[gate-users] Do I need an AMTIUM server or cluster?

[Yubin Wan]

Dear Gate users,

I have some questions about the computational platform required by GATE.

At present, our investigations focus on reconstruction method and data acquiring system,
but we have no PET/MicroPET scanner in our lab, so we choosed GATE as an virtual PET.
Recently my tutor planned to buy a server with 4 built-in Intel AMTIUM processors,
however, we are not so sure if this server can reduce simulation time remarkably.

1. Has anybody submitted GATE jobs on a server with several processors?
   Does it run fast?  
   I am wandering if GATE can work in a parallel mode automatically without modification.

2. I knew that many people have submitted GATE jobs on cluster with time division, but 
   we have no cluster, so I prefer to using severy PCs. I think I can get severy ROOT files
   with time division (e.g. 1~10sec, 10~20sec, 20~30sec), then using bin code based on ROOT
   I can get the final sinogram, however, if decay is included, how can I set the exact initial
   activity value for each time division? Should I calculate it with an experienced formula?

3. I think there are three solutions
   - server with multi-processors
   - cluster
   - multi-PCs
   Obviously the third solution is the cheapest, maybe it will be the most practical since
   I know little about MPI.

4. In my opinion, GATE could be a powerful tool in qualitative analysis, Do we really need
   high speed to get large counts in short time? Many people even use laptop computers.


Thankyou


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					 　　　　　　　       2005-11-14