HP xw3400 User Manual

Also see for Xw4600 - Workstation - 2 GB RAM: Installation guidelines Brochure & specs Specification Safety and regulatory information Compatibility chart

Contents

IntroductionThe HP xw9300 and the HP xw9400 workstations coupled with 2 NVIDIA high-end graphics cardsare great solutions for a reasonably priced, fully-capable Linux visualization center or advancedvisualization Linux workstation. This paper discusses how to set up such a visualization center drivingprojection systems, power walls, or stations with large-screen display monitors. A smaller-scaleVisualization Station setup can be used to drive stereo CRTs or large pixel-format digital flat panels forsmaller, less expensive environments. We also discuss some of the key applications and benefits ofthese immersive visualization environments. The xw9300/xw9400 visualization centers and stationsare a low-cost alternative to high-end SGI viz-centers that can cost ten times as much.OverviewThe xw9300 and xw9400 workstations both have dual PCI-Express x16 graphics slots, making themrather unique among commodity workstations. This capability, coupled with the two dual-coreOpteron processors, provides an unprecedented amount of graphics processing power for a Linuxworkstation. Two NVIDIA high-end graphics cards such as the fx4500 optionally enhanced withNVIDIA’s Gsync cards for stereo synchronization enables you to share your immersive graphicsexperience with a group of people. This is something that was only available on expensive SGIsystems in the past. The impressive features of the xw9300/xw9400 workstations, advances in thegraphics cards from NVIDIA, improved projector technologies, and high-resolution displays have allcome together to make these advanced visualization alternatives affordable.This paper will walk you through some of the mechanics of how to setup such a system. Since there isalready extensive knowledge and information on the different projectors and projection systems, thispaper will focus on the steps to integrate the xw9300/xw9400 into the visualization solutionalternatives. Some of these will be referenced as examples based on the author's first handknowledge or experience. Note that with the advent of powerful commodity workstation technologyin the xw9300/xw9400, the projection system can be the dominant cost in a fully-featuredvisualization system, so it is highly advised to do plenty of research and/or hire experts to help in theselection, installation and maintenance of the projection system.New projector technologies such as Sony’s SXRD 4k system greatly simplify the maintenance and thevizcenter setup, in that they do not require projector overlap and calibration is much simpler. Xwindow setup becomes much more like that of the Visualization Workstation.2