PCI Express Graphics and I/O, ISV Certifications

HP recommends Windows Vista® Business

What do I do if my 32-bit apps do not run due to missing shared libraries?

You will need to get the library from Red Hat’s 32-bit RHEL 3 distribution and put it on your system in the appropriate directory and report the missing library to Red Hat through their Red Hat Network subscription. This will help Red Hat to get the right set of 32-bit libraries needed for most apps in future releases.

Once I have installed the	Simple. Just rebuild from scratch and the compiler will build 64-bit by default. This is true for most apps. However, some
64-bit version of Linux, what	apps must be made 64-bit clean which means that the developers must review the code to get rid of any assumptions about
do I have to do to build	32-bitness, such pointer arithmetic issues. Some makefiles that explicitly declare paths such as /lib, /usr/lib and
64-bit apps?	/usr/X11R6/lib might need to be changed to append “64.”

PCI Express Graphics and I/O

What graphics card are available on the new HP xw4550 Workstation?

Integrated Graphics ATI Radeon X1250

Professional 2D NVIDIA Quadro NVS 290 (256 MB)

Entry 3D

NVIDIA Quadro FX 370 (256 MB) and NVIDIA FX 570 (256 MB)

Mid-range 3D ATI FireGL V5600 (512 MB) and NVIDIA FX 1700 (512 MB)

What’s the advantage of PCI Express for graphics? What are the differences?

PCI Express is the next generation interface not only for graphics cards, but also for I/O cards. PCI Express is a scalable interface, and depending on the chipset the system can have multiple PCI Express connections with various bandwidths. For graphics cards, the defined standard is “by sixteen” (or x16). This implementation of PCI Express Gen 1 provides twice the unidirectional bandwidth and four times the peak bandwidth as AGP 8X. PCI Express Gen 2 doubles that bandwidth again. The PCI Express specification also allows for 75W from the motherboard to the graphics cards. This is three times as much power as the standard AGP 8X specification.

Should I buy a graphics card with 256 MB or 512 MB of memory?

Graphics performance is dependent upon many factors, including the amount of video memory. Higher performing cards also include bigger and faster GPU’s, more memory bandwidth, and tend to have more features like dual-link connectors and support for stereo. The higher performance graphics cards will also have more memory (and a higher price). A dual display configuration at 1920x1200 pixels will allocate about 70MB for the frame buffer. The remaining graphics memory will be used to store textures, display lists (graphics data sent by your applications), and other data specific to graphics. If your application would benefit from more storage space for these items, then you should purchase a graphics card with more memory.

ISV Certifications

HP has very strong relationships with independent software vendors (ISVs). The software vendors recognize that HP is a critical ally in the industry, not only as a hardware OEM, but in marketing and support relationships. HP, in many cases, has engineering personnel located full-time on site at these software vendors’ location providing technical support, application performance tuning, and graphics driver optimization.

ISV certification is a critical aspect of the workstation value proposition. Workstation users are running very complicated, high-end, technical applications and reliability and stability are an absolute requirement. The entry workstation is targeted at specific technical applications, many of which were listed above. The following table outlines the applications that are planned for the HP xw4550.

Some of the applications listed in the table do not certify hardware, but they are listed as “targeted” applications. For those applications listed above that do offer hardware certification, the new entry workstation will be certified.