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Domain: vuurwerk.net

Stories and comments across the archive that link to vuurwerk.net.

Comments · 9

  1. Re:We're not all zealots :-) by MrHanky · · Score: 2, Informative · on Desktop Linux Share Overtaking Macintosh
    Truly an underappreciated, and highly marginalized system as far as graphics, and rendering goes...

    Maybe because SGIs were, and still are, ridiculusly expensive. I was given an Indigo^2 for free a couple of months ago, and naturally started surfing for info. I found this old article about the machine (from 1993), skimmed through it: "Wow, UK 8,000 for that computer?" Pretty expensive. But when I read the article again, I understood that was the cost of only the graphics card... "The Indigo2 costs 34,000 UKP." That's about half of what my parents got for their house when they moved, in 1992 (houses have at least doubled in value since then, and an Indigo^2 is worth almost nothing).

    My point is: You don't buy an SGI unless you really need it, or if you have too much money.
  2. Purple Boxes?? Hooray for SGI users! by green+pizza · · Score: 1 · on Desktop Linux Share Overtaking Macintosh

    I mean, not any geek could hack on a purple box.

    Back in the day, I knew a lot of geeks that dreamed of being able to hack on a Silicon Graphics Indigo2 Impact or an Onyx2...

    http://futuretech.mirror.vuurwerk.net/apps/i2impac t00.jpg
    http://www.hpc.susx.ac.uk/images/onyx2.jpg

    (Besides, how many "grape" iMacs were ever sold? It wasn't a popular flavor and the whole 5-flavors thing only lasted about a year or two).

  3. Re:Anyone know aything about SGI machines? by __past__ · · Score: 1 · on Sun Sparc 5 Nostalgia

    2nd-hand Purchasing Advice on Buying an Indy. Very informative site.

  4. Good article on FPS by Nijika · · Score: 1 · on id Says 60fps Is Enough For Doom III
    Just in case anyone fell behind on the WHY of this like I did :)

    Here it is

  5. Re:Possible Advertising Campaign? by foog · · Score: 1 · on Intel Demos New P4 'Extreme Edition'

    oh, it was kind of cool once. In 1992 or so...

  6. Re:Nice... by megan_of_wutai · · Score: 2, Interesting · on SGI Releases New Workstations
    I used to own both an old Indy and an Indigo2, both of which would be the equivilant of an 8086 in PeeCee computing terms..

    Actually, no, they aren't. A more accurate comparison would be a P5 series processor at a similar clock rate.

    You forget the several previous generations of machines such as the Indigo or the Personal Iris and they were drastically faster than an 8086... To find the first machines produced you have to go waaaaay back to 1983 and the Iris 1X00.

  7. Re:Fakery by HoneyBunchesOfGoats · · Score: 2, Informative · on AMD Releases Barton: Athlon 3000+

    I concur, but I doubt this will happen, as such a spec for direct performace comparison (1) is difficult to do, as performance can be quite different depending on the intended application; and (2) would hamper each company's marketing efforts.

    For an quick read on some of the issues associated with different benchmarks, you could look here.

  8. Re:Amazing.... by RageEX · · Score: 1 · on SGI Introduces World's Densest Server

    Please people take the time to understand before you let shiat fall out your mouth. That is 3.2GB/s of peak dedicated bandwidth through a point to point high-speed non-blocking crossbar. SGI systems don't use a bus based topology. That means that you can have 3.2GB/s from CPUMEM at the same time you can have 3.2GB/s from I/ODISK at the same time you can have 3.2GB/s from GFXCPU (sustained 2.4GB/s). Each router supports 8 connections at 3.2GB/s (1.6GB/s down 1.6GB/s up). And this is for their workstations, the new Origins bump things up a notch.

    When you see that a PC can do X.XGB/s peak that bandwitch is shared by all subsystems attatched to the bus.

    The main CPU in an desktop SGI system is matched just to fit this architecture. Whilst your AMD system is sitting idle 65% of the time waiting for data to get where it's going and dealing with bus contention issues and a crappy MSFT OS.

    Read through Ian Mapleson's Octane Architecture paper to get a better idea of the tech. that goes into an SGI workstation. Please also note that the Octane is a system from 1997 and no longer sold (only on eBay), the Octane2 is faster, and the Fuel is much faster though only offers 1 CPU.

  9. Re:Need? by dutky · · Score: 2 · on Apple Is Buyer of New 64-Bit IBM Chips
    Aren't the current crop of Nintendo game consoles powered by a 64-bit MIPS?
    No, they are powered by a 32-bit PowerPC-family chip.

    Hm, nice try, but here we can see that the N64 uses a MIPS R4300i, which is a 64-bit device. I think your convusing N64 with the Sony Playstation.
    Most variables have a minimum of 8 significant bits. The average length of a character string is in the 8-12 byte range (64-96 bits!)
    ..which almost always need to be operated on one character, i.e. 8 bits, at a time.
    The components of a variable are not, themselves, variables. The rebuttal stands: most variables have far more than 8 significant bits.
    All modern processors have 64-bit wide data busses
    ..and said transfers are used to fill cache lines, not to read individual variables. With 64-bit variables, you fit half as many into each of those cache lines, and thus go crashing back to memory accesses twice as often.
    Still, once the data is in cache, the expense of getting at the data is essentially moot (there is plenty of bandwidth between cache and CPU core). The business of 64-bit variables taking up twice as much cache is a red herring since most variables (other than pointers) aren't dependant on the underlying architecture for their size.