Improving Performance of Online Game Services via Graphic Processor: An Empirical Investigation

Abstract

A method for maintaining quality of service in
game servers with excessive users is often done by increasing the
number of game servers. While this method is straightforward,
it demands a number of new machines to be invested without
realizing local utilization of resources available in the current
machines. In this paper, we argue that graphic processor (GPU)
working in parallel with local central processor (CPU) inside
a machine can be a good candidate for reducing the workload,
before attempting to distribute it to the other machines. By using
the empirical study, we investigate in what level the GPU can give
benefits to different types of online game servers. As a result, we
can give suggestion how the GPU should be involved so that the
performance of game services can be improved. We believe that
this result can give benefits to online game developers who may
want to gain performance of their applications without requiring
any extra resources.