Guillaume Pottier wrote:
> 
> Ron Parker wrote:
> 
> > On Thu, 27 Aug 1998 19:55:19 +0100, Fabrice Marchal
> >         <fab### [at] epflch> wrote:
> > >Hi,
> > >I d like to know if POV runs on multi-processor machines or if it
> can
> > >run on a cluster of machines susing, for instance,
> > >pvm or mpi.
> >
> > Yes.  For version 3.1 of PVM-POV (corresponding to version 3.0x of
> POV-Ray)
> > go to
> http://www-mddsp.enel.ucalgary.ca/People/adilger/povray/pvmpov.html
> 
>   Many thanks, but what about mpi ? At work, I use a SGI Origin 2000
> with 8
> processors, linked together with mpi.
> And by the way, how to use any parallel version on a dual Pentium II
> PC (under
> WinNT, of course). Because my motherboard is dual Pentium II capable,
> although
> I still only have one installed...
> 
> Thanks in advance
> 
> GP

I think that PVM internally can (optionally?) use MPI.  The only
requirement for PVM is that all of the processors can use the same file
system (NFS works just fine).  With the current release of PVM you can
only use unix operating systems (linux works).  The upcoming release
will allow you to use PCs too.  The benefit of PVM is that it is
hardware independent.  You compile the PVM library and the program (in
this case PVMPov) for each platform.  Thus you can mix SGIs with Sparc
Stations.  If you have an 8 processor computer you can spawn 8 pvm
processes -- all which end up on the same physical computer but
different chips.

If you get a second Pentium II chip for your motherboard I think that
the suggested method to run in parallel is to actually run two copies of
the program, one on each chip.  You could set up the first chip to
render the first half of the image and the second chip for the second
half.  PvmPov sort of works this way.  Each process works independently
of the others except that they communicate their results with the master
process which parcels out pieces of the image.

-Eric Brown

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