Porting a Visualization Package from IRIX to NT : What Will I Get and What Will I Pay; Software engineering rept

摘要

We discuss our experiences in porting a moderately large scientific visualization environment from IRIX to NT approximate to 4.0. Two porting strategies have been taken: (1) a port via a POSIX emulation layer; and (2) a native NT port. POSIX compliant code can be ported to NT with relatively little effort if the code adheres to general accepted programming principles, such as modularity and encapsulation. The performance of a modern 3D Wintel machine is quite satisfactory for a variety of scientific desktop tasks. We have compared the performance of a 2 CPU Dell OptiPlex with FireGL 4000 graphics option to various SGI desktop workstations.