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Bigfoot Found, Creates Network Accelerator
by Chris Remo, Mar 08, 2006 12:15pm PSTBack in the early 90s, dedicated sound cards began popping up on the market, offering better sound quality and MIDI synthesis than existing integrated sound solutions. In the late 90s, similar progress was made with standalone graphics accelerator cards. These days, every dedicated gamer has a video accelerator and most have sound cards. Recently, AGEIA announced that it is developing the first standalone physics accelerator card, the PhysX chip. Early footage and claims regarding the PhysX chip have been attractive to many gamers, but many also question how it's going to affect PC gaming--certainly not the cheapest hobby--to be expected to buy so many separate cards. Now, startup Bigfoot Networks has just announced that it has obtained $4M in funding to release its first standalone network accelerator card.
The company will bring to market the world's first Gaming Network Accelerator card, which will allow online gamers to play their favorite games with less lag. Lag is the number one problem in online video games today, and Bigfoot Networks is the only company in the world whose sole mission is to fight lag. "Bigfoot Networks products will infuse online gaming with blazing speed, making them a ton more fun," says Harlan Beverly, inventor, co-Founder, and CEO of the company. "We are to online games what 3D video cards are to graphics: essential. Eventually, we plan to completely eliminate the dreaded lag monster."Bigfoot plans to announce more details about its card at conferences such as E3 in coming months, with the first product being brought to market this summer. The company's website also has a whitepaper on the causes of lag (PDF link), arguing that in today's world of broadband connections, latency itself is not the primary, or even a significant, cause of lag. Gamerati has a short interview about Bigfoot with company CEO Harland Beverly.
Comments
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I'm not aware of many intergrated on-board sound cards on motherboards back in the early 90s?
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I'm actually not TOTALLY averted to the general idea, but the implementation is completely ludicrous! Spot those buzz-words! 'infuse' and 'blazing'.. WOW!
I think my idea is much more feasible. We dont need a seperate processor to handle network stacks and packet management. It makes much more sense to have a 'Gaming Network Protocol' which is a simple installable TCP stack (like the TCP/IP windows stack) running in kernel mode, which is highly optimized to reduce any SYSTEM lag caused from crappy game code or a slow PC etc.. Latency will still be inevitable of course. You can't get from Australia (where I am) to the U.S. in anything less than 100ms :-)
Hell with multi-core processors these days, this would probably make more sense than having another network processor installed..
http://aiw2.uspto.gov/.aiw?docid=us20050232298ki&PageNum=2&IDKey=93359293D33C&HomeUrl=http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1%2526Sect2=HITOFF%2526d=PG01%2526p=1%2526u=%25252Fnetahtml%25252FPTO%25252Fsrchnum.html%2526r=1%2526f=G%2526l=50%2526s1=%25252220050232298%252522.PGNR.%2526OS=DN/20050232298%2526RS=DN/20050232298
you?
http://www.freshpatents.com/Early-direct-memory-access-in-network-communications-dt20051020ptan20050232298.php
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or perhaps Co-Ax Cables??
Perhaps this is for LAN PARTIES?? Since the invention of 1Mbps+ High Speed Internet, I haven't been to a Lan Party...
Just WTF are these guys selling?
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How would they get around the physics of distance, speed and time?
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In his paper, he repeatedly points to the inabillity of servers to send enough data to represent the game world accurately. This causes things like rubberbanding when the server eventually manages to send the requested data.
Given that premise, it's likely the card is based around some kind of data compression. Also, maybe jumbo packet support? Thing is, that would require people on both ends to have the cards... and jumbo packets require that all routers the packets pass through support the standard.
My guess is that they'd partner with some MMO/FPS company to release a game with Bigfoot-compatible servers. Players that buy Bigfoot cards would theoretically have a better experience because of the increased data rate between the client and the server. That said, it wouldn't help your reaction time in twich games, though.
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i don't need this.
the physX card - cool, ill check that out for sure, but this sounds like some kind of gimmick.
there is no way to speed up "the internet" with a card for your computer.
how they are going to pull something like this off, i don't know.
They arent trying to impress you. They are trying to get some stupid venture capitalists to buy their tech and get out with mad cash.
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Infinium got something like $63million and other than nice cars and houses for the owners, what are the investors getting out of it? :P
Anyone have a spare million and an idea? I know just the guy to tackle just about anything for that money... me. lol
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Sorry if I am retarded, feel free to flame away if you can answer my query.
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MAGIC DUST AND STUFF MAKES GAMING LESS LAGGY OK?
yeah i'd like to see that...
"In a twitch game, the underlying problem is still too many users in a
game, but the issue is probably bandwidth."
The issue is Bandwidth. BANDWIDTH!!
WOW!
I am so completely at a loss for words..... bandwidth....I just can't stop saying it.... If only we knew...
that website is hideous... with 4mil you think they could afford maybe 1k to make a presentable site.
Pure bullshit to get some funding from idiot VC's who know nothing about it looking to make some money.
Then again, so did Tim Robbins.
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meh, THEY EXIST ALREADY
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So what is causing Lag in today’s world of the
broadband internet connection? Lag is caused by
three main things
............
In summary, Lag has four main causes, one of which
is becoming less and less of an issue.
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maybe it can identify the choke point router, call the ISP backbone provider and leave a message they are slowing down my Quake packet delivery.
The only thing I can see them improving upon would be compression. But I still don't see how that has anything to do with lag. There is no physical way to reduce latency across a link without improving the actual link.
Regardless of what part of your PC is doing the compression/local acks/accelleration...the server could still see things different than you do. The server's view is what matters anyway. Otherwise you would have player A who "feels" like they have no lag while player B who truely doesn't have lag seeing the world two different ways.
Seems like to me this would cause people to seem to get shot where they were standing a split second ago.
Is there really a processor that can't handle whatever "pushlatency" type crap they plan on putting on a seperate card anyway?
Graphics cards were created because the processors were pegged trying to play games...
It reads like it was written by a retarded high school kid who thinks he's going to "do computers" when he grows up.
How would a faster NIC help when the bottleneck is my cable pipe?
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