Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!mips!bismarck!riley
From: riley@mips.COM (Riley Rainey)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: Offending game?
Message-ID: <42222@mips.mips.COM>
Date: 18 Oct 90 20:10:07 GMT
References: <1990Oct17.095033.1034@urz.unibas.ch> <2274@gazette.bcm.tmc.edu> <967@langtry.cs.utexas.edu>
Sender: news@mips.COM
Reply-To: riley@mips.COM (Riley Rainey)
Organization: MIPS Computer Systems, Inc.
Lines: 27

In article <967@langtry.cs.utexas.edu> mayoff@cs.utexas.edu (Robert Mayoff) writes:
>There are two obvious ways, to my knowledge, to write a
>multi-player X game. 
>
>Perhaps the acm author(s) will clarify?
>

acm runs with a single server.  MIPS has some excellent application
profiling tools (pixie), that yield much more precise runtime information
than the standard Unix profiling facilities.  My work indicated that in a
one player configuration with the acm server (acms) on a different machine
than the X server, the acms process needed about 10 percent of the CPU and
the X server was "outta gas".  acms updates flight information every eighth
of a second and transmits a new visual frame to each player every half
second.

This led me to conclude, based on the current resources required, that an
intermediate process that, say, did the 3-D stuff, was going to be excess
baggage.

I use a MIPS RC3260 as the acms server and a MIPS Magnum as the X station.
Both are rated at about 18 SPECmarks.  Different hardware configurations may
yield different conclusions.
-- 
Riley Rainey		Internet: riley@mips.com
MIPS Computer Systems	UUCP:	  {ames,prls,decwrl,pyramid}!mips!riley
Dallas, Texas		Phone:	  (214) 770-7989