Class 6 servers planned for Second Life

by Tateru Nino Sep 27th 2008 at 4:00PM

Filed under: News items, Second Life, Virtual worlds

Linden Lab apparently is in the planning stages for an upcoming rollout of new, "Class 6" hardware for Second Life, representing a step up from existing Class 5 server systems. Little is actually known about the roll-out, but they appear to be part of another project to migrate the server systems from 32-bit to 64-bit. How far along in that planning they may be is uncertain.

With SLS-1.24 server code still in the process of being stabilized, we wouldn't even begin to venture predictions as to when 64-bit server software or Class 6 servers will make it into testing, let alone into actual production. We assume it will be some time yet before the hardware is even purchased.

Are you a part of the most widely-known collaborative virtual environment or keeping a close eye on it? Massively's Second Life coverage keeps you in the loop.

If we had to pick a number, however, we'd normally suggest the start of Q4 2008 -- since that's 1 October, however, our backup prognostication would be the beginning of November, say around Monday the third of the month.

It's a sure bet that there will be a pricing change as a result of wholesale purchase and deployment of Class 6 hardware, but we cannot begin to speculate on the direction or magnitude of such a change.

It is possible that class 6 hardware may roll out to the Second Life mainland (Linden-estate) before they become available to other estate owners.

Linden Lab doesn't do anything very quickly, however, so we would be unsurprised if the roll-out didn't take place for another full quarter. Nonetheless, Class 6 hardware is definitely coming down the pipe -- it's just hard to say when.

How do you think Class 6 systems and 64-bit computing will affect the grid, land-pricing and land-availability?

[UPDATE]

Linden Lab is denying any plans for class six servers. Alternatively, you could go check the office hours transcripts where class six servers were discussed. Whichever story is true, there's obviously a communications problem at the Lab.

Actually, no. That denial was from February. We got our wires crossed this time!

Tags: linden-lab, second-life, sl-class5, sl-class6, virtual-worlds

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Rooke said on 4:48PM 9-27-2008

It seems like a good thing to be going to 64 bit since the servers will run faster and be able to address more memory. Faster and more memory means greater simultaneous support for more avatars, more prims, more scripts, etc. It's a good thing. :D

As far as the grid goes, it should also be a good thing seeing that everything on the sim side of things will be faster.

Price-wise, things shouldn't change too much as (I'm guessing) that the processors in the Class 5 servers should be able to support 64bit, so only an upgrade of OS and possibly motherboards would need replacing. They might charge for more memory over 4GB per server.

Erbo Evans said on 6:24PM 9-27-2008

You're right, it's inevitable. For one thing, the old Class 5's are moving down below the "sweet spot" of price/performance. Dual/dual servers are giving way to dual/quads as quad-core chips become more highly available, and we're starting to see chips with more cores being sampled by Intel and AMD. All these, of course, are 64-bit capable chips, so it'll make sense to put a 64-bit OS on them. And that means the server software will have to be recompiled as 64-bit for optimum performance...which may take some time, if the code needs to be made "64-bit clean." I wouldn't be surprised if significant parts of one or more of LL's test grids (maybe not Aditi, but one of their internal ones) is now running 64-bit as they work out the kinks.

(Heck, my own office workstation is now an Intel dual/quad with 8 Gb RAM and a pair of 500Gb hard drives. Time marches on...)