Introduction
This document summarized the hardware requirements and software
environment for both the SIMTRAP server and the networked
MODEL server(s).
It applies both to the development environment as well as a run-time
installation of the SIMTRAP system.
Hardware Requirement
For the Demonstrator, the SIMTRAP SERVER requires a UNIX workstation
with a high-resolution
graphics system (1280 by 1024), 256 simultaneous colors, i.e., an 8 bit
graphics frame buffer) with 64 MB RAM and, depending on the application,
1 GB of (data) disk space or more.
Please note that for the operational use of the system in the exploitation
phase, the Demonstrator can either be ported to Windows NT, or be
redistributed to use the same hardware platform as the MODEL Server and
use a Java based client-interface that can be run from any Java-enabled
browser program on a PC or Network computer (NC).
Operating System
The SIMTRAP SERVER will be supported for the demonstration phase
on SUN Sparc architectures,
under SUN Solaris 2.4 or higher.
Support for alternative architectures and operating systems (HP UX,
IBM AIX, Intel Linux) can be arranged, but would require additional
resources not foreseen in the project.
In addition to the operating system, X Windows run-time libraries (usually
part of the basic systems software. Under SUN Solaris, the necessary libraries
and tools are available under /usr/openwin/lib and
/usr/openwin/bin.
Window Manager:
Common Desktop Environment (CDE)
The system will also require a http demon (httpd)
for the client-server integration and Internet access.
For more information on http and setting up a local Web server,
see, for example:
- Liu, Peek, Jones, Buus, and Nye (1994)
- Managing Internet Information Services. 630 pp., O'Reilly &
Associates, Inc. Sebastopol, CA. ISBN 1-56592-062-7.
Networking: access to the SIMTRAP MODEL Server
The host of the SIMTRAP SERVER will require a local LAN
connection or Internet access for some of the systems intended functionality,
and in particular, the connection to the parallel HPCN models.
To access remote computing and data resources, a minimum of 64Kb/s
will be required (e.g., through an ISDN phone line).
The model server will be implemented either on a dedicated parallel
machine at the GMD, or on a UNIX workstation cluster under MPI.
Unless the workstation cluster running the MODEL Server is in the same LAN
with the SIMTRAP Server at a demonstration site, an external connection
(dedicated ISDN, Internet, see above) is required.
Auxiliary Tools:
As external tools for data preparation, editing etc, the following tools
are recommended:
- basic screen editor like vi
- graphical editors and image conversion programs, including
xv, xpaint, giftrans
- a standard GIS for geographical data capture and editing,
for example:
- Arc/Info (powerful but expensive);
- IDRISI (PC based, reasonably cheap);
- GRASS (public domain);
The SIMTRAP MODEL Server
In principle, the parallel versions of the DYNEMO and DYMOS programs run
on all hardware platforms listed below. However the listing is sorted in
order of the expected computational speed and therefore ordered according
to the proposed preference. Besides, the type of the used
computer platform the real computational speed depends on the number of
used parallel processors, the speed of the underlying communication network
and the considered model region (e.g. grid size, traffic burdens).
The given values of the memory as well as the number
of processors should always be considered as minimal requirement. The
listing is a collection of hardware platforms the programs can definitely
run on and therefore incomplete.
Highly parallel systems:
(e.g. Intel paragon, Cray T3D, Thinking Machines
CM5, Parsytec Power GC or CC, IBM SP2, iPSC/860
Workstation clusters
the following UNIX platforms interconnected by a variety of
networks (Ethernet,Token ring, FDDI,...) with TCP/IP.
At least 2 computers with 64 MByte RAM each are necessary:
In addition to the hardware requirements a FOTRAN and C compiler has to
be available on the chosen platform. PVM3 (Parallel Virtual Machine) is
used as the underlying mes sage passing system.
This tool allows a heterogeneous collection of workstations and
supercomputers to function as a single high performance parallel machine.
PVM is the existing de facto standard for distributed computing and
therefore usually installed on most platforms. Should this be not
the case, public domain versions of PVM are available in the Internet.
