Re: Two computers in one: two users each with their own accounts, monitor, and keyboard?
Boyd Stephen Smith Jr. put forth on 1/6/2010 9:20 AM:
> Technically, OpenGL was designed with network transparency in mind, but it
> doesn't always work well when large textures and/or changing textures or
> geometries are involved.
Waaay back in the day this was true, when an SGI, SUN, HP, Intergraph, or IBM
workstation cost $20-$40K USD, and before 3D chips were common. Companies would
have four engineers with X terminals sharing one workstation.
In the mid-late 90's the model started to change with the introduction of the
Pentium Pro, the Glint chip, and Windows NT4. At that point companies could
afford to put a $10K USD workstation with better 3D graphics performance on each
engineer's desk for about the same capital outlay.
This trend was accelerated by the proliferation of ultra high performance,
inexpensive, volume 3D graphics chips (3Dlabs, nVidia) going into the consumer
space. Due to the average PC cost, OpenGL architecture shifted from a multiuser
to a singe user focus. I actually recall reading a Linux announcement some
years ago that mutiuser 3D OpenGL would no longer be supported, period. I think
this was back in '02 or '03. To make OpenGL really scream on single user 3D
chips, they had to eliminate over the network OpenGL completely, as keeping that
capability would have totally hosed the rendering pipeline performance for 3D chips.
--
Stan
Reply to: