OTOY hardware specs announced.

[Alex]

http://www.hpcwire.com/features/AMD-Goes-Native-with-New-Server-Chipsets-60033367.html

“OTOY, the startup that is developing technology it hopes will enable real-time, high quality graphics to be streamed over the Web to your browser, is building with the high end of just about everything AMD makes. They are building a 240 processor (1,440 Istanbul cores) cluster with 480 FireStream graphics cards (4 per node, 2 per CPU). The cluster will be built from Supermicro 2P blades, using the SR5690 high end chipset. The 5690 can scale up to 8 sockets on a board, but I don't see that configuration being practical in anything but custom builds for highly-targeted customers”

One can see that each one of these has about 1.25 trillion logic transistors in it. That’s roughly the equivalent of 2500 PS3’s or 360s (yeah 360 has just a little more compute logic in it than PS3- you shouldn’t be surprised.) I am thinking it’s a good guess that each of these could hold 10000 subscribers as only a fraction would be online at once. Each of these systems could bring in 2-5 million a year. I think 2.5 million is the sweetspot. Now what is Onlive using? My guess is Onlive won’t say because it can’t match this. That’s going to be tough for Nvidia because it likes to brag unless it really can't match it.

[ryanswo07]

There are two things off the top of my head that I see wrong with this. 1) I could care less how many logic transistors there are if the game list is sub-par. This is really the first actual info that has come out on Otoy since most of their stuff has been demos. They haven't announced a game list as far as I can tell, and there is no mention of a beta or release date. When you go to their website, you just get a picture that says "Soon". That's a great way to get people interested, right? This brings me to my second point. 2) Whether Onlive succeeds or not is paramount for Otoy. If Onlive is good, people will pick up on the service leaving Otoy without many subscribers. If Onlive fails, people will be extremely wary of other cloud gaming companies and then Otoy will have few subscribers.

[AlexTheLion]

Moved to "Other Video Games Discussion" where it belongs.

[Alex]

No Onlive only demonstrates a synergistic model as does Gaikai. They do show how instantly pervasive the platform will be.

Gaikai:
Legacy games everywhere for a lower prices or a lower price. Developers pay less, gamers pay less and more people have access.

Onlive:
We spare you the expense and aggravation of having to acquire and maintain a high end gaming PC and we make he system much more available. We also make accessing the games much more affordable.

Otoy
We let you play on the same hardware used to make the movie. Just the kind, grade and size of the memory is a massive leap. But movies even as preambles are game spoilers. The real revolution, which is there right from the start, is when the Fusion Render Cloud (oh yes AMD is doing the marketing) – the expansive power of a true cloud platform meets crowd sourced plot and narrative- as in the WoW of the very near future. Then what happens is History and the movie becomes a mere artifact, an embellishment.

Activision
Activision already get this, even their we established company name seems to anticipate this. WoW already contains the seeds but the cloud takes it mainstream. The one area in all of gaming that going forward will not be quickly subject to absolute commoditization under cloud subscription are crowd sourced/driven environments like WoW. Services as exchanges will face strong competition but uniqueness will go to interactive worlds. It so far beyond things like Face Book its unreal. To slow WoW as it is took an act of the Chinese government, imagine the system getting access to 350 million screens. 10 million players 2500 moderators in a communication storm, what will it be tomorrow? The worlds are the IP of tomorrow. The movie and the single player game just won’t be compelling. The WoW type world will guaranteed be the top of the content heap, as stuff like Natal gets folded it will certainly push out sports. And why not, I never thought much of a set up where people sit there and stare at sports where they could be doing it.

[Lord Xenu]

Otoy is going to be crap. Besides, the title sounds like something a kid just shouldn't be playing with.

[Alex]

Granted in referring to WoW above I realize its a back of the head scroller and you can't even duck or crawl. I personally find something like the 1992 Ultima Underworld 1 more compelling much more immersive- first person ultimately has more potential that 3rd person.

But as to the problem. OTOY is a platform that can be offered to firms like Onlive. It would be surprising to see AMD launch their own service. OnLive could just as easily get such a service from Intel and Onlive does buy from both ATI (AMD) and Nvidia and presumable Intel. One would hope they've been able to remain hardware neutral. I don't know.

The problem is people don't want recycled PC technology they want a true cloud platform they want enterprise ecconomies of scale and they should have it. No one for instance wants to limited by the size of an optical disk or the speed of the kind of HDD or memory one could find in a PC.

OnLive needs to indicated a commitment to offering the best hardware/software, social group, play environment for the best price and following that whereever it leads. Even if its the present reality the public shouldn't be hearing about PCs connected by LAN cables. The really shouldn't be hearing the word server either- that's a blind deaf and dumb rack unit powered by an Intel 486 and an old hard drive. They shouldn't be thinking mainframe. They should be thinking massive super computer, something that looks at least as fancy as yesterday's Connection Machine.

OnLive had to be careful about stepping on toes and over promising so they had to cool it but they can't do that for too long and once the product is out they've got to fix the vision. Intel now is investing in its own service GameTree for sending subcription gaming straight to HDTVs. To me the key is making sure that advertising and sponship isn't allowed to sneak in, its about keeping as much corruption out as possible. People were stupid enough to allow cable to sneak in advertising but the HDTVs that allow for this are open, its the internet after all. They are open to competition. But as far as the basic approach even Kojima has said its going to be people connecting to super computers. So people get it.

The prohibition on advertising and dirty sponship arrangements is going to be huge. People don't want nielsen watching them in the living room because Natal is on. Flash attempts to allow companies to turn on your camera and mic without necessarily notifying you. So MS in particular is going to be very agressive in how they handle this. Only the US has idiotic ideas about people not having privacy everyother 1st and 2nd world country is more agressive about the intersection of privacy and commerce right down to considering credit reporting to be (accurately) financial gossip and making it illegal.

[hd5boros]

While Onlive is focused on providing current games, Otoy has its own game engine which created some very impressive virtual world footage back in 2007. I can only imagine what the Fusion Render Cloud is creating now.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/11/liveplace-to-launch-photo-realistic-virtual-world-rendered-in-the-cloud/

[Alex]

Otoy is going to be crap. Besides, the title sounds like something a kid just shouldn't be playing with.

What Perlman did and said at Columbia make me think that AMD will end up as a subcontractor for On Live's host. I doubt On Live would lockself in too much to one host. It would probably be a limited time contract at best. They'd want to be able to get the lowest price access to what ever AMD/Intel/IBM had to offer.

[preston]

I understand what a super computer is.... and the "SPECS" you describe from AMD is a garbage CPU Tower btw does that even reach 5 pekaflops? and XBOX and ps3 have the same computing logic they both have the IBM "C" Cell a xbox is a ps3 only difference is the competive drives between HD and BLU-ray and the graphic card companies using cards over 5 years old(nvidia ps3 ati xbox).... so when you say it's so many "x" xbox or ps3 put together is a lie and garbage i've taken 1st 2nd 3rd gen systems apart (22 xbox , 49 ps3) and non of them have the same components they are lucky that they are not being sued like what happen with DELL and HP. false advertisement. To stay ontop of the subject at hand AMD has started to "market" aka scam basic NET consumers and SPORTS watchers via commericals during games and man channels. The only time this idea ever worked was in the late 90's and it was called "SEGA Channel" and even then the limitations on bandwidth with beta CABLE technology was a little bit dubious.

This is an ATTEMPT to fade out the PC... because the XBOX and ps3 hit the halfway line it is time to employ a new gaming system to make money even if its garbage.... for an example between the disk and cartiridge fight of PS1 and n64 came the DREAMCAST which horrible failed but it did have the first console to go online.... not counting the other gimmicks like R.E.A.L TV or that one thing called a 3do not the jaguar the system after that never made it from infomericals ...... So, consumers and game-o-holics go purchase an old lga775 drop a quad core in it get performance ram clocked @ 1066 OC your FSB to 533 and run TRI-SLI mode with a RAID5 HD setup cost 500 dollars and if your anti-intel get the AMD competive which is a x6 core same price. go to a community college and take policital science along with buisness and marketing and you will see over the fascade these companies are trying to PLAY US..... since racketeering is illegal the gaming companies have made a truce that alloted time-shares of who should be on top of the market.... CEO of NVIDIA and ATI are playing golf to figure out how they can pay off that new car with 16 cylinders and a HP o meter in the dash 1001 HP :|

so repo haters i have aspergers and dont care about gram and specially spelling cause as a security coder and a cheat-coder i make a good leaving selling private hacks to games.... so have a good life OTOY OnLIVE ect ect sega channel wannabes waste the gamers time some more.... they could of made the best game of the PC instead of making a washed up idea come ashore. and KUDOS to ALEX he has a head on his shoulder.

[THE FUTURE]

While Onlive is focused on providing current games, Otoy has its own game engine which created some very impressive virtual world footage back in 2007. I can only imagine what the Fusion Render Cloud is creating now.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/11/liveplace-to-launch-photo-realistic-virtual-world-rendered-in-the-cloud/
OnLive is working on games that can be run on only their high-end hardware. Didn't you ever see the Mova/Geni4 example? These games are coming.


(massive neverending blob of text)
Welcome to the forums. Also, your first post is one massive neverending blob of text and as such I find it to be unreadable and didn't even attempt to actually read it.

[eguun]

Interresting post and topic here Alex, cheers!

Agree with the future: preston welcome here!
Please note that we are very OK with people using punctuation and line breaks to ventilate their text in order to avoid large undigest blobs heavily loaded with techs details.

[Saieno]

Preston, you're so wrong in so many ways that even I don't have the time nor the patience to go through each and every fallacy. All I can really say is educate yourself.

Then we have this little gem spout from you:

so repo haters i have aspergers and dont care about gram and specially spelling

I have aspergers as well, and it certainly doesn't give you an excuse to come in here spouting bullshit, nor does it give you free reign to act like an asshole. Wipe the foam from your mouth and think before you start babbling. Thanks...

[preston]

thanks for the welcome. I will use fragmented sentences in the future with line breaks :P

saieno aspergers is an asshole syndrome allowing "us" type to obtain lots of information and pretty much decode it backwards giving "us" to others the since of bashing or downing some hatorade. So, I will take your social que as a welcome to the forum.

As for an education I haven't been in college since the UofA. I was 17 years old and obtain my Bachelors in Computer Science and minor in Political Science, does career school count? If so my A+ certification is good. And I do have a fingerprint card for teaching my students since they are minors. Also, have tons of certs from cwnp to acp. I am well educated which doesn't mean I did to act educated. :twisted: so play some wheel of fortune

"I'd like to buy a vowel, Pat"

I _wn y_u , y_u F_B N__b :wacko:

[Saieno]

If you do in fact have all of those certifications and education, and you still are this clueless then I'd say it was a waste of money. If you're a teacher I'd really like to know which school, as I feel horrible for your students and would rather they had a teacher who knew what they were talking about.

[blackryn0]

/ignore preston

[KicknGuitar]

This is where it is headed :lock1:
Please keep personal attacks/comments out.