Supercomputing platform built for gaming

Scruff

This would be brilliant, if we ever got afforadable high speed, low ping internet access that is

Article from New Scientist

A distributed supercomputer games network now in development could for the first time enable more than a million people to play graphics-rich games together via the internet.

When the "Butterfly Grid" is up and running, its creators say that online games will run faster, be more reliable and may never need to shut down for maintenance.
Online games currently rely on dedicated servers. These may struggle to allocate memory and bandwidth to all players trying to connect at any one time, resulting in game play lag. Sometimes this means the same game is split onto a number of different servers.

But with the Butterfly Grid, the network will automatically allocate more memory and bandwidth from many different banks of servers to whichever game requires it most.

The system's developers say this would allow millions of users to connect simultaneously, rather than just hundreds of thousands as is currently possible. It would also make it possible to add new hardware without stopping a game.

Butterfly has developed the software that will allow any game to plug into any the network. Computer games programmers need only include the relevant code in their game to make use of the Butterfly grid. Butterfly will take a cut of the revenue earned from online gaming for providing the service. Its code is designed to work on many different platforms, including handheld computers.

deRanged

funny thing is I was(am) hoping to do something similar as part of my phd. looks like I'm not the only one with the idea!