[Paraview] minimal linux cluster for paraview, volume rendering

[Dr. Daniel James White PhD]

Hi Andy,

So is it possible to have a good openGL enable graphics card on each=20
node to do some number crunching, and send the results back to the=20
master node.
I thought  everything on the graphics card went in only 1 direction:=20
out to the monitor?

I was thinking 4 Athalon equipped motherboards with 1Gb ram and normal=20=

ethernet cards, that each boot off the master node, so no hard disks or=20=

video cards.
I guess without the videocard hardware acceleration on each node, the=20
nodes wouldn't really speed up the openGL display on the master node=20
(with a nice videocard), since software rendering is so much slower=20
than hardware?

What i am looking for is fast interactive display of large datasets,=20
using isosurfaces or even better true volume rendering (which I know=20
isn't in paraview yet, but i can do it with some other vtk tools, ie=20
Mayavi with the experimental volume module. Volume rendering with=20
composite ray cast function is slow at high quality settings, that is=20
what I want to speed up. It would be nice if the hardware stereo wasn't=20=

swapped LR in the vtk raycastmapper... but that is another story...)

Are you telling me that parrallelisation of the vtkVolumeRayCastMapper=20=

or whatever it is called would not really help, since it is the=20
graphics card that does most of the work anyway...?

cheers

Dan

On Friday, August 22, 2003, at 04:44 PM, Andy Cedilnik wrote:

> Hi Dan,
>
> ParaView would work fine on 4 node Linux cluster. I would invest a bit
> of money to get a gigabit ethernet, otherwise the network file system
> will eat in your bandidth. Also, since you do not have graphics card,
> each node will have to do software rendering. Depending on the number=20=

> of
> polygons ParaView will display, you will get various results.
>
> So, I would say processor power, memory, and network are places where
> you should not be cheap. What hardware do you have in mind?
>
> 			Andy
>
> On Fri, 2003-08-22 at 09:16, Dr. Daniel James White PhD wrote:
>> What would be a sensible small linux cluster for running paraview?
>> Could I use say 4 nodes, each with just processor, RAM, motherboard=20=

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

>> to
>> spend on such a minimal cluster?
>
>
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)
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http://www . chalkie . org . uk
dan at chalkie . org . uk
white at cc . jyu . fi