Awhile back I proposed building a Ethernet X/video/audio server using the OGP ASIC chip. Less expensive than the OGD1.
In my 'distributed' system, a 'dumb' terminal's video hardware just pushes image rectangles around the screen. For video requiring intensive computation, the a rectangle's image is streamed from a 'CPU server'. The 'CPU server' is just a 2.60 GHz Northwood -- just one core, and probably can't cut (decent) real time 'raytracing'. Obviously it would be better to have 16 cores, but it seems PC hardware is going nuts and replacing everything -- I have to upgrade from AGP and PCI to PCI Express, from DDR to DDR Two, from PATA to SATA. Now, not only are commodity parts useless, but drivers have to be written for Plan 9. (I guess we could just steal the drivers from Linux, but that still means all those great, old parts still go to straight to the dump.) So, instead of a new CPU for the 'CPU server'... how about an axillary processor, like the 'X/video/audio server' you mentioned? Like a 'Cell' processor on a PCI card on the 'CPU server' to take load off of the Northwood for 'raytracing'? Or if it wouldn't fit on a PCI card, a bigger board connected by ethernet. _______________________________________________ Open-graphics mailing list [email protected] http://lists.duskglow.com/mailman/listinfo/open-graphics List service provided by Duskglow Consulting, LLC (www.duskglow.com)
