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They had me until the moment where I read "While our game servers are built more like HFT Quant trading servers" yet they are in the cloud... They clearly have
by SEJeff 11y ago
They had me until the moment where I read "While our game servers are built more like HFT Quant trading servers" yet they are in the cloud... They clearly have no idea what they're talking to regarding finance, where latency matters a whole lot more than throughput.
"HFT Quant Trading Servers" optimize things down to the micro and even nanosecond level from the hardware to the bios all the way up to the networking interconnects and applications + c libraries. Optimization to this level is simply impossible from the cloud, where even with VT and SRIOV, the performance penalty is simply far too high (and measurably so!).
Disclaimer: I'm a technologist who has worked in the "HFT Quant / Electronic Trading" Industry the past 8 or so years. I literally build infrastructure like this for a living.
- happytrails 11y agoSomeone has to be a buzzkill :(
- atom_enger 11y agoBuzzkill or a realist? Personally I prefer when someone more knowledgeable on the topic corrects me about a statement I've made. If the OP is making analogies that aren't comparable, I'd rather know than not so I can dig in with a healthy bit of skepticism.
- corysama 11y agoSEjeff is seriously over-reacting to reject the entire article on the basis of a bad analogy that isn't even central to the material. If the article was pushing this system for use in HFT, that would be bad. But, this is just someone who doesn't work in the field that SEjeff is very, very deeply involved in mentioning that field offhand, in a clumsy way, once.
- ceedan 11y agobingo~
- brianwawok 11y agoSeconded, where is the Solar Flare card bypassing the OS for network ops? (Does that even work in windows? Doubtful)
- benaadams 11y agoUses the Registered Input/Output (RIO) API Extensions in Windows for user mode TCP/IP kernel bypass. PacketDirect is the next step for Server 2016 which moves closer to the NIC https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaXfDjIhn0U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaXfDjIhn0U
- SEJeff 11y agoA followup post on even more detail of this would be incredible if you're able to / have the time. I'm a Linux jockey who simply had no idea modern windows was capable of using hardware this well. Nicely done.
- terry526 11y agoTo be fair, it seems that even MS are a bit surprised about this throughput: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJeWIWkhVow&feature=youtu.be&t=29m5s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJeWIWkhVow&feature=youtu.be...
- accountatwork 11y agoSolarflare isn't the only option for OS bypass. In fact, no major cloud vendor uses Solarflare NICs even for applications where OS bypass is critical because Solarflare is way too expensive for what you get (the retail price is substantially higher than Mellanox, Annapurna back when you could buy those publicly, etc., without discounts, and the volume discount you get with other vendors is more than an order of magnitude larger than the discount Solarflare will give you). The advantage of Solarflare is that it's easy to use, but at the scale large cloud vendors operate at (millions of machines), it's much cheaper to just have a networking staff that can properly operate another vendor's NICs.
- benaadams 11y agoYes, the analogy to HFT trading is a bit clumsy - sorry - what we're saying is that we've borrowed techniques from HFT (especially at the decisioning end) rather than saying our system is suitable for HFT (which it absolutely isn't). Disclaimer: Author of article
- mc_hammer 11y agoits probably fair. gamers "flip their shit" when ping is not steady, and are only happy at ~50ms response times. a 200ms response in video games is usually considered "unplayable".
- btym 11y agoIn any split-second game (and this article literally advertises "real-time twitch combat"), 200 ms is unplayable. With two players of equal skill, it comes down to "who can react quicker", and the 30 ping player will win every time.
- rcarmo 11y agoYep. Loved it when we moved from ISDN to an E1, Quake became a lot more intense for my opponents :)
- vvanders 11y agoTotally depends on the type of game and how the design is structured to deal with latency. See my reference to SubSpace farther down, it's a highly skilled game that can be easily played on a ~250ms latency. The large majority of the game is predicting where the other player will be in ~0.75s and setting things in motion ahead of time to intercept them. Any game based on prediction and designed for smooth re-integration of the game state can be done on latent connections. Heck there's even been some really impressive stuff in the fighting game space involving re-winding gamestate to resolve hits ~0.25s in the past(the original Counter-Strike does this as well, although not as well which is why you'd sometimes see people rubber-band back around a corner when hit).
- 11y ago
- jnbiche 11y ago> They had me until the moment where I read "While our game servers are built more like HFT Quant trading servers" I read that and was hoping they were going to start talking about ring buffers and event sourcing, but no such luck.
- benaadams 11y agoThat's like a secret sauce, post launch; great success, here's how we did it, article - too early for that :)
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- SEJeff 11y agoEveryone is welcome to their own opinion :) I was at Ticketmaster for some time helping build very large load balanced web services which maxed dual 10G links on a regular basis in the early 2000s. I never said I'm any better than anyone or $industry is harder than another industry, so get the chip off of your own shoulder dude. Seriously, take the ego down a notch or five. I said that the statement made regarding HFT was factually incorrect, something you have not done anything to disprove. Trying to push millions of packets over some exotic networking interconnect in as little time as possible is a very hard technical problem, not sure what planet this isn't a technical problem. Working with very bleeding edge new hardware and being in a place where you can build the perfect solutions even if they aren't always inexpensive is quite amazing. Finance is super boring, but the technology behind it is absolutely fascinating. I'm in it for the tech and the seemingly impossible problems, the money is only a small benefit. TL;DNR: Quit being a dick, totally uncalled for. I'm a normal person just like you and everyone else here simply trying to better themselves.