Subject: Re: ScreamerNet Questions
From: Allen D Hastings <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 17 Jun 1994 01:51:47 -0700

>    Is the Raptor worth the money? Would it be more cost effective to
>get a few Pentiums or high end 486(100MHz) machines instead, and farm
>the work out?

You're "farming the work out" with a Raptor, too, since it is
essentially two separate MIPS-based PCs.  Very preliminary test
results comparing the rendering speed of my 66 MHz 486 PC and a
100 MHz R4400 PC show the MIPS rendering about two and a half
times faster.  I believe the CPUs in the Raptor run at 150 MHz
and there are two of them, so a Raptor ought to be worth about
seven and a half 486/66s.

>              How many machines can you plug into the net? (I've heard
>it is 8 (eight) machines but not too sure).

There can be up to eight render machines controlled by the Amiga.

>                                            Can these machine be on
>their own network ring or can they be connected to a standard (TCP/IP)
>network setup? Can you use machines that are usually on the other
>toasters network if they are not being used? 

I'm not sure I understand the questions, but I'll give it a try.
You can have lots of render machines and Amigas on the same network,
but only one Amiga can be the controller for ScreamerNet purposes.
Whether the render machines are available for ScreamerNet depends on
whether you have started the render module software on each machine
(the Raptor has a startup sequence that always starts the software).
You can use the render machines for other tasks regardless of whether
they are currently rendering or not (since Windows NT has pre-emptive
multitasking), unless of course they have no monitor or keyboard,
like Raptor or old Screamer prototypes.

>                                             Can ScreamerNet farm out
>one segment of a high res image to one machine, so if you had 4
>machines, you could do one image on four machines, 1 segment each?

Yes, and the image doesn't have to be split along segment boundaries
(for example, if you had three render CPUs, each would render a third
of the image).  The default mode for rendering a scene has each CPU
render a different complete frame, which is more efficient than the
image splitting mode, but both options are available.
 
- Allen Hastings