Running IL-2 on a Cloud Server?

[chiliwili69]

Have anyone tried it? Sounds like crazy, right? (Short: yes it is)

 

Some companies offer "Dedicated Server" or "Bare Metal" servers to execute high computing applications on monthly/yearly plans.

 

We have learn along the years, specially for VR, that IL-2 performance depends a lot on the Single-Thread performance of the CPU, specially for dense scenarios.

 

If you go to this page: https://www.cpubenchmark.net/CPU_mega_page.html

and short it by Thread Mark you will see that the top one is the i9-1400KS with about 4900 score.

 

If you go now to the best dedicated servers offered by MS AZURE (FXmds Series) they use the Xeon Gold 6246R which has a Thread Mark of 2400. And monthly you will pay a fortune (2000$), so you can buy a new build every month!

 

There are other niche Bare Metal server providers like Vultr which offer the Xeon E-2388G with a Thread Mark of 3500. And monthly cost is about 350$. So, definetely a better option. If fact, the best option I have been able to find from Bare Metal providers. If anyone knows a better option regarding Single-Mark just let me know

 

Historically the Xeon processors (typical from Servers) has been very bad on the Single-Thread performance, but in the last 2-3 years they have been improved quite a lot, being now closer to Desktop processor. If you filter the above link by "Server" you can see that they are now above 4000

 

 

Until here I have been only considering the CPU.

 

For GPU I have not investigated it, but I suposse that there is also company offering powerful GPUs on dedicated servers.

 

Then the next item to consider is the bandwidth of the network. For a fullHD or 4K monitor it could work (like Netflix performance) but in VR I don´t think it could be viable because the latencies.

 

So in general it could work for Monitor but not for VR, but definetely not practical since it will be very expensive. So, for the next years your IL-2 PC will be at your home. 😉 

 

Here I leave a good article about Cloud Servers performance versus Desktop PCs, it is an interesting read.

https://retailic.com/cloud-server-cpu-performance-comparison/