Subject: Re: [linux-audio-dev] [ot] rackmount
From: David Olofson (david_AT_gardena.net)
Date: Fri Dec 08 2000 - 04:30:12 EET
On Tuesday 05 December 2000 23:13, Erik Walthinsen wrote:
> On Tue, 5 Dec 2000, Erik Steffl wrote:
> > Check if the server has enough free slots (I guess you want PCI
> > for soundcard, AGP for video card) but that should not be a
> > problem with servers which are usually expected to be expanded.
>
> Except that I don't think many of the server chipsets (most [all?]
> of which come from Intel) even support AGP, because they aren't
> expected to do any real video. Then tend to have onboard stuff
> from C&T or such. Maybe a low-end ATI chip (Dell tends to use
> those).
On the contrary, at least the lower end "server" cards (ie one or two
CPUs) are frequently used in higher end PC class workstations, which
are often used for heavy graphics, like CAD, 3D design, animation
etc.
If you want more than two CPUs, you'd probably have to look for
something explicitly meant for extreme graphics workstations,
though... (And that most likely means we're not talking about x86
based machines, but high end RISC CPUs.)
> If the machine is just doing processing, that's fine, but if you
> need to put a GUI on that machine, I'd avoid servers so you can put
> a sufficiently fast video chipset on there (not that the ATIs
> aren't, but they're also PCI).
Depending on what kind of information the GUI will display, it might
be a viable option to use a dedicated box for that, with a dedicated
100 MBit or 1 Gbit link. It might be easier to find one extreme box
for DSP and one merely brutal box for the GUI. (P-III 1 GHz + G400
MAX or something.)
> The one major advantage server systems have is that some of the
> higher-end ones (Dell Poweredge 6xxx comes to mind) have multiple
> PCI busses, that really are separate PCI busses, not bridged.
> Basically, some boards put a chip on the main PCI bus that creates
> more slots, but all those card's bandwidth is still on the only PCI
> bus. Multiple *real* PCI busses multply total bandwidth to the
> chipset.
>
> If you're doing video or database stuff, this is a good thing. For
> audio, though, it may be overkill. Do the math on the audio
> bandwidth before spending $10K on a server ;-)
Well, if you need to drive a RAID array in striping mode for high
quality direct-from-disk sampling, you'll eventually exhaust the PCI
bandwidth of a "single" PCI bus system. This easilly puts you in the
same bandwidth class as video editing.
//David
.- M A I A -------------------------------------------------.
| Multimedia Application Integration Architecture |
| A Free/Open Source Plugin API for Professional Multimedia |
`----------------------> http://www.linuxaudiodev.com/maia -'
.- David Olofson -------------------------------------------.
| Audio Hacker - Open Source Advocate - Singer - Songwriter |
`--------------------------------------> david_AT_linuxdj.com -'
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