Managing shared state for video games in a networked multi-core environment II

Video Games require a vast array of different computations to present the desired experience. These computations must be completed consistently to make the software responsive to the user. The industry trend towards many separate processors (multi-core) in the same physical device and the mergence of network based ‘cloud’ computing have created many opportunities, but also many challenges for the game industry.

The goal of this project is to create efficient techniques to organize and schedule the computations to take advantage of all the processors available. These techniques must ensure that the results produced correctly and are obtained quickly enough to satisfy responsiveness. Each of these techniques will have a corresponding aspect that allows them to be used by programmers who are not experts in utilizing multiple processors.

While this project focuses on games, the benefits will be applicable to many domains, especially in the emerging field of mobile consumer-oriented applications.

Faculty Supervisor:

Dr. Alexandra Fedorova

Student:

Micah J Best

Partner:

Gaslamp Games

Discipline:

Computer science

Sector:

Digital media

University:

Simon Fraser University