Chunk generator performance survey

[ThuGie]

Well got windows 7 64bit,
CPU: AMD A8-3850 (Quad-Core) - one was in use when i did the test though doubt it will cause such a difference.
Ram: DDR3 (8GB)
MotherBoard:?? GA-A75-D3H(doubt this helps though :p)

So you tell me if its so low end that it should run this bad..

[xoft]

I don't know that much about AMD CPUs, but if it's a quadcore, it can't be that bad. And with DDR3 the results should be much better.

Would you be willing to run a profiled version of the server? Can you compile one for yourself, or need help? I'd quite like to know where the bottleneck is.

[ThuGie]

uhmz if you give me some smaill details on how to compile one .
I can compile mc-server fine so just tell me what to change .

[xoft]

I'm supposing you're compiling with MSVC 2008 for Windows. If you're compiling with MSVC 2010, you need to open and convert the 2008's solution file instead of the 2010's. The 2008's solution file has all the details configured.

First you need to install MS Standalone Profiler, the tool that does the actual profiling and provides the libraries needed. http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/...x?id=18277

Then in the MSVC IDE, go to Build (Alt+B) -> Configuration manager (O) and select "Release profiled" as the active solution configuration in the top left combobox. Close the dialog, compile.

Now you want to delete your $/world/region contents so that running the server will generate the spawn area. But do not run the server directly nor from within MSVC IDE.

Finally in the $/VC2008 folder there is a script file, profile_run.cmd. You need to run this script instead. It prepares the profiler, then runs the server, waits for it to finish and finally generates the reports. You may need to edit this script before running so that it contains proper path to the standalone profiler (pt variable). Also in the last line of the script you may want to change the path "c:\programovani\symbols" to an existing path where the profiler will download symbols for MS DLLs used.

This will give you a MCServer_profiledata.vsp file and lots of MCServer_profiledata_*.csv files in the svn root folder. I'm interested in the MCServer_profiledata_CallerCalleeSummary.csv file. If you want, you can also view its contents with the tool written on CodeProject: http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/1446...udio-for-F

I guess I'll write up a wiki page for this

[xoft]

Finally made Release build work on the Raspberry Pi

Unmodified RasPi hardware, CPU @ 700 MHz, RAM integrated into CPU, 224 MB available to the CPU
Official raspbian image, unmodified
About 10 chunks per second generated.
What's worse, though, only about 15 chunks per second through the lighting thread, and yet unmeasured number of chunks through the zlib compression.

But, I'm glad to say, MCServer is totally viable on the RasPi

[xoft]

Any luck on the profiled build, ThuGie?

[ThuGie]

Hey,

I still check the site but havent had the time to try it out sorry,
Atm its 5:18 am going to bed have to wakeup in a few hours.. this sucks .
Wil try and report when i got time though i havent forgoten .

[NiLSPACE]

hey xoft i just had an idea. it is gonna be huge and you surely don't want to add it becouse it so huge but i want to say it. what if MC-Server supported CUDA and/or GPGPU. it would make MC-Server much faster. minecraft doesn't use the graphic card so MC-Server could use it for for example chunk generation

[xoft]

You might not believe it, but I have considered that as soon as I started writing the new generator architecture. I didn't know anything about GPU programming at that time, so I did a little research, and the results are not good: There is no good standard that would be generally compatible with every gfx card. CUDA only works with nVidia cards and ATI has some other API. Now, we want to run on other devices, too - typically, internet servers in ISP server-housing don't have gfx cards at all. Raspberry Pi has a gfx chip, but doesn't provide the programming API. And so forth. So there's just no way to make this solution universal. Hence, it's not worth writing (yet).

I think the overall performance is good enough for now, so that we don't need to go this way immediately.

[NiLSPACE]

i thougt that it (maybe) would be possible if MC-Server detects if, or what kind of graphic card it uses and if it is compatible. and if it is compatible it uses the graphic card but that you can toggle it off in settings.ini (ATI uses GPGPU btw)