[Radiance-general] multiprocessor systems, Radiance, and you

[Rob Guglielmetti]

Hi Peter, Lars, Carsten, et al.,

Thanks so much for all the information.  As usual I am humbled by the 
depth of your collective wisdom.

It occurred to me shortly after I posted this (and was perusing the 
rpiece man page) that rpiece really only helps rpict processes, where I 
am primarily doing lots and lots of rtraces right now.  I will look 
further at Carsten's PVM-ified Radiance, and mosix, but in the meantime 
I think this next machine will be a single CPU box.  Shoot, even one 
2Ghz Athlon will be an improvement over my current Radiance setup, a 
wimpy PIII 450.

Scene complexity and image resolution are not my problems, it's simply 
the sheer number of rtrace calculations (with lots of ambient bounces) 
we are doing that piqued my interest in building the Fastest Computer 
Available.  But it sounds like my investment in a dual cpu box will not 
necessarily be returned immediately, since the bulk of my work lies in 
rtrace(s).  Maybe down the road I'll get another single, and then I 
*will* have dual fast cpu's chewing on Radiance calculations, and by 
having two separate boxes I gain a little redundancy to boot.

Thanks again for the info.  Have good weekends, all.

----

      Rob Guglielmetti

e. rpg@rumblestrip.org
w. www.rumblestrip.org