[Paraview] minimal linux cluster for paraview, volume rendering

[Dr. Daniel James White PhD]

Dear all,

I am a parallel computing newbie.

What would be a sensible small linux cluster for running paraview?
Could I use say 4 nodes, each with just processor, RAM, motherboard and=20=

ethernet card, with no videocard or hard disk, using a cheap ethernet=20
hub/repeater, connected to my existing linux workstation?
Has anyone made such a cluster recently, and how much would I expect to=20=

spend on such a minimal cluster?

Also, to the paraview developers,
are there plans to implement the volume rendering functions of VTK in=20
paraview,
I mean the ray cast functions, composite and MIP, aswell as the=20
existing isosurface implementation.
Would these be parallelisable?
Also would volume rendering for visualisation in quadbuffered hardware=20=

stereo  on the master node, or a client,
be speeded up by parallelisation of the volume rendering functions? I=20
mean does the quadbuffered stereo enabling VTK code work in such a way=20=

that generation of the left and right eye images would benefit from=20
parallelisation of the volume rendering functionality?

cheers

Dan

Dr. Daniel James White BSc. (Hons.) PhD
Cell Biology
Department of biological and environmental science
PO Box  35
University of Jyv=E4skyl=E4
Jyv=E4skyl=E4 FIN 40014
Finland
+358 (0)14 260 4183 (work)
+358 (0)414740463 (mob)

http://www . chalkie . org . uk
dan at chalkie . org . uk
white at cc . jyu . fi=