still a co-processor ;)

Well, maybe GPUs are good enough and more specialized hardware isn't needed, or does not justify the additional development costs?

It is not only about development costs, but also about hosting costs. As a rule of thumb, when running an MMOG you won't have your own servers in your own office, but will rent them (apiece or as a part of the cloud) from an ISP/CSP. And then it is not about "what you'd like to have", but rather about "what they have". You may find a provider with GPUs (though they're going to be damn expensive), but with ASIC - no way (by definition, as ISPs are only dealing with commodity stuff). Hosting with FPGAs might exist in theory, but I've never heard of it. Of course, there are also colo options where you can host pretty much your own servers, but they're usually too much headache to deal with - and too expensive too :-(.

Yes, there is colocation. It is too much headache to deal for me, on my own, but if someone is using it (it exists for a reason, right?), I expect the companies operating MMO games to be one of them. World of Warcraft costs $200M worth of infrastructure [1] (annually?) including salaries; surely you can afford colocation, as well as whatever you need, for such kind of invoice?

[1] https://www.nethosting.com/world-of-warcraft-case-study/

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