A hybrid edge-cloud architecture for reducing on-demand gaming latency
A hybrid edge-cloud architecture for reducing on-demand gaming latency
复制标题
DOI：
10.1007/s00530-014-0367-z
复制
发表时间：
2014-10-01
影响因子：
3.9
通讯作者：
Rosenberg, Catherine
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Choy, Sharon;Wong, Bernard;Rosenberg, Catherine
云计算最初旨在使用商品硬件提供通用计算，其重点是增加资源整合，以降低成本。因此，它不是特别适合于对延迟高度敏感并且需要专用硬件（诸如图形处理单元）的多媒体应用的要求。现有的云计算基础设施旨在服务于通用工作负载，并通过提供高吞吐量来满足最终用户的需求。在本文中，我们调查使用这种通用的基础设施服务延迟敏感的多媒体应用程序的有效性。特别是，我们研究了按需游戏，也称为云游戏，它有可能改变视频游戏行业。我们通过大规模的测量研究表明，现有的云基础设施无法满足可接受的按需游戏所需的严格延迟要求。此外，我们调查了合并边缘服务器的有效性，边缘服务器是位于终端用户附近的服务器（例如，CDN服务器），以提高最终用户覆盖率。具体来说，我们研究了仅边缘服务器的基础设施和混合基础设施，其中包括使用边缘服务器和云。我们发现，混合基础设施显着提高了最终用户的数量。然而，混合部署中满意的最终用户的数量在很大程度上取决于各种部署参数。因此，我们评估各种策略，确定两个这样的参数，即按需游戏服务器的位置和放置在这些服务器上的游戏。我们发现，通过仔细选择按需游戏服务器和游戏放置在这些服务器上，我们显着增加了基本的随机选择和放置策略的最终用户的数量。
The cloud was originally designed to provide general-purpose computing using commodity hardware and its focus was on increasing resource consolidation as a means to lower cost. Hence, it was not particularly adapted to the requirements of multimedia applications that are highly latency sensitive and require specialized hardware, such as graphical processing units. Existing cloud infrastructure is dimensioned to serve general-purpose workloads and to meet end-user requirements by providing high throughput. In this paper, we investigate the effectiveness of using this general-purpose infrastructure for serving latency-sensitive multimedia applications. In particular, we examine on-demand gaming, also known as cloud gaming, which has the potential to change the video game industry. We demonstrate through a large-scale measurement study that the existing cloud infrastructure is unable to meet the strict latency requirements necessary for acceptable on-demand game play. Furthermore, we investigate the effectiveness of incorporating edge servers, which are servers located near end-users (e.g., CDN servers), to improve end-user coverage. Specifically, we examine an edge-server-only infrastructure and a hybrid infrastructure that consists of using edge servers in addition to the cloud. We find that a hybrid infrastructure significantly improves the number of end-users served. However, the number of satisfied end-users in a hybrid deployment largely depends on the various deployment parameters. Therefore, we evaluate various strategies that determine two such parameters, namely, the location of on-demand gaming servers and the games that are placed on these servers. We find that, through both a careful selection of on-demand gaming servers and the games to place on these servers, we significantly increase the number of end-users served over the basic random selection and placement strategies.