I was at a visualisation conference, and one of the there was running global climate simulations remotely from a supercomputer. A standard desktop PC could display the data in real-time It was only the university network between the cluster and the desktop which prevented this from being done. In order to demonstrate responsible allocation of funds, they didn't want to pay high prices for proprietary solutions.
Is it just me or does the notion of a GUI on high performance computers sound at bit pointless.
With grid computing and the availability of high-performance graphics accelerators, there is now the ability to visualize results in real-time (climate simulation, finite-element analysis). This requires a graphics API (OpenGL), and consequently a windowing system (X Windows system/Motif, MS-Windows).
One solution is to have the results networked across to a separate workstation. The problem with this, is that the network becomes the bottleneck. Say you want to run a discrete event simulation of an attribute of the earth at 1 mile resolution (25000 samples longitude x 12500 latitude), and you're getting fifteen events per second, and you want to visualise a pincushion model of this. So you want to transfer (25000x12500x3 32-bit floats) across the network/second. While this is only 150 million lines/second, that's something like 52.5 Gigabytes of data/second going across the network. So you need all sorts of fancy caches/buffer memory to handle this communication. Alternatively, you just add the graphics card onto the supercomputer.
Neaten up the cables you want to keep and wrap them in masking tape. Write the specifications on the tape if you like - "CAT-5, 5M". Put them all into the one drawer/bucket/cupboard.
I find that using sealable freezer bags to bundle similar cables/plugs together helps to avoid stuff being lost/tangled up.
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I was at a visualisation conference, and one of the there was running global climate simulations remotely from a supercomputer. A standard desktop PC could display the data in real-time It was only the university network between the cluster and the desktop which prevented this from being done. In order to demonstrate responsible allocation of funds, they didn't want to pay high prices for proprietary solutions.
Another slashdot cliche: "BSD is dying"
Of course, there is always the slashdot random story generator
One guy in our office had his default home page set to slashdot. Someone changed it to this page. It took him 10 minutes before he noticed.
Is it just me or does the notion of a GUI on high performance computers sound at bit pointless.
With grid computing and the availability of high-performance graphics accelerators, there is now the ability to visualize results in real-time (climate simulation, finite-element analysis). This requires a graphics API (OpenGL), and consequently a windowing system (X Windows system/Motif, MS-Windows).
One solution is to have the results networked across to a separate workstation. The problem with this, is that the network becomes the bottleneck. Say you want to run a discrete event simulation of an attribute of the earth at 1 mile resolution (25000 samples longitude x 12500 latitude), and you're getting fifteen events per second, and you want to visualise a pincushion model of this. So you want to transfer (25000x12500x3 32-bit floats) across the network/second. While this is only 150 million lines/second, that's something like 52.5 Gigabytes of data/second going across the network. So you need all sorts of fancy caches/buffer memory to handle this communication. Alternatively, you just add the graphics card onto the supercomputer.
... a mission to Mars could be bit pricy for a car owner.
Neaten up the cables you want to keep and wrap them in masking tape. Write the specifications on the tape if you like - "CAT-5, 5M". Put them all into the one drawer/bucket/cupboard.
I find that using sealable freezer bags to bundle similar cables/plugs together helps to avoid stuff being lost/tangled up.
The Innovators (HP) could always just raise the licensing prices to the copying companies (Dell).
Or they rapidly innovate like mad bunnies. This seems to be happening in the graphics accelerator market.
The Athlon won't be in notebooks untill the begining of next year...or so I have heard.