47: Commodity Clusters for Immersive Projection Environments Tuesday, Full Day 8:30 am – 5:15 pm Room 206 CAL/Room 214CD Commodity clusters have become an attractive platform for powering immersive projection environments. This course presents practical hardware knowledge and free software tools that enable attendees to immediately use commodity clusters for virtual reality. Prerequisites Some familiarity with virtual reality technology. While no previous knowledge of cluster computing is assumed, attendees should have basic knowledge of computer programming and networking. Topics Understanding how the system characteristics of a commodity cluster affect its use for virtual reality and graphics. How to design, construct, and manage a commodity cluster from scratch. How to design, port, develop, and evaluate applications for the cluster platform. Organizers Hank Kaczmarski University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Marcelo Knorich Zuffo Universidade de São Paulo Lecturers Camille Goudeseune Hank Kaczmarski Benjamin Schaeffer University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Philippe Augerat Bruno Raffin IMAG Paulo Bressan Luciano Soares Marcelo Knorich Zuffo Universidade de São Paulo Schedule 8:30 Architecture Overview Schaeffer 8:50 Hardware Overview Kaczmarski 9:05 Software Overview Zuffo 9:25 I/O Device Integration Goudeseune 10:15 Break 10:30 Administration Overview Soares 10:50 Basic Hardware Set-Up Issues Raffin 11:15 Advanced Issues and Solutions Kaczmarski 11:30 Useful Devices Goudeseune 11:45 Systems Administration Augerat noon Software Development Methodologies Augerat 12:15 Lunch 1:30 Software Architecture Overview Schaeffer 1:45 WireGL Case Study Zuffo 2:00 Net Juggler Case Study Raffin 2:20 CORBA-Based Application Distribution Case Study Zuffo 2:40 Syzygy Case Study Schaeffer 3:00 Examples of Implementing Applications Schaeffer 3:15 Break 3:30 Module IV: Hands-On Laboratory Additional information from SIGGRAPH 2002 Courses is available in the Course Notes.