[vtkusers] Choice of PC's

[Will Schroeder]

Most every imaging filter is multithreaded. Volume rendering is 
multithreaded. A few
graphics filters are multithreaded. There is a new parallel directory in 
the nightly releases that supports MPI...so you can execute pipelines in 
parallel.

IMHO, from what little I know about the performance of the higher-speed 
processors, it seems that having two lower-speed processors is 
better...there seem to be memory/bus bottlenecks that prevent many systems 
from realizing their full clock-speed potential. You can check this out be 
looking at benchmarks on the web.

Will

At 10:53 AM 2/7/2001 -0500, Volpe, Christopher R (CRD) wrote:
>I know the imaging pipeline is set up to work multi-threaded, and the 
>graphics pipeline might be
>also, but I don't know how many real filters actually take advantage of 
>it. Also, if you're not doing
>a lot of data manipulation (filter execution), just fast viewing of 
>existing data, then taking
>advantage of multiple CPUs would require a graphics card whose display 
>drivers have multi-threaded
>capability (like, for example, 3DLabs's Oxygen series with its 
>PowerThreads (TM) drivers.
>
>
>|> -----Original Message-----
>|> From: Dave Reed [mailto:dreed at capital.edu]
>|> Sent: Wednesday, February 07, 2001 10:44 AM
>|> To: Volpe, Christopher R (CRD)
>|> Cc: jdb54 at pantheon-po01.its.yale.edu; vtkusers at public.kitware.com
>|> Subject: Re: [vtkusers] Choice of PC's
>|>
>|>
>|>
>|> Also, I don't believe the vtk code (although I haven't looked at the
>|> internal details) is set up to take advantage of multiple processors
>|> (I'm certain one of the developers will correct me if I'm wrong) so
>|> you're probably going to see very little benefit from a dual
>|> processor
>|> system.  The OS will hopefully run on one processor while the vtk
>|> program runs on the other, but the vtk program will not run on both
>|> processors simultaneously.
>|>
>|> Dave
>|>
>|>
>|> > From: "Volpe, Christopher R (CRD)" <volpecr at crd.ge.com>
>|> > Date: Wed, 7 Feb 2001 09:31:41 -0500
>|> >
>|> > Before buying a Pentium IV, read the following articles:
>|> > http://www4.tomshardware.com/cpu/00q4/001120/index.html
>|> > http://www4.tomshardware.com/cpu/00q4/001122/index.html
>|> > http://www4.tomshardware.com/cpu/00q4/001125/index.html
>|> > http://www4.tomshardware.com/cpu/00q4/001206/index.html
>|> >
>|> > I'd buy a 1.2 GHz Athlon Thunderbird and load it up with
>|> lots of SDRAM rather than buying an
>|> > overly-expensive RDRAM solution.
>|> >
>|> > |> -----Original Message-----
>|> > |> From: jdb54 at pantheon-po01.its.yale.edu
>|> > |> [mailto:jdb54 at pantheon-po01.its.yale.edu]
>|> > |> Sent: Tuesday, February 06, 2001 11:05 PM
>|> > |> To: vtkusers at public.kitware.com
>|> > |> Subject: [vtkusers] Choice of PC's
>|> > |>
>|> > |>
>|> > |> I am planning on using VTK to visiual some large
>|> datasets.  I am
>|> > |> debating on whether to oder a Dell Dimension 8100 with a
>|> > |> 1.4Ghz Pentium
>|> > |> IV processor or a workstation with dual 800Mhz Pentium III
>|> > |> processors.
>|> > |> Which do you think will work better visualizing the data.
>|> > |> The memory and graphics cards on the two systems are
>|> > |> comparable. Thank
>|> > |> you.
>|> > |>
>|> > |> -James
>|>
>
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