Slashdot Mirror
FourHead: One PC, Four Users
LoganGD writes "A reseach group from UFPR university in Brazil, C3SL has managed to make one Linux box run four terminals at the same time. That means four mice, keyboards, displays and users with just one CPU. The way they managed to do that can be found at the FourHead project webpage. The fact that one computer science laboratory can suport up to 60 users whit only 15 PCs is really attractive for low-resource groups and countries."
How is this different from a low-end mainframe?
Also, you don't need 4 cards, You could do it with two. NVidia's twinview allows you to run two seperate X-servers off of one card (provided of course that it has two outputs).
I have one linux box. In it I have:
2400+ AMD Althon.
800+ Gigs of RAM.
Mpeg2-type TV capture card.
Bttv based TV capture card
2 video cards, a Geforce 4 420MX PCI card, Geforce FX 5900 agp card.
2 harddrives,]
1 CDROM burner, 1 DVD combo drive.
Built it my self.
1 intake fan, dual fan 350watt Powersupply (adjust fan speed automaticly to temp.)
I play ut2004 on it, I rip CD's on it. I encode mutliple MPeg2 streams on it. etc etc etc.
Heat isn't a problem. Everything runs comfortably, even when having both disk drives churning away and cpu pegged at 100% for extended times it isn't a problem.
The single fan in the front is a 120mm fan. Can get annoying at times, but it 's much quiter then most PC boxes that I've seen.
Combining intelligent but plain jane type case design with some tiny little mods it's easy to keep cases cool. As long as it isn't the big nasty messes that most people/companies clobber together.
This sounds like a multiplayer gamer configuration. Unlike most shared-CPU systems, everybody has a 3D video card, although they have to be PCI boards. With everybody on the same CPU, latency is a non-issue. Fast FPS games should synchronize perfectly. That tightly synchronized feel will make for much better head to head gameplay.
Observations that "this has been done before" are really missing an important point, that it's being done in a new way. When there are hundreds of software solutions for everything, all for free, then there will cease to be a market for overpriced proprietary solutions. Not only that, but instead of thinking "where can I buy ___," the first thought to come to mind will be "where can I get this in Open Source."
To expand further on the parent's point - I personally have 4 monitors hooked up to my main machine, using a combination of GeForce2's and FeForceMX's. And I have on ordered another GeForceMX to push my count up to 6 monitors.
Heat has never been an issue. And this is a standard ATX case - no mods, no heavy cooling. Just one intake, one exhast, and the PSU.
In fact, we installed 10 workstations using this system on 5 PCs for a client of ours recently--replacing 10 old iMacs--to lower the TCO for a small call center.
It's been working great, no problems whatsoever.
Best Buy can have you arrested
Has computing gone forwards or backwards when it takes thousands of times the compute power to support fewer users, doing dumber things. We used to run whole research departments developing mathematical modelling, computational physics programmes on a single DEC VAX 11/750 with 8 MB of main memory and like 80 MB of hard disk space. It was so underutilised that astrophysics would rent out time on the darn thing to geophysics and chemistry.
This was on 4.2 BSD, the mother of all open source operating systems. And we had access to supercomputers at Argonne, NCAR, LANL, LBL and Cornell over the ARPAnet. in the freaking early 1980's.
AND we produced beautifully typeset scholarly papers and theses, full of equations using TeX. Try doing that with Office. Hnf.
Personally, I used to use maple to do the algebraic manipulations, and export to either fortran (to run a numerical simulation to get the results that formed my thesis) or to TeX (in order to publish it). Sure as hell can't do that with the stupid Office (open or MS) programmes you need 15 64MB computers to support only 60 users on in this model. Even if you insist on running a pointy-clicky GUI, with X10 we used to run dozens of graphics terminals off of one VAX
This article just proves that the net progress of computing is actually backwards because the computers certainly are getting bigger/faster/better more slowly than the intelligence and creativity of the users -- now they all need a GUI just to edit text and compile programs. To the point that it's a miracle when you can have more than one person using a computer at a time now. Sheesh!
You're missing (ignoring? i hope not.} that old P1's are getting old. Maintenance is a real cost, particularly labour, but also the parts when you've got downtime due to digging around for spare obsolete components.
Think five years ahead. ATX PSUs will still be cheap, AT PSUs will be a PITA. "Keep a stockpile"? Yeah, right; storage space costs a premium in schools. They'll be lucky to have a small closet or even a shelf to devote to future spares. Much cheaper to buy available components from dealers.
The cost of RAM for P1's is already unreal. I've been steadily replacing my free P1's here with cheap Athlon boxes just because of costs like that. The amount you have to futz around with P1's has begun to exceed the value they provide; this isn't a hobby -- we're trying to get work done.
Another issue is getting a budget approved by a non-geek board (the usual kind). This four head setup will get rubber stamped no problem. A "free old P1's" pitch is going to sound like a whacko adventure and be shown the door. Who has time for that? The computer lab needs terminals.
I'm not saying using existing P1's is bad at all. I'm pointing out that there's definitely a place for this 4x arrangement.
Heh, my parents weren't rich, that was what I bought myself as a treat after putting in some time at Bell Labs / Holmdel.
I kinda quit being a 'kid' dependent on my parents when I joined the Air Force in '66.
List price of the bare-bones 16B+ was $6499 plus maybe a grand for more memory, and another grand for modems. IIRC a bigger HD was about $1500.
Hmmmmmm... I guess that is pretty close to $10K.
Actually I still have that 16B+ - it's in storage and every now and then I drag it out and fire it up just to verify it still runs. It does.
Take care,
Tomas
While I am not the young man from whom you demanded an explanation, I can offer you som insight on why I do not use Xinerama for my dual-head setup.
I use a standard (non-Xinerama) dual-head config and a dual-head aware window manager (Openbox 2.x). This setup has but one serious flaw, and that is the inability to move windows between the screens. What it offers over xinerama is that it does not require xinerama-aware applications. Popup notifications never show up in between the monitors, for example. The big thing I dislike with Xinerama is that windows can be split over the two screens. I have never wanted to do this. I much prefer the ability to slide parts of windows out of view.
Another big nuisance with Xinerama is that I have yet to find a Xinerama-aware window manager that I like.
My vision of the perfect multihead desktop (which coincides with my vision of a reasonable X architecture) is pretty much X with something like xmove (which I have yet to get working on XFree86/Linux). The window manager could then be told to throw a window to the other screen when dragged to the edge, just as with virtual desktops. The bonus of using an X proxy, or preferably separating the display and server parts of the X server, is that you can move windows between computers, keep gui apps running on servers when the workstation is turned off, restart your X server (e.g. to upgrade drivers) without losing your apps, and so forth.
...ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.