VMD-L Mailing List

From: John Stone (johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu)
Date: Mon Sep 08 2008 - 11:07:09 CDT

Hi,
  I haven't personally tested the Dell FX100 device, nor the
Teradici chipset, but I've seen various similar devices in the past.
My main complaint with these devices is that they typically have a
difficult time keeping up with full-screen interactive frame rates at
high resolutions when they're used on a normal network.

Basically, these devices are real-time hardware video/audio/USB
encoder/decoder pairs with transmission over IP.
If you have a private subnet or a direct ethernet connection they
can work pretty well. On the other hand, if you have a busy network
or your IP connection has to pass through multiple routers and switches
to get to the other endpoint, you can experience glitching or hiccups in
screen updates, audio, etc. I tested a stereoscopic-capable device similar
to the Dell device on our building network a couple of years ago and found
that while it worked reasonably well with a direct connection, it had
troubles (both stereo and non-stereo) when used on the building network
due to competition from other traffic. Our building network is all
gigabit or better, but even so we have bursty traffic due to huge file
transfers to/from supercomputers, and analysis runs of huge MD trajectory
files.

So, in my opinion, if you can setup a private subnet just for your
PC-over-IP device, it may work out pretty well. If not, then I'd be
concerned over how well it would perform. Either way, you'll
want to get a loaner device and actually try it out to determine for
yourself.

Cheers,
  John Stone
  vmd_at_ks.uiuc.edu

On Mon, Sep 08, 2008 at 05:40:24PM +0200, Tru Huynh wrote:
> Hello,
>
> Sorry for crossposting, I believe both pymol and vmd communities share the same
> interest in linux/3D ;)
>
> Has anyone used the new Dell R5400 with the remote FX100 display
> with vmd/pymol or any linux 3D intensive software?
>
> if so, how does it compare to a regular linux workstation? ;D
> I assume it's faster than the regular X remote display...
>
> Cheers,
>
> Tru
>
> ref: http://www.teradici.com/technology/
> ref: http://www1.euro.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/workstation_precision_r5400
> --
> Dr Tru Huynh | http://www.pasteur.fr/recherche/unites/Binfs/
> mailto:tru_at_pasteur.fr | tel/fax +33 1 45 68 87 37/19
> Institut Pasteur, 25-28 rue du Docteur Roux, 75724 Paris CEDEX 15 France 

-- 
NIH Resource for Macromolecular Modeling and Bioinformatics
Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology
University of Illinois, 405 N. Mathews Ave, Urbana, IL 61801
Email: johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu                 Phone: 217-244-3349
  WWW: http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/~johns/      Fax: 217-244-6078