A gaming framework for a transactional DSM system

Abstract

State-of-the-art middleware like .NET or J2EE offers transparent access to distributed objects and services but lack support for consistency between groups of objects. Distributed Shared Memory (DSM) is an interesting alternative to build distributed applications because it maintains consistency among object groups. Although DSM has been used in the past only for special number crunching programs we expect it to be a good foundation to simplify the development of multi-player games and virtual reality applications. In this paper we present the relevant parts of our transactional DSM operating system (OS). Subsequently, we describe the gaming framework built on top of the DSM system. Finally we evaluate the framework with a sample game.