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Liquid sky... how do they do it?
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Liquid sky... how do they do it?

according to this article: http://venturebeat.com/2016/08/17/liquidsky-aims-to-revive-cloud-gaming-with-modernized-service/

LiquidSky uses one Nvidia graphics card to support 128 users on a cloud service. Any ideas on how they do that?

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Comments

  • FranciscoFrancisco Top Host, Host Rep, Veteran

    likely use either XEN or VMWARE which both support 'vgpu' and then you need to use a nvidia video card that costs $5k sorta deal. KVM doesn't support vGPU yet but there's VIRTIO-GPU that's supposed to support it at some point.

    Francisco

    Thanked by 2vimalware deadbeef
  • do you know which nvidea card could handle that many gl viewports?

  • jarjar Patron Provider, Top Host, Veteran

    These services are starting to look like nearly vaporware. I preordered one just like it over a year ago.

  • I couldn't get VMWare Workstation to pass on the card. It kept virtualising it, so meh, slash that off the list.

  • @jarland said:
    These services are starting to look like nearly vaporware. I preordered one just like it over a year ago.

    Was it leap computing? I jumped ship a while ago.

  • @AdamM said:
    LiquidSky uses one Nvidia graphics card to support 128 users on a cloud service. Any ideas on how they do that?

    It's based on the S3 Trio.

    Thanked by 1Maounique
  • jarjar Patron Provider, Top Host, Veteran

    @Dextronox said:

    @jarland said:
    These services are starting to look like nearly vaporware. I preordered one just like it over a year ago.

    Was it leap computing? I jumped ship a while ago.

    Yeah. They're still active and exist, but it seems like they're just not able to get off the ground. I think they all might be learning why onlive failed early, and holding off to make a perfect strategy.

    Amazon GPU is probably what they should focus on at this point, dynamically scale cost based on demand.

    Thanked by 1alown
  • pbgbenpbgben Member, Host Rep

    @AdamM said:
    according to this article: http://venturebeat.com/2016/08/17/liquidsky-aims-to-revive-cloud-gaming-with-modernized-service/

    LiquidSky uses one Nvidia graphics card to support 128 users on a cloud service. Any ideas on how they do that?

    Uses CitrixXenDesk with an Nvidia GRID as the GPU, they're designed to pass through to the hypervisor as multiple separate GPU's so that you can run many VM's with their own "Dedicated" GPU core. The 128 is a marketing number, I would doubt that is possible with what they're promising.

    See this blog on how it works (vGPU)
    https://www.citrix.com/blogs/2015/11/06/nvidia-m60-support-on-xenserver/

    See this for XenDesktop (What they use to provide this service)
    http://www.nvidia.com/object/xen-desktop.html

    See this as... Well, I was blessed to play with one of these units :P

  • pbgbenpbgben Member, Host Rep

    @Dextronox said:

    @jarland said:
    These services are starting to look like nearly vaporware. I preordered one just like it over a year ago.

    Was it leap computing? I jumped ship a while ago.

    Onlive?

    Thanked by 1Dormeo
  • pbgbenpbgben Member, Host Rep

    Also, I have the files that run the local UI on the platform. If you'd like to decompile and share then PM.

  • Guessing that 128 users means 128 monthly users, not 128 concurrent users. There will likely be 8-16 users max per card concurrently.

  • mailcheapmailcheap Member, Host Rep
    edited December 2016

    What about the latency? This is the biggest hurdle for cloud gaming; Most gamers wouldn't want anything more than 5 ms.

    Pavin.

    Thanked by 1Dormeo
  • ClouviderClouvider Member, Patron Provider

    @mailcheap said:
    What about the latency? This is the biggest hurdle for cloud gaming; Most gamers wouldn't want anything more than 5 ms.

    Pavin.

    This server GPU cards aren't made for gaming but for complicated math tasks.

  • interesting to see how this model works out, has anyone used liquidsky? reviews?

  • VPNshVPNsh Member, Host Rep

    @AdamM said:
    interesting to see how this model works out, has anyone used liquidsky? reviews?

    I've been using it for a few days, but only for a turn-based game that doesn't require decent latency. I'll be trying a couple of FPS games tomorrow and shall let you know how they perform then.

    It would be worth your while checking their locations, to ensure that one is physically close to you.

    Thanked by 1Dormeo
  • blackblack Member
    edited December 2016

    I used to have onapp, which worked pretty well for single player games. That was almost 5 years ago so the technology could've matured a lot more since then.

  • I've actually looked into the task manager and I saw Xen guest processes. The DCs are Softlayer (at least for Dallas)

  • mailcheapmailcheap Member, Host Rep

    @Clouvider said:

    @mailcheap said:
    What about the latency? This is the biggest hurdle for cloud gaming; Most gamers wouldn't want anything more than 5 ms.

    Pavin.

    This server GPU cards aren't made for gaming but for complicated math tasks.

    Most games run similar to GTX Titan X on Quadro cards; I think it was Linus who made a video about it recently.

    Pavin.

  • ClouviderClouvider Member, Patron Provider

    @mailcheap said:

    @Clouvider said:

    @mailcheap said:
    What about the latency? This is the biggest hurdle for cloud gaming; Most gamers wouldn't want anything more than 5 ms.

    Pavin.

    This server GPU cards aren't made for gaming but for complicated math tasks.

    Most games run similar to GTX Titan X on Quadro cards; I think it was Linus who made a video about it recently.

    Pavin.

    That's not what I meant. What I mean is, you don't sell servers or VMs with a GPU for the purpose of playing games remotely.

  • pbgbenpbgben Member, Host Rep

    @Clouvider said:

    @mailcheap said:

    @Clouvider said:

    @mailcheap said:
    What about the latency? This is the biggest hurdle for cloud gaming; Most gamers wouldn't want anything more than 5 ms.

    Pavin.

    This server GPU cards aren't made for gaming but for complicated math tasks.

    Most games run similar to GTX Titan X on Quadro cards; I think it was Linus who made a video about it recently.

    Pavin.

    That's not what I meant. What I mean is, you don't sell servers or VMs with a GPU for the purpose of playing games remotely.

    Typically, this is true. But nothing is done untill its done. Right?

    The K2 cards they're using are not designed for gaming, that doesn't mean they cant be used for gaming though. They perform fine if used for gaming.

    Thanked by 1Clouvider
  • @jarland said:
    These services are starting to look like nearly vaporware. I preordered one just like it over a year ago.

    If you choose a plan and pay them you can immediately create servers.

    I signed up for the Pay-as-You-Go plan and paid $5 for 10 SkyCredits (10 hours). They provid a LiquidSky client to access your "SkyComputer".

    SkyComputer

    A screenshot of the device manager:

    Device Manager

    The GPU GRID K280Q is a vGPU from Nvidia GRID K2. A screenshot from Nvidia control panel:

    System Information

    I tried running GPU-Z but the system crashed each time I opened it.

    Anvil disk benchmarks:

    Anvil

    The server has 3 cores, 8GB RAM and a 100GB disk (Gamer and Unlimited plans have 500GB and 1TB disks).

    I wanted to try out a game quickly, so I downloaded Doom 3 demo. There was some tearing initially but switching to fullscreen fixed it. Games can be downloaded via Steam or directly from the Internet but they dislike torrents. Unused credits roll over to the next month and are capped at 720. The disk is retained if you login once in every 7 days.

    I tested this on an 8Mbps ADSL connection that had a latency of 18-20ms to this server and I must say the experience was a satisfactory.

    Thanked by 4VPNsh jar Maounique vfuse
  • blackblack Member
    edited December 2016

    @jesin can you try a multiplayer game like csgo? What's the latency like?

    Do you know if they cap FPS to 30 or 60 @ 1080p? What about higher resolutions like 3k/4k?

  • pbgbenpbgben Member, Host Rep

    @black said:
    @jesin can you try a multiplayer game like csgo? What's the latency like?

    Do you know if they cap FPS to 30 or 60 @ 1080p? What about higher resolutions like 3k/4k?

    I would not recommend laying FPS Multiplayer games. Latency is a big player in those games. Single player fps is fine and most other game types too. I see this as a platform for people addicted to MMO's as they will be able to play anywhere with a 3g> connection.

    My experience was that the FPS to the client was capped, the game was able to achieve whatever fps it liked. They only support 720 and 1080 at this time, and I would bet they will stay with those as the compression of the video stream they're transmitting back to the client is the limiting factor. Also, the client is stuck to a aspect ratio, I could not go full screen on a 4:3 display.

  • pbgben said: My experience was that the FPS to the client was capped, the game was able to achieve whatever fps it liked.

    Do you remember / know what it was capped to?

  • its a radio button that toggles 30/60

  • pbgbenpbgben Member, Host Rep

    @black said:

    pbgben said: My experience was that the FPS to the client was capped, the game was able to achieve whatever fps it liked.

    Do you remember / know what it was capped to?

    This was on the high 2credits/hr plan (May be the same GPU power but with twice the cpu/ram)

  • I see they have a datacenter in Mexico, so it seems they use softlayer.

    i will try it later at home.

  • MaouniqueMaounique Host Rep, Veteran

    I wanted to test it too, doubting it will really work, however, the prices are pretty steep for me. Unfortunately, I expect the MMOs to ban datacenter ranges in most cases sooner or later and I do not see another usage, single player is not really a thing to pay so much for. An ebay laptop for 200 should probably do.

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