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WoW servers

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4GHZ_or_bust

Now 6GHz or Bust!
Joined
Aug 1, 2002
Location
Michigan
Was looking for something else on WoW game when I found this one: http://www.videogamer.com/pc/wow/news/wow_servers_use_75_000_cpu_cores.html

If you've ever wondered how much computing power is needed to ensure over 11.5 million subscribers can happily take off their clothes and dance around, then wonder no more.

Thursday morning's GDC Austin keynote saw Blizzard Entertainment's J. Allen Brack and Frank Pearce take to the stage to delve deep into the inner workings of the blockbuster MMO.
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According to Pearce, the Blizzard Online network has data centres from Texas to Soul, and monitor over 13,250 server blades. This equates to 75,000 cpu cores and 112.5 terabytes of blade RAM. The Global Network Operations Center even features televisions tuned into weather stations that are used to ensure that conditions at the data centre are up to their standards

With so many players, releasing a patch is no simple task. Patch 1.3 saw 4.7 petabytes of data sent out to players. Brack described the process of patching, which includes testing, as a monumental task.

As an organisation World of Warcraft uses 20,000 computer systems and 1.3 petabytes of storage.

112.5TB of RAM... most people don't even have a single TB of disk storage and we are a long way from seeing 8GB+ as normal configuration. 75,000 cores... You'd have to build a massive drive array to reach 1+ petabyte of disk storage (over 500 2TB drives) not to mention the electric bill for all those computers and for cooling the building.

Info on that web site was Sept 18 of this year. And when you consider these servers are some of the best Blizzard could get (quoted from Blue in response to excessive lag in WG), it makes one wonder how many RAC these servers can do if all were dedicated to seti@home. *pulled numbers out of my butt* the whole server farm could probably do well over 50 million RAC per day.
 
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