Cloud for Gaming

Abstract

DefinitionCloud for Gaming refers to the use of cloud computing technologies to build large-scale gaming infrastructures, with the goal of improving scalability and responsiveness, improve the user's experience and enable new business models. What is cloud computing?Cloud computing is a service model where the provider offers computation and storage resources to customers on a "pay as you go" basis [12]. The essential features of a cloud computing environment are:On-demand self service: the ability to provide computing capabilities (e.g., CPU time, network storage) dynamically, as needed, without human intervention;Broad network access: resources can be accessed through the network by client platforms using standard mechanisms and protocols;Resource pooling: virtual and physical resources can be pooled and assigned dynamically to consumers, according to their demand, using a multi-tenant model;Elasticity: from the customers point of view, the provider offers unlimited resources that can be purchased in any quantity at any time;Measured service: cloud resource and service usages are optimized through a pay-per-use business model, and are monitored, controlled and reported transparently to both their customer and provider.The typical interaction between cloud provider and customer works as follows: the customer connects to a "cloud marketplace" through a Web interface, and selects the type and amount of the resources she needs (e.g., some virtual servers with given number of CPU cores, memory and disk space). The resources are allocated from a large pool that is physically hosted on some big datacenter managed by the cloud provider. Once instantiated, the resources are accessed by the customer through the network. Additional resources can be acquired at a later time, e.g., to cope with an increase of the workload, and released when no longer needed. The customer pays a price that depends on the type and amount of resources requested (e.g., CPU cores speed, memory size, disk space), and on the duration of their usage.0 The publisher version of this book chapter is available at http://dx