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 :)

Comments

One of the key apps is Medical Imaging?

[itsnotme]

Medical imaging... hmm... shooter games.. medical imaging.. hmm sounds nice.. makes the games more REALISTIC! and probably has enough horsepower to render it in real life color too.. ooh!

Might point the right direction

[david_e_v]

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.

Re:Might point the right direction

[doom]

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.

Much as I enjoy Belluzo bashing, I believe the NT-madness actually preceeded his reign.

If you want to argue that he encouraged it, made it a priority, and so on, I'd be willing to listen.

By the way, kids: Mhz is not the measure of a machine. Floating point benchmarks are not the measure of a machine either. The world is a complicated place, and computers are no escape from that problem.

Re:Why?

[niola]

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

More like lukewarm

[Space cowboy]

SGI are still producing fantastic graphics architectures with next-to-nothing processing power behind them... Sheesh. What are they on ?

I work in the video/film post-production business. We are one of their major clientbases, and these machines will go down well in this niche area. Unfortunately, althoguh SGI get a lot of press for their "movie" image, it's not their money-spinner...

SGI get most of their money from government and research contracts. This machine will not cut the mustard in those areas - it's just too damn slow. Yes the CPU is probably a better performer than its Intel equivalent in MHz, but I just don't believe it'll get anywhere near the SPECfp and SPECint of the Athlon 2000 or Intel 2.2GHz CPUs.

It's a shame. I *really* like SGI machines. I've bought several (I donated one of them to libsdl just so SDL would support SGIs :-) but this machine is - to coin a phrase - too little, too late :-(

Simon.

Re:More like lukewarm

[davechen]

Here are some numbers from Spec.org

This is for Spec CFP 2000 (i.e. floating point). I picked the SGI Origin 3200, which has a similar processor (although I'm not sure if its identical or not).

Advanced Micro Devic Epox 8KHA+ Motherboard, AMD Athlon (TM) XP 2000+ 1 596 642
Intel Corporation Intel D850MD motherboard (2.2 GHz, Pentium 4 pro 1 766 777
SGI SGI Origin 3200 1X 500MHz R14k 1 436 463

The Spec CINT 2000 numbers look similar, I just didn't feel like cutting and pasting.

So, sure your average P4 or Athlon is faster, but its not as simple as a matter of Megahertz.

My concern about SGI is that these machines have the same graphics V10 and V12 that they've been using for years now. I heard that these were designed as the last hurrah of designers who have since gone on to Nvidia or ATI.

I wonder if SGI has the manpower left to design new, innovative graphics architectures, or will they be just slapping more texture and cranking the clock on old designs.

dave

Re:More like lukewarm

[green pizza]

wonder if SGI has the manpower left to design new, innovative graphics architectures, or will they be just slapping
more texture and cranking the clock on old designs.

I've been told that a speed boost along the lines of a "V14" and "V16" will be available in May, with a totally new gfx line (compatible with existing machines as just a new gfx card) becoming available this fall.

Then, of course, there are neat new SGI gfx offerings such as Onyx InfinitePerformance...

http://www.sgi.com/visualization/onyx/3000/ip/

Re:More like lukewarm

[Glock27]

Yes the CPU is probably a better performer than its Intel equivalent in MHz, but I just don't believe it'll get anywhere near the SPECfp and SPECint of the Athlon 2000 or Intel 2.2GHz CPUs.

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):

R14000 500---------- 410 / 436
Athlon 2000+-------- 697 / 596
Pentium 4 2200------- 771 / 766
IBM Power4 1300----- 814 / 1169

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!

Re:More like lukewarm

[AMuse]

This machine will not cut the mustard in those areas - it's just too damn slow.

I have to disagree. I work for a government research center who is still running some Indys and Challenge S series machines for some applications. The scientists there are worried less about speed, typically, and more about stability and function.

Speed is good, but increased function is even more important, and above all else it had better NOT crash on day 13 of a 14 day modeling operation.

Re:More like lukewarm

[ToLu the Happy Furby]

Looks like SGI should consider joining Apple in the PowerPC world...that Power4 looks pretty awesome!

That Power4 also costs like $100,000 for each (4-way CMP) processor module alone, so, gee, it'd better be pretty awesome. The 1 GHz G4+ that powers the current generation of Macs would probably score about the same as the R14k on SPEC, or a bit lower...but we don't know because Apple is too cowardly to submit themselves to legitimate benchmarks when they have a bunch of fools running around believing that a G4 is faster than a P4 or Athlon, and Motorola doesn't bother because they know the G4+ is actually designed for the embedded signal processing market, where SPEC scores are not too relevant. Just because the G4 and Power4 are both "in the PowerPC world" doesn't mean they have similar performance characteristics.

In any case, where the R1x000 really shines is in scalability to very high processor count NUMA configurations (not at issue in this case of course). It'd still be a world-class processor line if SGI hadn't given up 5 years ago by essentially stopping R1x000 development and committing to Itanium instead. They've finally realized their mistake and apparently have some extra tweaks on the way (R16k and R18k), but it's probably too little too late.

Were I SGI at the moment, I'd drop IRIX for Linux, port everything that made IRIX special, and run it all on proprietary P4 or Xeon boards with all the special SGI graphics goodies. Although that was the idea behind their NT line and that didn't do so well, did it...

SGI had some amazing tech back in the day, but having more or less rolled over and died the past few years it might be difficult for them to stay ahead of the commidity hardware crowd. (Re: 48-bit color, if johnc has his way--and he usually does--commidity graphics cards will have 48 or 64-bit internal color soon enough.) But they appear to be finally waking up and making a go at it, so best of luck to them.

Re:More like lukewarm

[Space cowboy]

*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.

Re:More like lukewarm

[RevAaron]

Besides, I doubt that that person would want to buy a Mac as they seem solidly convinced that they
don't perform as well as claimed when properly comparing the performance.

I know very well that my iBook with a 500 MHz G3 doesn't perform the same as a 1 GHz P4. However, raw performance is definately not the most important thing in a computer. What matters is that I can do what I want to do. This requirement encompasses an adequate speed, naturally. However, I'm not willing to sacrifice the ability to what I want to do in the way I want to do it in order to gain MHz bragging rights, getting stuck running Linux or (eek) Windows. Some people seem to have other priorities, tyo each her own.

Re:More like lukewarm

[ToLu the Happy Furby]

Ok, you have several misconceptions about the relationship of IBM's PowerX line to IBM and Moto's Gx line. Simply put, they have extremely little in common besides the fact that they both use their own (incompatible) supersets of the PowerPC ISA.

That $100,000 cost is fairly meaningless, since there is an extreme markup on server hardware, and the chip isn't in mass production...I'd venture to say that it can be mass-produced cheaper than P4, as I'll bet it has a lower gate count.

Yes and no. Sure the HPC market where the Power4 currently plays has huge markups and very low production volumes...but that also means designs which could not possibly be cost effective in the desktop market. A single Power4 multi-chip module contains 4 2-way CMP dies, 256-bit interconnect between each pair of dies, and, oh yeah, a measely 128MB of eDRAM.

Each one of the 4 dies takes up 400mm^2 on a .18um process. (Compare to 217mm^2 for the P4 on .18um, 145mm^2 on .13um. "Lower gate count" my ass.) The process is copper and SOI, which are quite a bit more expensive and lower-yielding in the case of SOI than the P4's bulk aluminum process on .18um. The ceramic substrate the thing sits in probably costs IBM considerably more than the cost of a new iMac.

G5 will essentially be this architecture.

The G5 is an upcoming 32-bit embedded chip made by Motorola (like the G4 and G4+), and does not resemble the (64-bit) Power4's internal architecture in the slightest. Whether this chip will be the basis of the next generation of Macs is of course not yet known.

The 1 GHz G4+ that powers the current generation of Macs would probably score about the same as the R14k on SPEC, or a bit lower

Please cite some reference to support this (wild in my opinion) claim.

Because Apple does not have the integrity (nor, according to the oft-repeated excuse, the FORTRAN compiler) to submit SPEC runs for a G4-based computer, there are no official SPEC scores for the G4. However, we do have Motorola's *estimated* *SPEC95* scores for the 7450 (a.k.a. G4+) at 733MHz. (Here, second page, on the left.)

They are 32.1/23.9, SPEC95 int/fp. By comparison, a 400MHz R12k (best I could find for SPEC95; it is an old benchmark after all) scores 24.2/43.5 SPEC95 int/fp; 25% worse on int, and 82% better on fp.

That same 400MHz R12k scores 347/343 on SPEC2k int/fp. (Sorry, but no more links; the scores are all available at www.spec.org) Assuming equivalent SPEC95-to-SPEC2k ratios (a faulty assumption, but then again we're using estimated scores in the first place), we get our 733MHz G4+ scoring 460/188(!!) on SPEC2k int/fp.

For a scaling factor we'll use the Coppermine PIII, since it has SPEC2k scores available for both 733MHz and 1GHz configs. 1GHz is 22%/16% faster than 733MHz at SPEC2k int/fp. (If you repeat my calcs, be sure to use the 1 GHz PIII scores using the same compiler version as the 733MHz scores.) So applying that to our "estimated" SPEC2k scores for 733MHz G4+, we get even-more-estimated SPEC2k scores of 563/219 for a 1GHz G4+.

So, a decent spot (32%) better than the 500MHz R14k at int, and a significant bit (53%) worse at fp. Plus the CPU in the new SGI Graphics Fuel can be up to 600MHz and uses DDR and not SDRAM like the one I got the scores from.

So...hope that helped.

Re: the Power4 SPEC scores(Also this was a single-CPU system, so I don't think it was a multi-CPU module.)

SPEC2k is single-threaded. The score was obtained using a 4-way Power4 "Turbo" module with 3 of the cores "turned off". The rather sneaky thing is this gave the remaining core access to all 128MB L3, which means the SPEC score probably overstates single-threaded performance a bit.

What makes you think that Power4 technology won't make it's way into desktop chips? IBM manufactures desktop PowerPC chips as well, and certainly shows no sign of giving up on PowerPC in general. There have recently been rumors of Apple switching from Motorola to IBM for it's chips...we'll see what happens.

Power4 is simply not a desktop chip design. Even using one of the 4 dies in the MCM as the basis for a desktop CPU is a shakey proposition, since they're too big (again, 400mm^2 on .18um), and include a bunch of integrated I/O stuff and the L3 TLBs, all stuff which would be worthless in a desktop machine. The actual datapaths are quite simple, and indeed are optimized to work in an 8-way MCM, not as the sole CPU of a desktop machine.

Of course, it may be quite likely that Apple turns to IBM instead of Motorola for the next generation of Mac CPUs (especially as it looks somewhat likely that Moto will exit the semi business in the coming year). But it will not look anything like a Power4.

Price/Performance

[sjbe]

Disclaimer. I spent the last three years working daily on an SGI Octane. I loved it and turned down several offers to "upgrade" to a Windows based system that in real terms was faster. SGI makes excellent systems which are by and large great to work with.

This new system looks great but unless I was trapped by some particular piece of software I still could never cost justify buying one. $12000+? Sorry. Even presuming that the real world performance is significantly ahead of a high end Pentium system (which I doubt) it's still more expensive, especially once you factor in the service contracts. Those will add several thousand a year. Not to mention that a "well equiped" version will cost much more in all likelyhood.

SGI makes great machines but as a business they are in a teeny-tiny little market niche that is being eroded far too quickly by commodity hardware. They manage to keep ahead for the super high end stuff but that never leaves much room to grow. Frankly I'm mildly astonished the company is doing as well as it is.

I'd love to play around with one of these new Fuel systems but I doubt I'll ever have the chance. There just are too few cases where anyone could justify buying one. Sad really...

Last hurrah for SGI

[PoiBoy]

This looks like a great machine for its intended markets, but one still has to ask the most relevant question: how much longer will SGI last?

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?

sweet design

[the_rev_matt]

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...

What a piece of crap!!

[Uttles]

Single MIPS® 64-bit R14000A processor, 500 MHz with 2MB L2 cache or 600 MHz with 4MB L2 cache; 200 MHz front-side bus

OMG! Like, for real? Only 600 Mhz max? What kind of slack ass company makes a computer that slow these days? These people are totally lame! {/SARCASM}

Sorry for the trolling guys, hopefully some of you find it funny. I just thought I'd do my impersonation of 75% of the readers when they evaluate Macintosh specs. Anyway, happy modding!

Re:No Mention of UMA

[green pizza]

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.

Of Course IRIX Only

[irix]

CmdrTaco writes:

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 :-)

Now we have to listen to...

[The Man]

all the people who have never used an SGI give their pet theories about how much faster a[n] {Athlon|AthlonXP|Pentium3|Pentium4|Xeon|...} is than the R14k because of {clock speed|pipelines|RAMBUS|...}. *sigh* The SGI is fast. The CPU is fast. The graphics are REALLY fast. The system bus architecture...well, go read SGI's white papers. No PC can compete. Never has, never will. Get over yourselves and recognize that, although the SGI is better than any PC ever made, the price/performance ratio is not so good. Which means that it's not a standard desktop workstation, and sure enough when you look at their target applications list you won't see "word processing" or "web browsing." Imagine that, a machine not targetted at people who read slashdot all day...

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.

Re:Look Great

[green pizza]

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.

Doomed? Maybe reborn.

[heyitsme]

SGI Isn't doomed.

There has been great discussion within the "SGI camp" about SGI's abandonment of MIPS and adoptions of x86; many people being disheartened by this. With the new release of this machine, I think it will make many people take a second glance at SGI before choosing an x86-based Linux farm.

Why do people choose SGI? Because with SGI you get a workstation that was designed for Unix; a real Unix workstation. It's an all in one package-- hardware, software, support. It's not some Linux-based kludge.

Look at Apple -- they are nearly identically copying the SGI business model with the release of OSX: an all-encompassing unix workstation solution targetted towards content creation.

While I only own a few less powerful R4400s and R4600s, I believe the R10000 based SGI machines (Purple Indigo2s) are 64 bit... and those were released 8 or 10 years ago-- making moot of your last point. Plus, anyone with any hardware experience outside the x86 realm will note that you are falling into the 'megahertz myth.' Alphas are great and all, but they are being phased out, even though megahertz-per-megahertz they are probably 2x-3x faster than x86 processors.

Welcome back into the ring, SGI

Prove the speed to me

[Raleel]

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.

Re:Prove the speed to me

[fobbman]

Tyan is offering a Pentium 4 Xeon board currently. So technically it does have the P4 moniker but it is also a Xeon so I guess it isn't a full-fledged P4.

Re:Why?

[furiousgeorge]

If you think that a Mac is a reasonable resplacement for one of these then you really don't understand either machine, nor what they're good for.

Don't get me wrong, I'm really impressed with the work Apple is doing, but I'd never consider trading in an Octane for a OSX box, let alone a Fuel.

Not hardly

[nosferatu-man]

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)

Re:Not hardly

[Milalwi]

I agree with most of what you said, obviously the Mac is not in the same league as an Octane, however...

And the Mac has a
"Geforce4MX", which is basically a faster GF2MX, not a fourth
generation part.

To quote someone else...

NV17/GeForce4 MX is not the renaming of any existing product. (It is not just the mobile part either)

NV17 is a new part and will be a very impressive complement to any other GPUs that are released in the near future.

As for its performance just barely beating a GeForce3 Ti 500 (using Apple's or whomever's numbers) well... Wouldn't you like something in the price range of the current MX graphics cards that beat the most expensive GF3 Ti 500???

A heck of a lot more people buy $199 graphics cards than buy $399 ones.

It seems that the GF4MX should be about as fast as a GF3-Ti500, and that's pretty fast.

Milalwi

Been Said Before; So I'll Say it Again

[4of12]

I think it's getting to be evident that the traditional UNIX RISC workstation vendors are having a hard time keeping their CPUs not only on the price/performance curve, but on the performance curve itself.

The MIPS chip is battling uphill, just like the UltraSPARC III against competitive offerings like the 2.2 GHz Northwood P4 and the AMD Athlon XP 2000.

I respect SGI for it's history of graphics expertise and devotion to producing quality hardware, but like many others I have to ask the hard question:

Is what I'm getting in this desktop workstation worth the difference in price with, say, an HP x4000 running Linux with a Wildcat 5110?

For some people, it probably is worth the extra money. But I think that target market is constantly shrinking.

SGI has hemorrhaged some good people, money, and their 3D patent portfolio (to MS recently). They can ill afford to come up with any product less than a perfect bullseye at this stage of the game. I fear this is not it.

It's Badass

[Octane23]

Ok people, let's get some things straight. First off, this is a _workstation_ so discussing it's use as a node in a render farm is kind of pointless, unless you use the 'free cpu in the office' model that some companies favor. Yes, x86 boxes are better for batch rendering. That's cool. It means that you can throw a lot of cheap hardware at a labor intensive process. Yippe.

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.

Re:It's Badass

[nusuth]

Now, as for the clock cycles. Please. Hasn't the recent AMD vs intel clock cycle mess taught you people anything?

Well I already knew that before the mess but recent wars between intel and amd has tought me something which most of the people don't seem to get: with enough competition between two strong componies, a product line can evolve to unimaginable heights. The x86 line is fast, so fast that they make everything else seem ridiculously slow or ridiculously expensive or both. The x86s were not designed to be one size fits all, but it turned out they came to be just that.

One can buy a dedicated super-computer for 1000X the price and 100X the power, or a computer 3X the price 2X the power but noone in their right minds should buy a computer 2X the power with a 10X higher cost. Instead one would buy two x86s and match the power or buy five of them and do some weird stuff!

Price/Performance doesn't get in the way if you cannot get the performace you want no matter the price on an alternative platform. Older SGIs were expensive too, but they are one of the few computers that could cut it. You couldn't just buy a hundered 486s and expect same performace. This just doesn't happen anymore except for supercomputers. Current x86s are very fast that there is no offering in the Or perhaps this post is offtopic, as benchmarks quoted here show that fastest single x86s are faster than R14 already.

Folks are still forgetting some major things...

[green pizza]

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...

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/ 3000/ip/tech_info.html.

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/

No audio, huh?

[Emil Brink]

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.

SGI beginning to be able to innovate again!

[PotatoHead]

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!

dual 1GHz MIPS on the same chip !

[johnjones]

please in terms MHz the PowerPC is well behind even the under funded MIPS CPU's (they dont care so much about MHz but about integration on the same Die i.e. SOC)

really I dont know why SGI dont use this chip
RM9000x2 its got HYPERTRANSPORT like the AMD chips and the ol SysAD bus and Supports DDR SDRAM

all they have to have is GIMP for IRIX ICC'd and most people would be happy for Bitmap manipulation

lots of render's work under IRIX so thats not a problem

the problem is the back end Farm that now EVERYONE uses Linux for on el'cheapo AMD/Intel box's SGI used to live here and now they got shoved out by Linux

they are doing the right thing extend product range and work on getting Linux on decent hardware so they can sell it to their customers

pity Itanium turned out such a PIG

I just hope SGI are doing their own motherboards (-;

regards

john jones

But Fuel is not the point!!!

[halfelven]

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...