malcolm@Apple.COM (Malcolm Slaney) (07/24/90)
What are good machines for scientific visualizations? We have a Cray but I'm looking around for other machines that can do my work nearly as fast. My research (models of human hearing) can support parallelism and lots of vectorization. I want to be able to compute something and then display the result very quickly (20 frames per second) on a monitor. I guess the numbers that are important to me are >100 MFlops of peak performance and > 25 Mega-pixels per second output rate (at the same time.) Should I think about Convex? What about the new Connection Machine? Machines like the DAP and the MassPar seem to be too hard to program (I want to do new research in hearing, not algorithm development.) What do people think? Thanks. Malcolm Slaney Apple Perception Group malcolm@apple.com
mike@BRL.MIL (Mike Muuss) (07/25/90)
The SGI PowerSeries (4D/380 machine) and the new Alliant machine (28000? with the 28 Intel 860 processors in it) are the most interesting "super-minicomputers" around right now, in my opinion. Best, -Mike
refson@castle.ed.ac.uk (Keith Refson) (07/27/90)
In article <9811@hubcap.clemson.edu> malcolm@Apple.COM (Malcolm Slaney) writes: >What are good machines for scientific visualizations? We have a Cray but >I'm looking around for other machines that can do my work nearly as fast. > >vectorization. I want to be able to compute something and then display the >result very quickly (20 frames per second) on a monitor. > >I guess the numbers that are important to me are >100 MFlops of peak >performance and > 25 Mega-pixels per second output rate (at the same time.) > >Should I think about Convex? What about the new Connection Machine? Machines >like the DAP and the MassPar seem to be too hard to program (I want to do >new research in hearing, not algorithm development.) As far as I know neither the Convex or DAP are visualization machines. I think you should consider machines from Stardent Computer Ltd (formerly Stellar and Ardent). They combine the sort of performance you seem to be seeking with the visualization. Our Stardent GS2000 can run my vector-parallel codes at 27% of the speed of a CRAY XMP (single processor) and do geometry rendering of complex molecular models at > 12 frames/sec. Codes vectorized for the cray should port easily, and the vectorizing fortran and C compilers are quite good. The greatest advantage I find of Stardent is their AVS visualization program which means that you can do vizualization without any graphics programming. At all. You should be able to integrate your codes with AVS with a small programming effort to get the computatational module to deliver data for immediate visualization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- | JANET : keith@uk.ac.ox.earth | Royal Mail: | | INTERNET: keith@earth.ox.ac.uk | Keith Refson | | BITNET : keith%uk.ac.ox.earth@ukacrl | Department of Earth Sciences | | UUCP : K.Refson@ed.uucp | Oxford University | | : keith%uk.ac.ox.earth@ukc.uucp | Parks Road | | PHONE : +44 865 272026/272016 | Oxford OX1 3PR | | FAX : +44 865 272072 | UK | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
lrul00@dixel.Kodak.COM (Richard C. Dempsey) (07/27/90)
In article <9869@hubcap.clemson.edu> refson@castle.ed.ac.uk (Keith Refson) writes: >As far as I know neither the Convex or DAP are visualization machines. > >I think you should consider machines from Stardent Computer Ltd >(formerly Stellar and Ardent). (...) > >The greatest advantage I find of Stardent is their AVS visualization >program which means that you can do vizualization without any graphics >programming. At all. You should be able to integrate your codes with >AVS with a small programming effort to get the computatational module >to deliver data for immediate visualization. My local Convex sales rep tells me that Convex has licensed AVS so as to make it available on Convexes. Check with yours to find out about pricing and availability. -- Richard C. Dempsey dempsey@Kodak.COM Computational Science Laboratory (716) 477-3457 Eastman Kodak Company #include <disclaimer.std> Rochester, NY 14650