Re: Best,Fastest platform for IDL 5.2 (NT or UNIX)

[rivers(at)cars3.uchicago.edu (Mark Rivers)]

In article <37DD70F9.D76719BB@sbrc.umanitoba.ca>, Richard Tyc 
<richt@sbrc.umanitoba.ca> writes:

>To add to the another similar post, I would like to know from the
>experts what system they would buy if they had $10K - $30K (speed being
>an important factor) ?
>
>We are running on a SGI O2 R5K, 576Mb RAM  and it is pathetically
>slow!!  Our project has recently received some infusion of capital and I
>would like to ask what hardware platform would be ideal ?  I am not
>opposed to switching over to NT.
>
>The application makes heavy use of object graphics, volume rendering
>with cutting planes etc.  (eg.  render volumes of 512x512x100 with
>real-time  motion updates using the trackball object)
>
>I was thinking of moving up to a SGI Octane with the R12K CPU (or
>multiple CPU).
>Any performance comparisons with IDL on the new Pentium III 600 MHz
>machines vs. UNIX workstations ?

I am using a Dell Precision 610 workstation with 1GB of RAM, 36 GB of RAID 0
disk, and dual 450 MHz processors.  I am very pleased with the system.  Its
cost today (with 550 MHz processors) is about $8,000.

My application is 3-D tomography data processing and visualization.  Having 2
processors helps in 2 ways:

- I can be running one IDL session doing compute-intensive reconstructions on 
  one processor while doing interactive work on the other.

- The IDL volume rendering object does use both processors

1 GB of RAM is essential for what I am doing, in fact I still need more memory
at times, but Windows has a limit of 1 GB of virtual memory per process.  The
memory fragmentation problems often seen in IDL under Unix are much less
serious under Windows.  I can create and delete 300MB arrays interactively for
hours without having to restart IDL.

I have not used similarly configured Unix systems so I really can't compare.

Mark Rivers