[UCI-Calit2] Seminar: Scalable Virtual Worlds

[Anna Lynn Spitzer]

You are invited:

 

Title:                Scalable Virtual Worlds

 

Time:               12:30-1:30 p.m.

 

Date:               Thursday, Dec. 17, 2009

 

Location:         Bren Hall, Room 5011

 

Speaker:         Mic Bowman, principal engineer, Intel Research

 

Abstract:          At the core of most virtual world applications is a
quadratic computation of the set of interactions among avatars (users)
and a shared scene. The computation and associated communication of the
results represents a fundamental barrier to scaling experiences in these
applications. The common solution to the problem is to limit the
interaction among avatars through spatial subdivision or sharding. With
both approaches, the content and shape of the interaction is driven by
the limits of the simulation. In this talk we will describe a virtual
world architecture that is designed to scale interactions among avatars
and the scene without the limits imposed by current subdivision
approaches. We use distributed systems technologies to balance the
simulation load dynamically and to optimize network communication. We
apply graphics technologies to limit the amount of network traffic that
is generated for every client. And we apply information theory to reduce
the overall computation that is required. A prototype of the
architecture based on OpenSim, an open source virtual world platform,
demonstrates significant scalability improvements over existing
approaches.

 

Bio:                  Bowman is a principal engineer in Intel Labs and
manages the Virtual World Infrastructure group.  He received his B.S.
from the University of Montana, and his M.S. and Ph.D. in computer
science from the University of Arizona. He joined Intel's Personal
Information Management group in 1999, where he developed personal
information retrieval applications, context-based communication systems,
and middleware services for mobile applications. In addition, he led the
team that built and deployed the first version of PlanetLab, a global
test bed for networking research. Prior to joining Intel he worked at
Transarc Corp., where he led research teams that developed distributed
search services for the Web, distributed file systems and naming
systems. 

Hosts:              Crista Lopes, ICS and Calit2

 





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