Introduction

Several facts can be taken into account:

• decreasing the financial resources in HEP;
• increasing the requirements for computing;
• existing of a cheap operating platform like Linux;
• cheap commodity hardware (PC);
• existing batch sytems CODINE, NQS, LSF, and others which are relatively easy available in many leading HEP laboratories;
• new languages: java;

We might consider General Purpose Computing Facility on a base of PC.

It is discussed PC farm consisting of N nodes (PCs) for batch processing with relatively weak communications between nodes. N might be considered in range from several PCs to probably 100 or more.

Reliability of an existing hardware is enough to support PC farm consisting of 100 nodes by one person (for hardware, operating system and general application software).

Scalability: we can increase a number of PCs to desired value in step by step mode.

The value about 400 Pentium Pro 200 MHz or 200 Pentium II 300 MHz can be discussed as really achievable maximum of computing power (in case when four processor motherboards will be used).

One processor Pentium II 300 MHz is more than two times more powerful the R4400 200 MHz. That means the maximum computing power will be more than 30 SGI with 28 R4400 processors every SGI.

A number of SCSI ports and disk drives may be various and will reflect concrete needs in the discussed proposal.