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Experiences When Transitioning to Low-End Workstations?
gerddie asks: "Lately, we have seen a lot of companies starting to move their graphics stuff from high end to low end linux workstations (e.g. Dreamworks).
Of course one reason to do such thing is cut costs, and therefore, at our institute we are going to replace or aging SGI O2s with Linux workstations. I wonder if you have experience with such a transition - especially regarding the usability of such machines for (scientific) visualization? What is working well, and where did you encounter pitfalls?"
better yet, just buy a system with an nvidia card and use nvidia's binary driver (it's free as in beer) for XFree. that'll be as fast as the commercial X distros alluded to but a bit cheaper.
SGI, Sun, HP, IBM all basically want to sell you more or less proprietary hardware with expensive support contracts.
I can almost buy, each and every year, a new fast Dell machine with a fast video card for what we paid in support for our old unix workstations.
We go with this general platform:
1. One or two steps below the fastest cpu
2. One step below the fastest video card
3. Default values for all of the other parts including IDE hard disks
4. No monitor - we buy a new one when the old ones break down
General cost, $500-$650 per machine, no yearly support costs, no ongoing software licensing from SGI/SUN either
We then recycle the old machines for use for regular office workers.
Sorry, I had to laugh.
You are moving from O2s to PCs with Linux, and you are worried because the new machines won't be able to handle the visualization tasks? Worry about what to do with the lack of ethernal coffee pauses while you wait for programs to load or thing to compile, but don't worry about the PCs not handling the task.
Problems you are going to find:
* No 4Dwm replacement, your users are going to have to learn another window manager, sorry. (yes, I know there's a 4Dwm for non-Irix but the thing is not the read 4Dwm)
* Linux on Intel is a 32 bit OS. You might find that you have to go thru your code checking for stuff assuming it's running in 64 bits. Large files might be a problem (shouldn't, but can)
* Compared to O2s, PCs are too fast. You might find some of your programs weren't really expecting that.
* Visuals are limited to 8 bits (not that it matters, unless you were attached to those funny 4 bit visuals on the O2s)
* No good overlay support.
* 3D textures could be faster. It's not the kind of stuff games use.
* You can't just hit the power button on PCs an hope everything is ok.
* Even if you compare PCs to Octanes, Octane 2s or Fuels, the PCs win.
* Some OpenGL extensions are not available (think those funky SGI, SGIS, SGIX ones, and ARB_multitexture is just different than SGIS_multitexture)
* I had something else to write but forgot it.
HTH,
Still ROTFLing.