[AG-TECH] inquiry on the hardware specs...

[Harri Salminen]

I've successfully set up a single machine PIG node using a Dell 650
with dual 2.8 Ghz Xeon processors and 1GB of memory. I have Matrox
Parhelia in AGP slot and four output G200 MM on a PCI-X slot. It fits
only two Osprey cards (rest of the card slots are PCI-X which Osprey
does not seem to support) but otherwise it's a nice machine and it
works quietly (no processor fans). More cameras probably could come in
via some interface or another machine which should be easier in AG 2.x
as far as I understand.

I happened to notice that when the machine was temporarily in a single
processor mode (settable from BIOS) the AG lobby caused some problems
due to constant 100% CPU use but in dual processor (actually
hyperthreading shows it as 4 CPUs) mode it worked OK. The display vic
apparently is singlethreading and reserves only one processor up to
it's limit leaving enough CPU for all the rest including windows XP
pro, dppt, beacon, vnc and gentner AXP-800 control program. 

2 x 550Mhz is not that much for the display node I suppose, maybe it's
enough for other processes in a multi machine configuration so perhaps
two single processor machines with 2,4Ghz processor and enough memory
would work as well but probably others can comment on that better.

Harri Salminen
CSC / Funet-TV AG node tech. contact