IncrediBuild at GDC 2013
March 27, 2013, Game Developers Conference, San Francisco—We talked with IncrediBuild about their acceleration platform for software developers. They have the technology to improve Make and Build cycles through sharing of CPU cycles in game development and other vertical markets.
By using the Net and parallelism, they emulate a high performance compute network. Most of their installations are on the LAN, but some use the WAN and cloud services. Some of their other tools and applications are used to accelerate code analysis, render through CPUs and remote GPUs, compression, and shading.
They have a full development environment for all facets of code and asset creation. One of these is to use a render function in a PC mode from a console. They support tools for all of the consoles and some ISVs use their technology for other applications or similar software to use their acceleration technology. Many of their users start with the basic technology and adapt the technology for other functions. the management console is in C++ on Windows with a Linux port coming soon.
For many developments, mobile is similar to PCs in complexity for the development efforts. Their technology can collect network resources at the job stage and dynamically reassign the jobs. They do not replicate any data, and cache the required libraries for reuse to minimize I/O.
They have thousands of agents in production, running hundreds of agents per job. The tools are robust, and plug and play. They work at layer 7, above the database and just work with processing and applications. They can accelerate execution and compute through their tools. Some included utilities are integrated debug and trace functions. they are not a workflow, but can interface to 3-D character generation tools.
Their licensing models include perpetual plus maintenance, and now some users are moving to subscription. The models apply to agents and solutions based upon the number of machines and software packages included in the management. In addition, they have a number of suites of software packages and agents. For more information, see www.incredibuild.com
