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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 :)
Finally, after long dark times, and a very tough re-structuring effort, it seems that SGI is back on the field they lead by far: Big and powerful Unix systems, with the best graphics you can find in the industry. After the strategic zig-zag due to Mr. Belluzio 3-4 years ago("Now we're gonna be an NT vendor!"), it's good to see some big company other than Sun which sticks to the good old, reliable and scalable UNIX systems.
Because, at least, not everyone should sell Windows machines, let Mr. Dell do it.
Just hope support for Linux up to some extent.
I'm not about to enter the SGI vs. Linux vs. Mac debate; look no further than the company's own stock price. Back in September the stock hit a low of $0.31 per share, though it has made impressive gains in recent months due to potential government contracts.
Even in the great technology spending spree of the late 1990's SGI languished far behind everyone else. The company has lost money each quarter since at least 1999, the company is expected to show a net loss for the fiscal year ending in June, and the June 03 year is expected to be breakeven at best. Currently only four analysts follow the stock; jokes about the usefulness of analysts aside, 3 have it rated a hold and 1 has an outright sell.
How much longer will SGI survive. The technology is great, but can they pay the bills?
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
SGI has always had incredible design sensibility. I like the logic of "If you pay a crapload of money for a workstation, it should look really cool". Outside of Apple, SGI is the only company that has a computer that people LOOK at and think "I want THAT on my desk".
And of course the speed and power don't hurt...
this is getting old and so are you
blog
I really shouldn't dignify this post with a response, but here goes:
1)ILM and Linux? No, I don't think so. ILM uses SGIs, which means IRIX. They've got a shitload of them, and probably MILLIONS of lines of proprietary code, all written for SGI machines running IRIX. And, unless I'm mistaken, ILM has a deal with SGI where ILM gets SGI's hardware for dirt cheap, in return for being a testbed/advertisement for SGI.
2)500 mhz may not sound like much, but remember: it's a 64-bit CPU. All you'll see in a PC or a Mac is a 32-bit CPU. Yes, yes, I know, more bits != better, but neither does more mhz. Besides, SGIs have an incredible amount of memory bandwidth, due in part to their wide data bus.
The machine is nice, SGI makes a fine product, and with renewed violence on the part of the US military they have some chance of being solvent again in the near future. So relax, enjoy looking at a beautiful product you will never be able to afford, and don't be so jealous.
SGI has been slowly collapsing like flan on a cupboard for the past 6 years. They haven't achieved much other than injecting their necrotic agent into once-successful companies like Cray, MIPS and others they have absorbed throughout the years. They are overly-diversified and unfocused, which a pathetic excuse for a new workstation won't help.
I will not let SGI sit on their laurels. They will have to prove to me that it is worth 4x money for the applications that me and my clients run.
I have one scientist I support. I told him that the p4 was some hot computing (in more ways than one). He put his app on it. His $5k linux machine (dual p4) outran his dual R10k (might have been 12k, can't remember) but 4x. Some might say "Well, ya...that's such an old box". I'll say that it has to last longer because it cost $60k! Not to mention the memory upgrade prices.
There comes a point with the hardware were it is cheaper to get a programmer to optimize your app for a linux machine, or to buy a compiler that can fake out your 32 bit box into doign 64 bit-ish instructions.
-- Who is the bigger fool? The fool or the fool who follows him? --
Since this is a workstation, it's primary usage in the post production industry would be as a modeling or editing station, like the Octane/Octane2. Actually, looking at the specs, this looks like an "Octane lite." Note that in the expansion section they do not mention available XIO slots, so no HD (snowball) cards for this puppy. As for the lack of UMA mentioned by another poster, UMA was only ever available on the O2 and x86 visual workstations. Using the system memory for texture is good for CAD applications, but not so good for the real time manipulation of textures needed by Maya or Discreet's compositing applications. Note that the stock graphics are VPro V10 - pretty badass. Personally, I have a V6 in My Octane2. In short, this is an R14k single proc Octane, with no XIO, not too sure about the backplane, as there do not seem to be any fuel related docs up on techpubs yet. For 1/2 the price of an Octane2, this seems like a pretty good deal to me.
Now, as for the clock cycles. Please. Hasn't the recent AMD vs intel clock cycle mess taught you people anything? Clock Cycles !=speed. I mean really, this is not a box to play quake on. This is a box to design quake on. =)
Finally, on a personal note, I think it's pretty amusing that they have returned to the Crimson color scheme.
Good work all around lads, glad to see that there are still enough good people at sgi to get this kind of box out the door. I think that this box is a good mid range system, right between the O2 and the Octane.
A major error: The O2 is NOT the same box as the Octane 2. The Octane Two can be maxed out with 8GB RAM, has the same graphics stuff, can have two CPU's, and has a fast memory solution as well, in the form of a fast crossbar switch. It was the O2, the little cute desktop box that had UMA, and a maximum of 1GB of RAM.
what's the difference?
:)
i cant't seem to find any technical descriptions, all i saw is this:
"SGI offers a choice of the greatest visual realism in the world with SGI? InfiniteReality3TM graphics subsystem and the highest interactive graphics performance with the new InfinitePerformance graphics subsystem."
... and oh eah, how is it better then my 80mill tri/sec PS2
One thing that immediately struck me when browsing the tech specs, was that the only mention of audio was this:
Digital Audio Through USB ports
Now, I'm not sure how many of you are familiar with this, but SGI workstations are known for their great audio capabilities. Even the humble O2 has 8-channel 24-bit ADAT optical audio I/O; that's quite something! It seems SGI has decided that this level of audio support is no longer desired, though... Too bad. I'm not sure if USB can be pushed to support this; at 48kHz sampling rate, 8 channels of 24-bit audio requires a minimum of 9 Mbps of bandwidth, which is less than the 12 Mbps theoretical maximum. *Shrug*. Of course, there's PCI slots, but having it integrated was very convenient. And cool, too.
main(O){10<putchar(4^--O?77-(15&5128 >>4*O):10)&&main(2+O);}
I think you're right. There are published results at the SPEC website for the R14000 at 500 MHz. Here's the bottom line (CPU / SPECint / SPECfp - all rates are base):
Looks like SGI should consider joining Apple in the PowerPC world...that Power4 looks pretty awesome!
299,792,458 m/s...not just a good idea, its the law!
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
You are comparing apples to potatoes.
Apple's claims are nothing but ridiculous, since they are doing pseudo-FP with their velocity engine. These are 8-bit FP Ops that apple uses for their MFLOPS. SGI is using DP-64bit FP Ops for their MFLOPS rating, so theoretically you should divide appple's number by 8 to get the same FP numbers. So apple's G4 is more like a 0.9GFLOP machine. Theoretically then, the R18K is 3x the speed of a G4 at 1GHz at a slower clock speed. So much for Job's Mhz myth! That is why Apple's claims are nothing but a source of good laugh's when they label their systems as "supers", ooohh look 8-bit FP!
Also a Vpro V12 has a) more color depth per pixel, b) siginificantly larger texture memory, c) Most of the OGL pipeline in HW, d) Does geometry processing on chip... and on and on....
They have lowered the bar for entry for many people who could use an Octane, but don't need the higher end options avaliable. This machine combined with their O300 scalable server line and the new VizServer products will open a lot of new doors for SGI. They are working very hard at improving price / performance and it shows in this product as well as their O300 line of machines currently shipping.
For those doing the MHZ thing while bitching about the price, forget it. This is a visual workstation. For those doing modeling, imaging, MCAD, and other graphical tasks, Fuel is hard to beat. There are things that even older IRIX machines do easily that give todays PC the fits. I use them all the time and they are worth what you pay for stability, long life, and capability.
Think of it this way also: You will now be able to get re-maunfactured Octane machines, with very good GFX systems for a lot cheaper in the next coming months. Given the very long life of these machines, that can only be a good thing.
These attributes are what holistic design gives you. Sure the price is higher, but you do get exactly what you pay for... For an example, look at Apple. Say what you want, but they are doing very well while copying what SGI has always done for years. Slowly the 'market' (read: masses) are beginning to figure out that this approach has long term value.
Basically you almost never throw an SGI machine away. When used for one of the specialized tasks they are built for, they continue to be useful long after they should be.
A little off topic, but look at Apple machines and realize that they will be good for making DVDs a long time from now. 5 years from now an older G4 with the DVD drive will still have nice value because it gets the DVD tasks done right. This is how SGI machines have almost always been.
So pay more now, but if the purchase actually reflects the strengths of the machine, you pay a hell of a lot less later.
There is more coming this year I'll bet, it should be an interesting one for SGI!
Blogging because I can...
That's right. How come there are no PC vendors on the top-500? it's because they can't cut it..! Period... All those Altheon freaks should understand the difference between surfing porn sites and doing real time meteo rendering. They don't use PC's in big enterprises/car manufactuer/army/medecine, etc. Why? Because they aren't worth anything..! Even if you have a nice modified car, it won't be able to compete with a Formula1 car. Comparing Intel/AMD to Mips is like comparing the size of a steering wheel. you just can't compare them! MIPS has been 64 bits for YEARS. Where are Intel/AMD? Also, MIPS has a 3.2Gpbs bus, what about Intel? that cheezy 133 mhz front side bus is reallllly kicking some ass! (sarcasm here..)
You obviously haven't written many PC 3D engines lately then. Low framebuffer precision per component means that after a few blending operations your actual pixel color can be sufficiently off the correct value as to make a difference.
Plus, higher pixel depths will allow us to more accurately simulate the accumlation of light in the frame buffer, leading to much more realistic and "correct" lighting solutions.
*Any* unix system should work for more than 14 days. I know a linux system will. I know a BSD system will, and I know a SunOs system will. I
:-))
also know an SGI system will.
The point I'm making is that uptime of less than a year is hardly news. The fact that you have paid an enormous amount of money for something does *not* guarantee it will be proportionatly better in its service than 'el cheapo' replacement, at least not in this environment.
I used to work for the MOD (the equivalent of the US DARPA). We used to have SGI onyx's for our simulations, and life was good. We also had PC's running linux, and life was equally good. There were a few sun's, but because everything else was just as reliable, but got the job done faster, the Suns were marginalised. I could be less subtly about this, but I don't feel like it
ATB,
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
Having worked on SGIs for quite a few years with OpenGL, Performer, Inventor and a number of other toolkits, I'll say that SGI does a great job of bringing together hardware and software to make a compelling product. I've worked mostly on their high end products (Onyx, RE, RE2, IR, IR2, Origin, ...), but I've worked on pretty much every workstation they have made.
Render Farm??
Why does everybody think that that's all there is to 3D applications?
If you need to have fast interactive graphics, a render farm isn't going to be what you want to use... Besides, render farms are only a small part of 3D graphics market; there ARE other applications.
SGI/IRIX versus M$ Winblows
I've programmed in both, and I'll tell you that getting a 3D app up and running in IRIX for me has been WAY faster and easier than M$ crap. There is just no comparing the two. Although I do have my share of rants about unix (my preferred os) and especially about open source (I know that I'm going to get flamed by many for saying that open source has its problems).
Don't even ask me about OpenGL compliance...
Stupid M$, they always ruin real standards.
Features
Many of the high end SGI graphics engines have many features that you don't really get with the el cheapo cards.
Rick Beluzzo, the ass
I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but I sometimes think that Rick Beluzzo was in Microsoft's employ the whole time he was at SGI, just to sabotage SGI. talking about a person with a complete lack of vision and direction. He completely hurt SGI by taking them towards a commodity market. Hmmmm.... let's see. We completely rule the realtime 3D market, so let's try to sell PCs instead and make no margins doing so. Talking about a really tough market where it is hard to differentiate yourself. I was completely baffled by SGI spending millions of dollars to change their name to SGI (from Silicon Graphics), when everybody in the universe already referred to them as SGI. Ugh!
The whole Fahrenheit thing made me a bit leary too; I always glaze over when I hear talk of all-encompassing/panacea solutions.
I, for one, hope that SGI pulls ahead again; they were fun to work with.
-Ralph