The Journal of the Institute of Internet, Broadcasting and Communication (한국인터넷방송통신학회논문지)

The Institute of Internet, Broadcasting and Communication (한국인터넷방송통신학회)
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Priority-based Group Task Scheduling Policy for a Multiplayer Real-time Game Server

다중사용자용 실시간 게임 서버를 위한 우선순위 기반 그룹 태스크 스케쥴링 정책

  • Kim, Jin-Hwan (Dept. of Multimedia Engineering, Hansung University)
  • 김진환 (한성대학교 멀티미디어공학과)
  • Received : 2012.02.27
  • Accepted : 2012.08.10
  • Published : 2012.08.31
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Abstract

Multiplayer, real-time games are a kind of soft real-time systems because a game server has to respond to requests from many clients within specified time constraints. Client events have different timeliness and consistency requirements according to their nature in the game world. These requirements lead to different priorities on CPU processing. Events can be divided into different groups, depending on their consistency degree and priority. To handle these events with different priority and meet their timing constraints, we propose a priority-based group task scheduling policy in this paper. The number of clients or events requested by each client may be increased temporarily. In the presence of transient overloading, the game server needs to allocate more CPU bandwidth to serve an event with the higher priority level preferentially. The proposed scheduling policy is capable of enhancing real-time performance of the entire system by maximizing the number of events with higher priority completed successfully within their deadlines. The performance of this policy is evaluated through extensive simulation experiments.

게임 서버는 명시된 시간 내에 많은 클라이언트들의 요청을 처리해야 하기 때문에 다중 사용자용 실시간 게임들은 일종의 연성 실시간 시스템이다. 클라이언트 이벤트들은 게임 세계의 본질에 따라 상이한 시간 요건과 일관성 요건을 가지고 있다. 이러한 요건들은 CPU 처리시 상이한 우선순위를 유발하게 되며 이벤트들은 일관성과 우선순위 정도에 따라 여러 그룹으로 분류될 수 있다. 우선순위가 상이한 이벤트들의 시간적 요건을 충족하기 위하여 본 논문에서는 우선순위 기반 그룹 태스크 스케쥴링 정책이 제시된다. 클라이언트의 수나 클라이언트가 발생시키는 이벤트들의 수는 일시적으로 증가할 수 있다. 일시적인 과부하가 발생한 경우에 게임 서버는 우선순위가 높은 이벤트들을 우선적으로 처리하기 위하여 더 많은 CPU 대역폭을 할당할 필요가 있다. 제시된 스케쥴링 정책은 우선순위가 높은 이벤트일수록 종료시한내에 성공적으로 종료되는 수를 최대화함으로써 전체 시스템의 실시간적 성능을 향상시킬 수 있다. 이 정책의 성능은 다양한 실험을 통하여 평가되었다.

Keywords

References

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