Converting multiple OC-3c ATM streams to HIPPI to drive an HDTV frame buffer from a workstation cluster

摘要

A group of eight Digital Equipment Corporation Alpha workstations is interconnected with ATM to form a cluster with supercomputer power. For output, each workstation drives a single ''tile'' on an 8-tile high-resolution frame buffer. A special purpose adapter is used to convert the workstation's ATM format to the frame buffer's HIPPI format. This paper discusses the rationale behind the workstation farm, and then describes the visualization output path in detail. To provide the system quickly, special emphasis was placed on making the design as simple as possible. The design choices are examined, and the resultant system is described.