[geeks] Jesus this guy could be me

[Joshua D. Boyd]

On Wed, Jan 29, 2003 at 12:36:58PM +0000, David Cantrell wrote:

> >                                              Like say all the studios
> > switching from Irix to Linux.
> 
> Render-farms don't need monitors.  Of course their desktop machines do.

I was refering to the growing trend of desktop linux in such places.  I
believe that ILM and Weta are both mainly desktop linux at this time.
 
> >                                Or the Ohio Supercomputer Center's new
> > Linux visualization cluster (saw a really great presentation on it
> > Thursday). 
> 
> Weren't you saying that several of the presentations were obviously bollocks?

Err, yes.  Err, I said that one of the exhibitors seemed to be bollocks
(the one seen as the Microsoft of the haptics world), and that one of
the presenters was also.  I generally assumed most of the presenters
were on the up and up, but perhaps I was being over generous.

However, if OSC doesn't own a linux visualization cluster, someone is
running a major scam.  I think it is safe to assume that they actually
have one.

Which does leave the question of whether it actually works or not.
Their presentation was plausible.  The Quadro4 cards they said they used
should be perfectly good at volumetricly rendering small volumes.  And
the nodes are interconnected by Myrinet 2000, which is supposed to be
able to sustain 250megabytes a second, which will nicely transmit
32megapixels of 64bit pixels (32bit RGBA+32bit zbuffer), which is enough
for 30FPS of a mega pixel display.  I wouldn't be surprised if they
considered a lower frame rate acceptable in this case.  Or, if they
split the display over several machines (which would mean not all the
volumes would have to fit down one myrinet link), 640x480 at 60fps with
plenty of bandwidth to spare would be doable, and you would just need 4+
machines driving the display (say perhaps each one driving a seperate
projector for a wall display).  There is a lot of room in here for
things that will work acceptably, if not exactly what gamers would call
ideal.  A network upgrade would fix this.

And, BTW, the guy mentioned they were moving to Infiniband.  The lowest
level of infiniband is 500mbits faster than the fastest myrinet.  I
don't know what the overhead is like for infiniband though.