1. PC’s For HEP Graphics at FNAL
Jeff Kallenbach
Fermi National Accelerator Lab
Jan 29, 1998

2. Motivation
Our task is to get PC’s integrated into our environment without sacrifice
We’re deeply into Open Inventor & HEPVis on SGI (happily)
D0, CDF, MCFast, Geant4, Muon Collider, Emulsion
PC’s are proliferating like Unix did
Everyone loves Windows ;-)

3. Our Goals Short Term Long Term Learn NT Programming
Experiment with NT OI
Port HEPVis Library
Linux Port
Long Term
Port UNIX/FORTRAN Programs
Part Of Desktop - Development/Runtime
Management of Users

4. Our Setup High-end PC Basic PC - for Reference only P-Pro 200
128 MB RAM
FireGL 1000, 8MB VRAM
Total cost ~$ monitor
Basic PC - for Reference only
Pentium 200, 64 MB RAM
Diamond Stealth 3D 2000, 2MB VRAM
Total Cost ~$ monitor

5. Software Environment NT - Total Cost ~$1500
Open Inventor (Template Graphic System) 2.4 developer’s license
MS VC++ 5.0
Linux - Total Cost ~$100*
RedHat g++, X, Xt, fvwm
Mesa 2.5
Open Inventor 2.4 * - free demo license - no price available yet
MooTiff 2.0.1

6. Initial Observations NT Linux
Development Environment is much different from Unix world
Linux
Complete Anarchy
If you want help, you have to sit through the sermon

7. Results - The Bad News
OI not free any more - now paying about $1000 per developer seat, less for runtime
NT programming a different game
Editor
Structured Environment
MS IDE/IVF App Wizard
Less Access to Bottom Level

8. Results - Bad News (Cont..)
Linux
Everything done from scratch - OS, Motif, Mesa
Commercial tools not plentiful, no “common set” (tools or even OS)
Lots of mismatches, add-ons are hard - OI delivered was completely incompatible

9. Good News NT Linux Speed is very good - especially for $
NT programming knowledge is there
Everyone loves windows - what we were able to do folds nicely into the NT Desktop
Linux
Development procedure familiar - editors, make, etc. like Unix
Eventually this will stabilize, like Unix did (at least at FNAL)

10. Performance of different Configs

11. Where Is This Going? Desktop w/ CPU for all?
From HV95 - bad display on desk beats good one down the hall
Will “free” win out over proprietary
Unix beat VMS - will Linux beat NT at FNAL?
Client/server - Unix extrapolation?
Star Wars - Will there be PC VR?

12. What Do We Need To Do?
We have been unable to port the HEPVis Library to NT the way we would like
So we can’t implement it for Geant4
Linux, OTOH, is “unsupported” wrt our Toolkit

13. A Pilot Deployment Plan
Purchase from TGS of some specific tools (Linux OI with Motif 2.0, KCC)
Port of HEPVis library, Geant4 to RH
Port of a facsimile of HEPVis to NT, using Master Suite, TGS’s supplementary product
Working Group composed of CD, Experiment reps.