Details on EVE Online's server infrastructure

[siculars]

EVE has a single instance world which is a much more difficult problem than what WOW has to deal with. WOW basically caps the total amount of people that can be in one instance (or at least they used to, haven't played in a few years).

It kinda boils down to a massive supercomputer simulation where your limiting factor is the speed, but more specifically latency of communication between servers. Notice how this upgrade brings them far greater internal networking capabilities which should mitigate performance pressure from growth for the time being.

If you look at their hardware you can kinda glimpse how their software stack might function:

TQ Tech Details: (Not the whole system, just what runs TQ)

Servers 64 x IBM HS21 2x Dual Core 3.33GHz CPU's 32GB of RAM Each 1x72GB HDD Each

                2 x IBM X3850 M2's 
                2x Six Core 2.66GHz  
                128GB of RAM
                4 x 146GB HDD

Cores - 280 total Cores - ~1 THz

RAM - 2.3TB of Total RAM

Storage - 4.8TB of Local Storage - 2TB of SSD SAN - 256GB of RAM SAN

Network - Gigabit Ethernet - 4Gb/s Fiber Channel

[sp332]

EVE is also one of the major contributors to Stackless Python. The EVE client and apparently quite a lot of the server-side software are written in Stackless.

[Aaronontheweb]

The WOW dungeons are instanced but the worlds aren't - in WOTLK there used to be a major problem with the new World Battleground (Wintergrasp) where hundreds of players would be playing in it at once and the entire zone would become unusable. Eventually they fixed that by instancing it.

[Aaronontheweb]

Gotta hand it to MMOs when it comes to architecture - they have some very unique problems to deal with. Sending media-heavy data back to a number of widely dispersed clients in real time has to take the cake in my book, not to mention continuously writing that same data back onto a database (you log in the same place as you logged out, don't you?)

I'd imagine the media messages they send to clients are a continuous broadcast of 3D coordinates and audio processing signals for player characters but I honestly have no idea. I'd love to learn more about it.

[seunosewa]

They don't send "media-heavy data" back to clients, actually. All the media comes with your installation DVD. Used to play Eve over dial-up.

[jswinghammer]

Before I had my daughter I played this game all the time. The politics, drama, and complexity of the game are very compelling. Their infrastructure and design always impressed me. Keeping the whole world in one instance makes for a lot more fun when playing with people you know.

[stcredzero]

Also a former player. They do have instances, but they are based on locations, like star systems. I think someone should rewrite the drive mechanics so that instances are attached to reference frames. (Which have a fictional physics upper limit on the number of ships that can join to prevent lag.) This way, a battle could rage in a particular system, but it would consist of many encounters. Such a system would load-balance itself!

[houseabsolute]

I get so used to my tens of thousands of cores that I forget the amazing things that can be done with far less . . . only two hundred cores! Only two terabytes of RAM! Astounding.