Server 6 sims

Anyone know where they are on the SL timeline map?

I have heard no mutterings about a new server class; the Class 5 machines are already pretty substantial. If we see a hardware change, it would likely involve a shift to quad-core processors, and it would be to enable LL to run more sims in the same amount of physical space, not to improve performance. I wouldn't be shocked to see a move before the end of the year, but I also wouldn't be shocked not to.

I would expect the next move to be a new platform using two of either quad-core Xeons (either the current ones or upcoming Penryn-based chips) or AMD's upcoming Barcelona, and 8GB RAM. They would run 8 sims on each box; one per processor core, just as they do now. The remaining Class 3 servers would probably be retired; Class 4 will likely hang on for another year.

Another thought: would there be a market for premium private islands, running on heftier servers? If it were possible to substantially increase the number of avatars that could be supported in a sim, some customers might be interested. It would require that the server code be able to take advantage of multiple CPU cores; I don't know if the current code can.

I think the current sim code is designed to work on a single CPU so there would probably need to be some rework to do ubersims..

Do we know that processing power is the gating factor to getting more avatars on a sim? I don't know either way - just asking...

Server 6, heh. Don't ask why, I'm bored....



"We'll leave the bandwidth on for you."

I just had to.

Rhyph, FTW.

I think teh big bottleneck with getting more avatars in a sim is actually teh client computer, not teh server. Unless you have just bought a new computer last week, your PC will probably start slowing down once it tries to draw 60 avatars each with particle bling jewellery and 100s of twisted torii for hair and prim flexi-skirts and scripted xcite parts and so on and so forth.

Problem is that even if cramming more sims on the same machine wouldn't impact CPU load and memory consumption - multi-core CPU's be blessed - there is that thing about bus, network and hard disk transfer bandwidths. So keep your eye on the rest of the server hardware as well.