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

[Jan De Beenhouwer]

Hi Yubin,

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Yubin Wan" <wanyubin_hust at sohu.com>
To: "gate-users" <gate-users at lphe1pet1.epfl.ch>
Sent: Monday, November 14, 2005 1:52 PM
Subject: [gate-users] Do I need an AMTIUM server or cluster?


> 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.

I'm not familiar with this type of processor by Intel. Are you sure you 
don't mean either
Itanium or Xeon, or maybe even AMD Opteron ?

>
> 1. Has anybody submitted GATE jobs on a server with several processors?
>   Does it run fast?

Our cluster has dual processors and that works great

>   I am wandering if GATE can work in a parallel mode automatically without 
> modification.

Aside from any MPI solution, I suppose you could do that if you split the 
jobs at the original
timeslices.

>
> 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?

That should be ok by using the GateClock to set the time

>
> 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.

OpenMosix is a nice tool if you use seperate PCs. We plan to release cluster 
software for
splitting up GATE jobs with time division in the next release of GATE. 
You'll be able to launch as
many jobs as you like and we'll support openMosix, Condor and OpenPBS at 
first. A tool to merge
ROOT output will be included as well.

Best regards,
Jan


>
> 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
>
>
> ****************************************************
> Tel: (86)027-87543730 or (86)027-61034053
> Email: popowan_foxbaby at 163.com
> Major: Control Theory & Control Engineering
> Huazhong University of Science & Technology (HUST)
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> ****************************************************
> 　　　　　　　       2005-11-14
>
>
>
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