[AG-TECH] Hardware concern ...

[Jason Bell]

G'day Nathan

The question you pose, can a single machine run an entire AG, is an
interesting one, which there is no right answer.  As it depends on many
variables and how you wish to use the Access Grid.  (I will only talk
about the AG stuff, as I have never used INSORS)

I personally use a single machine for some of my AG nodes, as well as I
also use multi-machine nodes as well.

For the current use of Access Grids, I would say that a powerful machine
(Insert any brand here) should be able to handle most AG situations.
Though, a consideration you will have to think of is how a single
machine will handle future AG improvements.  For example, if a "new"
media tool for the AG uses H264 as a codec, then this will require
significant computing resources to "encode" the video streams and having
multiple video captures may reduce the performance of a single machine
greatly.  Of course there is also DV and HDTV to also consider.

One of the great things about the Access Grid is that it is so flexible,
such that you could just try running it on a single machine!!!  If you
find that it isn't powerful enough, just add another computer to the AG
Node.  This new computer could possibly perform the capturing of video,
thereby reducing the load of the single machine.

This is just my 2 cents worth, but hopefully you find it useful.

Cheers,
Jason.

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-ag-tech at mcs.anl.gov [mailto:owner-ag-tech at mcs.anl.gov] On
Behalf Of Nathan P Johnson
Sent: Wednesday, 17 May 2006 11:55 PM
To: ag-tech at mcs.anl.gov
Subject: [AG-TECH] Hardware concern ...



Hi everyone:

We are thinking of converting our three-PC full room node ( three
projectors, AP 400 etc. ) to a single PC design, possibly using a PC
setup from INSORS. Has anyone set up a room node with three projectors
and everything running on a single PC? If so what has the experience
been during large conferences when there are a large number of incoming
video streams and so on. 

Thanks in advance for your help.

Nate

Nathan Johnson
sysAdmin
Dahlem Supercomputer Lab
Speed Scientific School
University of Louisville
(502) 852-0164
nathan.johnson at louisville.edu