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SGI launches R16000
nkrgovic writes " SGI has just launched a new CPU - the long expected R16000. The new CPU works on 700MHz, has 4MB secondary cache and more goodies.
For now the new CPU is only used in SGI's Fuel workstations, but we should expect to see it pretty soon in SGI's Origin servers as well. With new high density compute nodes this should make the Origin's the fastest supercomputing server per square foot."
I'm confused. I thought SGI was dropping support on IRIX. Why are they releasing new Irix boxen?
Information doesn't want to be anthropomorphized anymore.
Yeah.... Only that you forgot things like the R8000, which was the fastest FP processor when introduced, the R4000 which was the first mass production 64bit micro (true 64bit), etc... etc....
And then you finish with this gem:
"Clustering has nothing to do with the markets SGI sells in. Please don't mention it, it makes me think you don't know what you're talking about"
So please do apply your own advice first... and shut up.
I worked all summer in an all-SGI shop.. And I call tell you how far behind they are. The place where I work is specialized in HPC, so when they started in 1992, SGI was probably a pretty good choice, but now for workstation, I wouldnt say its overkill, I would actually say that its underkill. We made a benchmark comparing an SGI Origin and a linux Ahtlon cluster, the athlon needed only two nodes to beat the origin and with all 16 nodes where about 10 times faster... SGIs are just overpriced, for 99.999% (that's 5 nines) PCs can do the job and even do it better and especially do it much cheaper. So their workstation market is being destroyed from under them.
On the other end, their HPC (super-computers) is being attacked from above. On that sector, price is not really a problem, its just pure performance. And there too they are being beaten, SGI just does not have the research power that
NEC or IBM can have. So they are starting to be pretty much behind, so they become not only more expensive (which does not really matter), but more importantly much slower...
Also on the workstation market, their desktop SUCKS, its just a pain to use. They are still stuck in the pre-win95 era... It might have been good compared to win3.1 or twm, but it just is not in the same world as GNOME, KDE, WinXP or MacOSX.
Also, their other strengh where there graphics board, they invented modern 3D hardware. And for a long time the roadmap for the PC 3d hardware was simple, they just had to do what SGI already had, but we have now passed a point where the PC hardware has actually more features then the SGI stuff. The only difference now between the pro and game markets are the amount of ram/cache and those "pro" cards exist on PCs. They do cost $ 2000-3000, but they are nowhere near the cost of the SGI workstation that includes them...
SGI has no future. They have been losing money for years. I have been thinking for quite a while that they where a good target for an acquisition, but now that MSFT has bought much of their patents. It might be cheaper to wait for them to go bankrupt and to pick up the pieces. They where in a fast playing game and they have gotten slow.....
Nice troll, and if it isn't, wow. Everything in your post is false. the 700Mhz MIPS certainly does stand a chance against other processors and I would love to have one, but as for price/performance, it is probably a very poor option.
The N64 did well as a system, and had far more power than the playstation. The playstation just did incredibly well.
Hollywood is a city, not a company. I am assuming you are talking about 3D and compositing visual effects studios, of which a few are near Hollywood, California. They aren't going to BSD, they are going to Linux, not just for rendering, but for workstations. Irix is unix and it makes it a very flexible choice for an OS. Because Linux is so similiar, it is also a flexible and powerful.
This Wiki Feeds You TV and Anime - vidwiki.org
Oh? Quick, everyone with Radeon 9700 PRO graphics boards in your PCs, make sure you have them in tower cases, or something!
For reference, the ATI specs page states:
I guess SGI might refer to actual output precision, i.e. the RAMDAC D/A-converters... In that case, it seems they still have the edge, since the ATI boards only have 10 bits per component. Still, I think that's of lesser value than the actual precision image operations are performed at.
main(O){10<putchar(4^--O?77-(15&5128 >>4*O):10)&&main(2+O);}
OK, what is the deal with "In Soviet Russia XXX launch YYY".
I've seen two jokes with Soviet Russia now. And I'm not laughing. Can someone let me in on the inside joke here?
The Internet is full. Go Away!!!
How about we bring in the {mips|flops|whatever) per watt, then we start to get even better. The USIII runs off what, around 25-30W, the p4 draws around 70W. Using this, we have the Sun box beating the P4 quite easily, as we can scale up the number of processors to a higher number before we have problems due to dissipating heat and drawing soo much power that we blow the breakers in the data center.
As you can guess from the above post, I don't like the x86 architecture, ugly_hack(){ ugly_hack(); }. There's something to be said about elegance in the design of a processor.
and iirc you windows can't officially have higher than 32bit(24bit+8bit alpha/wasted/whatever) currently.
the matrox card that does 48(? or was it 42), is actually using a dirty hack of some sort to get that depth on windows..
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Have you read the SPECint and SPECfp results posted above? The Pentium4 runs at 6 (six) times this cpu's speed, yet only scores twice. Talk about good cpu design.
You should also keep in mind that SGI has some ass kicking technology when it comes to cpu and memory interconnect. NUMAFlex makes it possible to have a penalty as little as 1.5 vs 1 for memory accesses outside the local ram banks. Now try doing that with commodity x86 hardware. For problems that aren't easily broken down in small parts and, that have huge datasets, nothing touches SGI.
Kudos to the SGI engineers for their great job.
A long time SGI fan :)