#3ds/NT MULTIPROCESSOR
34 messages in this thread
Just a quick query about NT version of 3ds, as I understand (which isn't saying
much) the main thing that to get fired up anout NT 3ds is the ability to use a
multiprocessor system. Now does any one out there have experience of this using
other packages (hopefully other 3d software).
Will i be able to buy for example a 6 prcessor dec alpha or 4 processor
pentium system or even mix and match processors boards via pci and run one
super fast version of 3ds5 on such a beast. Is this at all possible are people
doing it now with other NT software. I know this will be all made clearer after
Siggraph (looking forward to seeing all those I met last year and all the new
faces), but I could do with a few words of advice from experienced NT'ers.
Thanks in advance for any response.
James
James – it's an exciting prospect, but, as of yet, no official announcement has
been made regarding support for multi-processing under NT for 3dStudio. Yost
Group is keeping mum on the subject. My own stab in the dark is that they are
working on it, but won't announce it unless it's rock-solid. Gary & Co. have a
good reputation, and they don't want to blow it by making promises and then not
delivering.
But . . . keep the faith! If they can make it happen, it will!
Let one thing be clear: the operating system NT 3.5 it self supports
multiprocessing and all packages who are written for NT will operate on
multiprocesspr environment
Emmanuel De Smet / CREATIVE COMPUTING
If this is so then the quality of my life will improve vastly. Thanks for the
reponse
<<If this is so then the quality of my life will improve vastly.>>
I think that most people had the misunderstanding between multithreading and
symmetric processing. It is true that Windows NT takes care automatically the
sharing of dual processors between applications, i.e. you have several
applications running Windows NT will distribute the work between the CPUs
automatically. The programmer in fact has no control over this(or to a very
limited degree).
BUT having multiple threads(multithreading) is something the programmer must
explicitly design and implement into their program. NT supports it but doesn't
enforce it. A single program(process) is just one thread.
So if you buy a dual Pentium they will be BOTH used if you run Windows NT with
ANY program, since it is Windows NT that handles this and not the applications.
The main question is how well 3DS NT handles multithreading, i.e. how well 3DS
NT was designed to allow many threads to work at once. The most basic will be
rendering while modelling at the same time.
I hope that may help further in clearing up the confusion.
DaviD "threading the needle" GouID
>> all packages who are written for NT will operate on multiprocesspr
environment… <<
Big difference between being able to run on a multi processing system and being
able to take advantage of it however, very few apps that I'm aware of can
actually take advantage of it. Ron Scott's QFX is one, but PhotoShop for
instance does not… just so people are clear about what it means to have a
multi-processing system and what advantages may or may not be available…
John
John,
In addition to what you said about software taking advantage of
multi-processors, I beleive that NT Workstation will only take advantage of 2
processors max, but NT Server will take advantage of as many as are on the
system.
– Steve Ormonde
>> NT Server will take advantage of as many as are on the system…. <<
Could be, I recently talked with a hardware manufacturer and they didn't seem
to think so, so there were only making dual proc boards… but things are
changing fast… so interesting point, and I'm make a note to track it down
further…
John
John,
>> recently talked with a hardware manufacturer and they didn't seem to think
so, so there were only making dual proc boards
Nt Server will handle many processors; NT Workstation will only handle 2.
John
Hi John,
>> NT server will handle many processors… <<
This company also makes back plane boards where the CPU etc. sits on a card and
you can put a bunch of them on a back plane… the problem is getting them to
talk to each other… Seems pretty wierd they didn't know… has this always
been the case?
So what does this mean, if I have NT server how will it multi-thread an
application if it has say 4 processors on it… ? Does it make any difference?
John
John,
>> So what does this mean, if I have NT server how will it multi-thread an
application if it has say 4 processors on it… ?
From my understanding, it's up to the application writer to incorporate
multi-threading capabilities in his program; NT just gives him the platform to
do it. AutoCAD R13/NT is an example; it will run on a multi-processor machine,
but only use one of them for the program itself. NT will still use the other
one for its own operations, say, printing in the background.
John
p.s. This is kinda funny…you were the one who soothed my apprehensions about
getting into NT, and now that I have, I spend about as much time on the WINNT
forum as anywhere, and find you asking me questions. <g> Hopefully, some of my
responses will be correct.
>> This is kinda funny… you were the one who soothed my apprehensions about
getting into NT… <<
From little sparks come big flames… 🙂
In other words you've got a passion for NT I take it. <g>
Well I appreciate your staying on top of it and keeping me straight… to be
frank while I find it interesting I'm not sure how it plays in the grand scheme
of things… like is it fairly easy to write a program that will take advantage
of multi processors or does it require quite a bit of additional overhead and
do you have to know up front how many CPU's you'll be running… interesting
possiblities to be sure… but there are other fundemental concerns right now
that have my attention more…. like what about capture capability… this
seems like a potential headache…
John
John,
>> In other words you've got a passion for NT I take it. <g>
Well, after I discovered how nice NT is compared to the alternatives, I went
ahead and installed a network at our office, (7 machines), using NT as the
server, and including a few other NT stations hanging off it. Thanks to
insights gained from watching the WINNT forum, it all went off without a single
hitch! Now my boss thinks I'm a guru. <g>
>> fundemental concerns right now that have my attention more…. like what
about capture capability…
I *believe* some low end video capture works, like the VideoBlaster or
something, but below is a post from the WINNT forum today:
_________________________________________________________________________
Forum: WinNT+ Section: H/W Compatibility
Subj : Video Capture
To : Dan Buendia, 76722,2107 Saturday, July 08, 1995 3:08:07 AM
From : Jan Bottorff, 74775,546 #428031
In annoyance of the lack of NT device drivers for video capture, I've taken on
the background project of creating drivers myself. MANY of the available boards
use the Philips digitalk video chipsets (7191/7194/7196/7110). I currently
have, and am using as a reference model, the Miro D1 capture board. This is a
dumb ISA bus capture only board. If things go well (and I have enough free time
from my paying consulting projects), I'll adapt the drivers to other boards.
The Miro D1 seems quite capable of 320x240xYUVx30fps (actually better, but not
640x480x60 fields/sec). For something like MPEG compression, doing RAW YUV
capture seems like a potential good idea, provided you have very large high
speed disks. I'm also looking for a PCI bus based simple capture card. Any
ideas? Philips seems to have a reference design, including PCI interface chips
codesigned with Intel. After the dumb capture cards, ones with hardware
compression/decompression come next. It will be a month or two for the first
driver. I'll drop some messages around when it's time. – Jan
PMFJI – one other item to consider in the SMP equation. In this month's PC
Graphics and Video it was mentioned that beyond 6 processors, SMP starts losing
ground to the overhead that the OS has to expend in keeping track of threads.
Which doesn't surprise me a bit. I have difficulty doing two things at once,
let alone six.
>Nt Server will handle many processors; NT Workstation will only handle 2.<
Intergraph graphics workstations run up to SIX processors, and I doubt they run
the server version. Probably a custom HAL (which handles the different
processors) It should be possible in WS.
JNJ
John,
>> >Nt Server will handle many processors; NT Workstation will only handle 2.<
>> … It should be possible in WS.
For the definitive answer, it might be necessary to GO WINNT, which I'll do in
a little bit. But right now, I'm looking at the actual spec. sheet from MS on
NT3.5/WS, and under System requirements, it says, "Note: Software in package is
for use with one or two processors."
I'm not sure how else to interpret this.
John
>For the definitive answer, it might be necessary to GO WINNT, which I'll do in
a little bit. But right now, I'm looking at the actual spec. sheet from MS on
NT3.5/WS, and under System requirements, it says, "Note: Software in package is
for use with one or two processors."
<
John,
I've been on WinNT for about 8 months now, I believe you need a custom HAL to
run more than 2 with NTWS. I have a pamphlet on the Intergraph TDZ-60 system
in hand (6cpu, killer OpenGL card) I doubt OpenGL would be on NT Server.
There has to be a way. I'm 99% sure they said you need a custom HAL. The HAL
is the part (that handles the direct access to different processors, etc.
JNJ
John,
>> I've been on WinNT for about 8 months now, I believe you need a custom HAL
to run more than 2 with NTWS.
I believe you're probably correct. After posting my message to you, I posted
one over there, and got the reply that NTWS will use 2 out of the box, Server
will use 4 out of the box, and to use more, you need a custom HAL from the
computer manufacturer. The Resource Guide says 32 is the maximum.
John
>I've been on WinNT for about 8 months now, I believe you need a custom HAL to
run more than 2 with NTWS. I have a pamphlet on the Intergraph TDZ-60 system
in hand (6cpu, killer OpenGL card) I doubt OpenGL would be on NT Server.
There has to be a way. I'm 99% sure they said you need a custom HAL. The HAL
is the part (that handles the direct access to different processors, etc.<
For more than 2 CPU's the hardware manufacturer has to write the HAL.
hi John,
actualy the apps do not have to be specifically written for
smp, since NT dynamicaly controlls all cpu thread allocation, like it does
memory.
as lon as an app is 32 bit and multithreaded, it will fly on nt, as nt
constantly monitors and assigns cpu threads to maximize efficiency.
even 16 bit apps benefit, though not as much, because even though they cannot
do multiple tasks within the app, the NT os runs on one
cpu ad the app have another to itself.
so all apps benefit from smp under Nt, nut 32 bit threaded app benefit
to a higher degree.
we have been building SMP dual pentium systems for over a year under NT with
ASUS boards and have seen the results
even when running a 16 bit app like photoshp 2.5,
when you multitask another app , and print in the background
you see the difference with 2 cpu's
this is NT's beauty over any other OS's, it is semi intelligent
and makes decisions Dynamically for RAM, Swap file, Cache,
and CPu threads based on what is going on from second to second.
it can shut down part of itself not being used to disk to maximize avail ram,
uses all free ram for a disk cache, spontaneously, decides
what app needs how much cpu time, and always gives apps
a maximum efficient supply of ram\ CPu\cache
though you may be interested.
Cameron
CYberImage
Cameron,
>> as long as an app is 32 bit and multi-threaded, it will fly on nt… <<
Right, but my understanding was that PhotoShop was not multithreaded… so the
only benefit will be the dynamic allocation which is an NT function not the
function of the app… so for instance by comparison QFX will scream through
processing because it is multi-threaded and multi-tasked where as PhotoShop 3.0
does not have anything to offer in the way of performance greater than as a 16
bit app running in a 32 bit OS.
you btw mention 2.5 which many people feel is quicker than 3.0 so there
again… I think my speaking up on behalf of QFX and in combination with your
comments really proves the worth behind the design of this paint program….
And thanks for passing those thoughts along as its added insight into the
signfigance of the performance that can be obtained with true
multi-threaded/tasked programs…
I do love it btw except for this thing with the video but that's another story.
I couldn't believe what a performance boost I got just on a DX2 with 32 mb of
RAM… it was like taking the choke off and letting it rip, really amazing…
especially on an EISA bus… (its my file server so don't get excited… <g>)
John
Though NT support multiple chips, software must be coded to take advantage of
this feature. Software which is not coded to utilize multiple chip arrays will
still run, but it's calls will be answered by one dedicated chip. That still
remains interesting on a multichip system with enough RAM since you are free to
multi-task and the bus traffic can do some pretty fancy distribution.
Multi-threading and symetical procs will be terrific for all us 3-Ders.
However, in light of DEC's newest generation of multi-proc very very fast
chips, it would behoove 3-DS to fully take advantage of the
mega-steroid-brawnmeister sweatboxes and run multi-proc in an ALPHA
environment. Let's face it, with Lightwave and Softimage jumping onto NT there
is going to be a down-and-dirty fist fight, very scarrrrrry. The outcome of the
next year will be very encouraging for 3-D animators, yet another revolution.
and to my opinion the outcome off more powerfull solutions (cost)
will bring the present systems to wider public,
aswel as the software(dident i heard someting about 3d light)
making more people respect the effort off expereanced annimators.
because more off them will be able to get a affordemle go at it.
and realise what is involved whit it.
Aernoudt Wim
Yes – NT 3.5 DOES support multiprocessing. But, the individual application
software packages still have to be properly compiled to take advantage of that
feature of the OS. Otherwise, the only multiprocessing that will occur is in
operations that are strictly within the domain of the OS.
This has been discussed in this forum several times, and was also addressed in
this month's edition of PC Graphics and Video.
Gary Y. and Co. probably will produce a version that will take advantage of SMP
– but they haven't promised anything or given any time frame.
i've just been given the impression that the mutiprocessor aspect of NT is all
handled by NT itself and all apps can use it, is this not so, perhaps yost have
not made any comment because it is implicit. Thanks for your respone
James
>> made any comment because it is implicit… <<
No James it is not implicit… its the wording Emanuel is using, that is
confusing the issue here. PhotoShop is not a true multitasking paint program
therefore it cannot take advantage of a dual processing system… yes it will
run on NT with a dual processor but you can't make the assumption that just
because a software can run on a multi proc that you can actually take advantage
of it. QFX is a paint program which is true multi-tasking and can take
advantage of dual processors. The point is, we don't know at this point whether
3DS will support dual processors or not, it may be assumed that it will run a
dual board but taking advantage of it, is another story. For that answer you
will have to wait a few more weeks…
John
Hello,
I understand that my message can be confusing. Am I right when I say that all
software wrtitten for NT in a multitreaded way will profit from the
multiprocessing ability of Windows NT.
I've seen 2 years ago a demo on a NCR PC (PC?) with several processor of a
mutltreaded program and all threads where equally divided amoung the several
processors.
Emmanuel / CREATIVE COMPUTING
Emmanuel,
Sorry for misspelling your name before. 🙁
>> Am I right when I say… <<
Yes that is correct as far as I know… and I don't believe you were
intentionally trying to mislead anyone… this medium is difficult to exchange
in more often than not, and it was easy to see how someone might take it the
wrong way…
Thanks your insight on NT is generally most helpful…
John
Thanks John,
Sorry for my English.
I believe that porting 3D Studio from DOS to Windows NT is one of best things
did in 1995.
Bye,
Emmanuel
Emmanuel,
>> Sorry for my English. <<
Your English is great… its the language which leave so much up to
intrpretation. <G> Its my native tongue and I am confounded by it. 🙂
>> I believe that porting 3D Studio from DOS to Window NT is one of the best
things did in 1995. <<
We are in total agreement, I think NT is the greatest!
Thanks for the support.
John
John,
I will come to Siggraph95 in LA. Does your company have a booth there ?
Emmanuel /CREATIVE COMPUTING
Hi Emmanuel,
>> Does your company have a booth there? <<
No, that would be nice… maybe some day I'll share some space with ADESK. <g>
It would be fun to meet you, however I'm still not certain of my schedule. I've
had to reserve for the week, with luck I will get two days. 🙂
John
ok, we will see. I'm there from Sunday morning until Thursday evening.
Bye,
Emmanuel
Emmanuel,
As an after-thought to your last question, I wondered if you were aware that a
party for Ammedia people is being held the Sunday before official Siggraph Week
starts. If you will be in L.A. at that time it would be a nice opportunity for
you to meet with some of the regulars here. I would like to attend and it may
be possible. I think you would find it an entertaining experience, especially
as it is being held at the Biltmore which is a great old hotel. I will get you
the particulars if you do not already have them.
John