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Hot New Silicon Graphics Workstations
Jonathan C. Patschke writes: "SGI have finally unveiled their newest-generation visual workstation, the Silicon Graphics Fuel. Features include a MIPS R14k CPU, Vpro graphics, and a PCI bus (finally)." As you would expect from SGI, it looks good,
and the specs are impressive. I only see IRIX listed, but with the
specs on this thing, it may not be slow :)
faster Mac OS X machine? No way dude. If you are looking purely at mhz, yeah, the Mac is faster, but the architecture is vastly different. The address bus and memory bus are larger, and even if most people think IRIX is a pile, it was designed for graphics i/o.
:)
:)
I wouldn't mind having one of these, but I wish they would bring back their old logo
Want a really fun machine? Get the Origin 2800 w/ 250 CPU's
--Jon
Fuel isn't based on UMA, it's based on the same exact set of ASICs that powers the Origin 3000. This is basicly a 1 CPU version of O3K. Compared to Octane2... Fuel has 3.2x RAM, 2x faster CPU bus, 1/2 the interconnect latency, plus a faster SCSI bus. Neat stuff. Not to mention that VPro graphics are 48bit, compared to the 32bit you find elsewhere. Film people like that.
I only see IRIX listed
That's becuase this is their latest MIPS system, not some x86 box. Despite some progress, Linux does not really run on SGI MIPS boxes. And some of us like IRIX just fine, thank you :-)
Do you even know anything about perl? -- AC Replying to Tom Christiansen post.
One of the fellows in our CS GFX class just returned from a 9 month co-op at PDI/Dreamworks. It sounds to me like PDI is still about 90% SGI on the desktop for modeling, layout, animation, etc. Most of the primary desktop machines are pretty new, mostly Octane2 with VPro graphics. Most of the older Octanes and O2s go to the company newbies or as secondary workstations. They do have a small number of PCs (Windows and Linux) and Macs (Mac OS 9 and X) running 2D paint software and some minor 3D stuff. Rendering and other batch server jobs is all Linux on cheap PC hardware in a server room.
A faster Mac? Please.
This thing looks to have the same terrifying memory bandwidth as its
big brother, the Octane2. 3.2GBps. On a dedicated port crossbar.
The Mac is STILL struggling along with PC133 SDRAM. And the Mac has a
"Geforce4MX", which is basically a faster GF2MX, not a fourth
generation part. Compare that to the SGI graphics subsystem for a
laugh.
For processor bound tasks, yes, the 7455 G4 will be faster than the
R14k, but for overall system performance, ESPECIALLY when pushing big
models around, you'd be goofy stupid to try and use a Mac if you could
afford one of these babies (to say nothing of the Octane2).
Peace,
(jfb)
To spur "enterprise Linux," Big Bang, the distributed two-phase commit.
First of all, the Fuel workstation is sort of a cool new evolution... it uses the existing V10 and V12 graphics from Octane2, and the chipset from a single Origin 3000 node. This means instant software compatibility and one hell of an awesome base to run future graphics and CPU offerings. Compared to a single CPU Octane2... Fuel has *half* the latency, *3.2x* the RAM thruput, and *twice* the CPU interconnect thruput. And it run the same OS and the same apps. All for about 1/3 to about 1/2 the price. Sounds like a pretty resonable update to me. And an Octane2 ain't too shabby for real-time interactive apps, either. If you haven't already, find one to play with. A VPro-based Octane running IRIX 6.5.12 or newer is a 3D beast, and yet rock solid stable. Even makes for one hell of an uncompressed, realtime HD video solution, if you can afford the RAID and HD interface. I've never seen a PC or Mac HD solution come even close to Octane2. And Fuel is that much better...
/ 3000/ip/tech_info.html.
Folks run IRIX for HD video editing, effects compositing, and 3D modeling for a reason -- it works and it doesn't have the "crap out" effect when working under a huge load. Sure the CPUs in an SGI aren't extremely powerful, but that doesn't matter much -- it's the crossbar switch architecture (Octane/Octane2 is based on Origin 2000, Fuel is based on Origin 3000) and wide busses that make the difference. Batch jobs and long haul rendering is all done on a farm of cheap PC's anyway (unless you're ILM, which owns six Origin 2000s, each with 128 CPUs).
Secondly, SGI is coming up with some way cool graphics offerings. In my opinion, the new Onyx InfinitePerformance graphics is bigger news than the new workstation:http://www.sgi.com/visualization/onyx
SGI screwed up big time in the past, but they're working on fixing the situation. They can't do everything at once, but they're working as hard as they can. They're a pretty wide spread company. Hell, they even own Alias-Wavefront (ever heard of Maya?). They're doing some other cool things, too. Their developer program is now free to commercial developers, but hobbyists with a real project are invited as well in a case-by-case basis. They're even giving away a Fuel workstation at the SGI Global Developer Conference next month. And it's not just a drawing, either. The winner of the machine will be a hobbyist with an attendee-voted best project. Very, very cool stuff.
http://www.sgi.com/developers
http://www.sgievents.com/developer2002/
Well, it's not the first time Slashdot misses the point. :-( SGI didn't released just the Fuel workstation today. In fact, that the smallest and most insignificant part of their announcement.
The actual announcement reffers to the so-called Visual Area Networking - a concept that, basically, boils down to distributed visualising and data processing over a network.
With VAN, a user can interact with an InfinitePerformance supercomputer (usually an Onyx 3000 with several hundred processors), let the big iron do the data processing, and receive the resulting images over a network to a thin client. That "thin" client may be a Fuel workstation, a PDA, some device used by US troops to get realtime maps of the enemy positions, whatever.
The point is, many people, working from many different locations, can work together using their thin clients, but manipulating data on the same supercomputer. I've seen some impressive demos, where two people were immersed into the same VR environment, and were manipulating objects on the same scene, at the same time, over the network. Given the fact that the scene was not just a pure graphical computer-games scene, but an actual simulation with real physical laws and everything, that was pretty damn cool.
I tried to submit the actual story, but it was rejected. Instead, Slashdot caught this ridiculous story about "yet another workstation from SGI". Come on people, get real...