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Uhm.. Visual Workstations are neither low-cost nor "cheap".

$3500 for a base VW is not what I would call "low-cost".

If you'd take a look at the Visual Workstation page you'd see that the hardware in the VW smokes anything in the "PC" world, especially in graphics.

But don't just go off on a rant because you work for a competing company with an inferior product. *grins*

Silicon Graphics does. Check out The Silicon Graphics webpage for the 1600SW. I've got one sitting right next to my CRT and people just marvel at the clarity of the screen. I should point out that the 1600SW has a 110dpi resolution, which largely accounts for its incredible crispness.

Disclaimer: I work for Silicon Graphics.

Jon Leech
SGI Core OpenGL Group

I just got one of these babies, and I hope that SGI will get going on the port! Right now there's a website under SGI's domain with info on Linux for their various systems.

The good news:

It runs (Yea!)

It will display on the flat screen (YES!)

The bad news:

It needs an IDE (no SCSI)

No X acceleration

No OpenGL acceleration

"Very little" PCI card support

I'm loading it when I get my next paycheck and I can pick up an IDE drive! I'll keep you all informed...

visual workstation products

- |Daryll

The SGI URL was mistyped in the story

BIOS is going the way of the dodo. It lags behind the capability of most modern ide devices. Most advanced computers don't use BIOS any more. ARC boot is already supported by many advanced platforms, it just hasn't trickled down to Intel based machines yet. Don't worry, we can break this BIOS habit soon enough. All we need is a little help from some friends .

Sun currently ships with CDE, the Common Desktop Environment, which is based on Motif and the Motif widget set. I find it quite clunky and cumbersome -- FVWM has it licked on most counts. SGI's Irix is similarly based on a Motif-like system though with some nice chrome. I believe the display mechanisms are different though (is Irix X based?).

The only really outstanding commercial Unix desktop predating Linux that I'm aware of is NeXT, and I'm currently running the highly NeXT-influenced WindowMaker. Note that I didn't run NeXT, I just find wm quite the bomb.

Sun previously shipped with OpenLook / OpenWindows (also X based) and NeWS (Network Extensible Windowing System). Hewlett Packard had it's VUE (Visual User Environment) which highly influenced CDE. There's more general history here.

Frankly, though, I have to agree with the general assessment that there was no really good integrated graphical environment for Unix prior to Linux and the FSF. For all the comparisons made between Linux and consumer desktops, you'll note that there are none made between GNOME/KDE and commercial Unix offerings, or to Windows 3.x. The development path for a best-of-breed desktop for Linux, bar none, is clearly established.

Provided you have the right version of Irix, of course :-)

SGI's 3D Filesystem Navigator (fsn)

The "RealityMonsterTM multisubsystem" in the high-end SGI Onxy2 systems renders "up to 210 million polygons per second and [has a] 7.2 gigapixels per second fill rate", although the high-end Onyx2 might not fit in your door. Go here, and bring LOTS of cash

Cool, but I'm not running IRIX. Linux needs a successor to ext2.

Did you miss the announcement that SGI's porting xfs to Linux? Apparently the only reason they haven't released code already is that their lawyers are still haggling over the license.

--Troy

NVRAM harddrives have been available for a while. The CRAY T932 has 800GB/s memory bandwidth, I'd say it's safe to say that that bus is running at at least a GHz. I haven't heard of a 10GHz CPU, unless you are talking in the aggregate (eg. 10 processors running at 1GHz each), in which case the CRAY T932 almost certainly qualifies. You should go out and get one, and install an NVRAM harddrive in it.

If you think the O2 looks cool, you should try the Visual workstations. As an added feature, they have that door on the front that, when you press on the bottom gently) automatically slide down gracefully revealing the floppy, CDROM, tape, and Power button. More information is available on the SGi web site.

Once you get to that point, you should switch to something like SGI's crossbars and CC-NUMA arcitecture. Look at the architecture of the Origin 2000. Each Node board contains 2 MIPS R12ks, memory, and a router to talk to all of the other processors. The best part is, the memory is shared between all of the processors, so the whole thing runs as a single image. If you don't think this technology can be adaped to PC architecture, check out the SGI 320 and 540 class computers, Intel based but with a radically different "bus" that isn't really a bus at all.

SGI also released OpenVault but its license has some problems (Notification Clause, Advertising Clause, US Legislation Imperialism) which have been discussed on license-discuss and debian-legal.

SGI also released OpenVault but its license has some problems (Notification Clause, Advertising Clause, US Legislation Imperialism) which have been discussed on license-discuss and debian-legal.

I believe the Linux box was used to reboot wedged SGI - Challenge XL render servers, which have special system controller ports.

I believe the Linux box was used to reboot wedged SGI - Challenge XL render servers, which have special system controller ports.

Yes but they are not giving away the guaranteed I/O rate part of it. At least not according to this link though I can't find any mention of that in the news story or the SGI press release.

I haven't seen what EXT3 promises,

It will add journalling (see the white paper Stephen wrote), and probably extent based block lists and btrees by Ted Ts'o will be in there too.

Linux does need a journaling FS and XFS may be the best bet, but it won't happen quickly unless SGI puts some serious resources behind it.

SGI are employing kernel hackers and you can start to see some of the stuff they are getting up to

Also, just who has the resources to test large production systems (4+ CPUs) on an OS under test? Corporates, that's who. And they'll contribute their code to Open Source, right? Because...?

Hell, we've got MS helping us by looking for performance bottlenecks for us and that is already starting to bear fruit (I can't seem to link to that article right. Check out the article "Re:Thank you Microsoft!" by petchema. You will need Alt-F to find it.)

Personally, I think ext3 will rock. This isn't Stephen's first file system by a long chalk.

may have a price current purists will not like but will have to accept (ie less than Open Source code licenses

We can't succeed by destroying ourselves, and I don't think the Linux community will try. If XFS weren't Open Source then it would fail to gain any market share against ext3. But it will be Open Source, so it's a moot point.

SGI and Veritas Form Strike Team to Investigate Development of Journaled File System Solution for Linux

I'd guess a Logical Volume Manager would be part of what SGI contributes to the free software commuity.

Posted by skaffster:

What I could never figure out is, if the JFS has to keep a changelog, where does it store it? If it's on the disk, how do you handle corruption to the changelog file(s) if it crashes? Anyway, the whitepaper is here

Apparently, this file system does not have quota or ACL support? As per the SGI white-paper on the XFS filesystem, those features are on the TODO list.

Is this something we will be able to put in given the source, and call the whole thing ext3fs, and release it in Linux 2.4?

Good filesystems are some of the most difficult code in an operating system, so having an excellent base like XFS will certainly help. Thank you SGI!

If the license for XFS is any sensible (i.e. a true Open Source license), this is the single most intelligent thing SGI could have done to score with the Open Source movement. Linux is in dire need of an Journalling File System and XFS is one of the very best of this flock.

Their white paper on XFS explains how XFS is different from conventional file systems and what they did to it to make it fast with very large files as well as with many, many small files (SGI is not Open Sourcing their GRIO capabilities, which together with RT scheduling would make Linux a serious multimedia contender).

If you are a USENIX member, you will be able to download the Sweeney paper Scalabilit y in the XFS File System from the USENIX server. It was published in the Spring 1996 proceedings of the USENIX, so you may also read it in your Universities library.

SGI Makes Linux Debut at Linux Expo

they're presenting a paper called:

Scalable File Systems for the Open Source Community

sounds like they might be open sourcing XFS , cool!

SGI Makes Linux Debut at Linux Expo

they're presenting a paper called:

Scalable File Systems for the Open Source Community

sounds like they might be open sourcing XFS , cool!

And, though SGI has announced NT server, it has yet to make any.

Incorrect. They're shipping, and have been for a while now. The reviews I've seen make them out to be pretty hot boxes.

See http://www.sgi.com/products/hw_wor kstations.html

Open Vault is a mass storage media manager. It deals with tape drives, CD-R, and other storage media doing stuff like scheduled stores, stores to the most appropriate media.

Here's the SGI press release..

The comment was:
For the longest time, PTC only supported NT on Intel hardware

Do not confuse PTC (Parametric Technologies) with one of it's product lines, Pro/E.

Pro/E is NT based right now, but PTC owns more than one CAD/CAM company. Not too many know this.

Last year, ICEM Technologies, makers of ICEM DDN, a high end UNIX only (now we support NT too) CAD/CAM suite was bought from Control Data Corperation by Parametric Technologies. This was not primary for ICEM DDN, the CAD suite, but for it's high end surfacing application, ICEM Surf which has long been coveted by PTC because of its desire to integrate with Pro/E.

ICEM DDN, which is quite popular in Germany and in other European Engineering Firms as well as high end European Car Companies (Ferrari, for instance), is wholey owned by PTC.

So when you say that PTC is UNIX only or has been UNIX only, you're incorrect. I work for ICEM and subsequently PTC which might I add, treats its developers/programmers quite well (free pop machine, free snacks, and free beer on fridays for those of age).


-Zebulun

Here's an excerpt of the Responsibilities section of the marketing job (36186):

Knowledge of software development, scientific research, EDA/ECAD a plus.

I have RH 6.0 working beautifully with a Matrox G200. I did an "Upgrade" install over 5.2, but a real install might work better. I couldn't get the real install to work (and no I'm not a Unix newbie either). 5.2 works well with a G200 but you need to get the X updates (mini gripe... the FTP installer should give the option of grabbing updates if available).

I got the Quake to work briefly but I realized that I wasn't using GLX, but software only Mesa. Since then I haven't been able to get it to work at all, or any GLU stuff for that matter, although the X server does recognize the GLX extension at startup.

In case you haven't run across it, a good page for getting Quake3 to run with Matrox is at http://www.linuxstart.com/~kva nce/projects/g200.html. And for those that want more G200 info, see http://reality.sgi.com/ri pperda_engr/glx/matrox_stat.html. As I have noted, it hasn't worked for me yet, but it's progressing pretty well.

As an aside. Redhat 6.0 is a great upgrade for those of you running 5.2. The 2.2.5 kernel and glibc 2.1 make a noticable difference in speed, (and apparently make Netscape more stable, but this could be a mirage). It's nice to see that a company can issue an upgrade that performs better than the original. Thanks to all the hackers in and out of Redhat that made it happen. (And no, before you flame me, I haven't tried Debian yet, but I've got an empty partition just waiting for it.)





--

Given the ubiquity of memory leaks, why don't more programs use garbage collection? The idea being not to rely on garbage collection, but to let it clean up after your mistakes, because you can't find them ALL. The Boehm-Demers-Weiser conservative garbage collector is such a package for C/C++. (And before everyone jumps all over GC, please read this portion of the GC faq)

OpenVault was open sourced yesterday, see

http://www.sgi.com/software/openso urce/openvault

and

http://www.sgi.com/software/openvault

Judging from their current line of servers, these machines might not have graphics boards in them at all.

The servers will have graphics (probably not accelerated 3D) since they will be designed to run both Linux and Micro$oft Windoze NT. A headless server would be a more reasonable option if NT wasn't part of the plan.

check out the press release

I hope the server is rackmountable, takes up 4U or less and has an LCDproc compatible display, especially if it's targeted at ISPs.

The amiga is better, provided you install a load of commodities and patches from the aminet - such as MagicMenu, for the best menus, newicons 4 +glowicons for a nice iconset, Magic User Interface, for the coolest GUI API there is, etc.
I you want to see what the average Amiga "Power User" desktop looks like, check out the link below,and go to screenshots (Yes, this guy works at SGI. Yes he uses an Amiga. The Amiga still rocks for 2D pixel-editing)

http://reality.sgi.com/mchaput_aw/inde x.html

Unfortunately, a vanilla Amiga OS 3.1 installation
is not so nice. 3.5 might fix that, it's due out in the summer.
Of course, the full 3.1 installation fits on 5 floppies, so it's unsurprising it's not flashy by today's standards.

At this time, the aforementioned web page seems to be slashdotted or otherwise down. If it still is at the time you read this, you can send email to their trademark-watching department by going to http://www.sgi.com/company_inf o/trademarks/questions.html

And please give this post a fantastic ranking so everyone sees it :)

At this time, the aforementioned web page seems to be slashdotted or otherwise down. If it still is at the time you read this, you can send email to their trademark-watching department by going to http://www.sgi.com/company_inf o/trademarks/questions.html

And please give this post a fantastic ranking so everyone sees it :)

A little steep for an intel based machine.
Regardless of no. of processors or speed,
it's no SGI. I called SGI and for a basic
SGI ONYX^2 Base Reality 2x 195Mhz RS10k .. yada
system its only $70,000. The basic setup
for this 8 xeon proc box is $100,000.

-Z

A little steep for an intel based machine.
Regardless of no. of processors or speed,
it's no SGI. I called SGI and for a basic
SGI ONYX^2 Base Reality 2x 195Mhz RS10k .. yada
system its only $70,000. The basic setup
for this 8 xeon proc box is $100,000.

-Z

A little steep for an intel based machine.
Regardless of no. of processors or speed,
it's no SGI. I called SGI and for a basic
SGI ONYX^2 Base Reality 2x 195Mhz RS10k .. yada
system its only $70,000. The basic setup
for this 8 xeon proc box is $100,000.

-Z

A little steep for an intel based machine.
Regardless of no. of processors or speed,
it's no SGI. I called SGI and for a basic
SGI ONYX^2 Base Reality 2x 195Mhz RS10k .. yada
system its only $70,000. The basic setup
for this 8 xeon proc box is $100,000.

-Z

Here's a link to a Matrox G200 project, but it doesn't look like they've really gotten started yet.

reality.sgi.com/ripperda_ engr/glx/matrox_news.html

TedC

Actually, Cray invented all of this, but hey, why nitpick :-P.

SGI's ccNUMA white paper can be found here

Well I tried to post some links, but nothing shows, so I don't know if it was lost. So just in case, here you are: http://reality.sgi.com/kjw_engr /Wearables/pc104.htm, http://wearables.blu.org/hardwear.html , http://www.rtdusa.com/pc104men.htm and www.pc104.org

• PC/104 is simply an ISA bus that is stackable for small cards (see for instance the picture on top at http://www.pc104.com/
• PC/104+ is the same idea with a PCI-bus. Drawback: I only saw a handful of PC/104+ products in the huge amount of PC/104 products (since the only actual use I would have for this would be a 100 Mbps router, I postponed my dreams :-)

I hope that PC/104(+) will become widely commercially successful, so that we start to see the prices dropping, and might have a chance to get fun assembling micro-PCs :-)

When is someone gonna make a cool case to build a frankenstein system?

People don't realize how many tehnical companies are up around these parts: and I will kick anyone's ass who says this town is cold-- as soon as I get my tongue removed from this flag-pole... But seriously: There are a lot of hi-tech companies around here: Seagate, Digi International, SGI, Comtrol, and of course IBM (Rochester, MN). South Dakota had the "Silicon Prairie," we have the "Technical Tundra." I'm going out for ice-cream... -AP (Minnetonka, MN) [Min-uh-TONG-ka]

CRAPPY LOW END? Do you have any idea of what you speak? The Onyx 2 that gets 13.1m polys/sec is the best graphics station in the world. I believe it costs in excess of $1million. This is what they used to make a Bugs Life with. Don't knock it. Have a look

So, by "key technology", do you think they mean algorithms, libraries, whole apps, and/or something completely else?

Dunno. One thing they've already released is the GLX code; they may plan to release other things in the future.

Not to say this isn't possible, just that it probably isn't worth the effort to SGI. They already went through the pain of getting Irix to run on these things. Plus, there's no guarantee that the OS on the Origin2000s would still be efficient on Linus's stated target of mid-range SMPs.

SGI's providing specs to let others do it would be pretty harmless, though. Not many folks would want the down time on their very expensive box to test and tune a different OS. SGI wouldn't lose anything, so maybe that's how people should push...

Jason