Boosted Metaheuristic Algorithms for QoE-Aware Server Selection in Multiplayer Cloud Gaming

Abstract

Cloud Gaming (CG) provides a high performance and cost-effective solution where players with low-end devices can play high-end games without the need for advanced hardware. A cloud-based video game system offloads all the computational tasks to the cloud. Considering the dynamic nature of game workloads and resource capacity, resource management is still a significant challenge. Since CG is a real-time gaming service, graphics processing units (GPUs) are necessary to accelerate game scene rendering. GPUs are one of the most expensive resources in a CG platform. Therefore, service providers have a strong incentive to utilize GPUs efficiently to maximize their economic profit. In addition, players' quality of game experience (QoE) is a crucial parameter that can directly affect a service provider's profit and must be taken into account in any resource scheduling optimization. To satisfy both parties, in this paper we propose two efficient methods for GPU based server selection in CG. The proposed methods are an improved version of two well-known metaheuristic algorithms called Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) and Genetic Algorithm (GA), which we refer to as Boosted-PSO and Boosted-GA, respectively. The proposed methods consider service providers' profits and players' experience simultaneously. Our objective is to maximize GPU utilization, which will not only lead to the service provider's economic benefit, but also increase the player's QoE. Our simulation results show that compared to the existing methods to solve such an NP-Hard optimization problem, our Boosted-PSO method, followed by Boosted-GA, achieves the highest efficiency in terms of GPU utilization, capacity wastage, and player's QoE.

An Overview of the Networking Issues of Cloud Gaming

“…Based on the identified issues and challenges, 20 pieces of literature were selected to discuss solutions. From the literature, the identified solutions include lag or latency compensation [17], [29], compression with encoding techniques [20], [32], [40], [41], the use of client computing power [29], [35], [42], edge computing [23], [25], [31], [43], machine learning [36], [38], [44], [45], frame adaption [46], [47], and GPU-based server selection [48], [49]. Figure 3 presents the identified solutions along with the number of references cited to review them.…”

Fractional Rider Deep Long Short Term Memory Network for Workload Prediction-Based Distributed Resource Allocation Using Spark in Cloud Gaming

“…The cloud gaming provides interactive gaming application, which is remotely processed in cloud and pictures are streamed as video series to play by internet. The main challenge is the interactive and real time behaviour of multiplayer cloud gaming produces a response delay in end user quality of experience [7] [22] [23]. The adaptive optimization system for cognitive resource allocation is challenging one, due to load of requested resources and real time service in gaming [7].…”

“…The main challenge is the interactive and real time behaviour of multiplayer cloud gaming produces a response delay in end user quality of experience [7] [22] [23]. The adaptive optimization system for cognitive resource allocation is challenging one, due to load of requested resources and real time service in gaming [7]. Also, the energy consumption is an important challenge in the cloud gaming.…”

“…To overcome this problem, the multi-objective method is estimated to find optimal solution in the proposed method. Hossein Ebrahimi Dinaki et al [7] introduced two effective techniques for graphics processing unit-based server selection in cloud gaming. This approach is a developed version of PSO and GA, named boosted PSO and boosted GA. Additionally, service providers and players experience profits were considered for enhancing the quality of experience.…”

“…Normally, response delay includes playout delay, processing delay and network delay. Typically, playout delay is considered insignificant, and it does not have an important factor in player's game experience [6] [7]. A huge amount of games are delivered by service providers and simulated in numerous instances at various data-centers in cloud, and it is geographically distributed for reducing network delay.…”