Posted by
ryuzaki0
on from the we-wants-it-we-do dept.
Jonathan C. Patschke writes "SGI unveiled two new graphics workhorses today, the Tezro
(an Octane2 replacement) and the much-anticipated Onyx 4. The presence of the old "bug" logo warms the cockles of my heart, even if the desktop Tezro looks much like a subwoofer."
The huge news with the new systems does not seem to be mentioned on SGIs site. They use ATI chips/cards for the graphics.... SGI has given up on doing proprietary graphics solutions it would seem.. and with good reason imnsho!
I agree... we are using SGI systems for which there simply does not exist a PC equivelent. The graphics subsystems, now an ancient six or seven years old (when did IR come out?) still outperforms, in many instances, anything available on PCs.
It's not just about raw polygon numbers, it's throughput and combining things like live video textures and so forth - things we use for live, on-air graphics that simply can't be done on any PC graphics cards we've seen, and that includes a very recent test (about a month ago) - our accountants would love for us to replace SGIs with PCs, it just won't work.
But now I'm sure we'd see the same limitations we have with PCs by using these ATI cards. So seven year old technology is still better than the new stuff (for our purposes).
Yet more machines for geeks to dribble over.. I know I wouldn't mind one of those on my desk, even if all I used it for was browsing the net and checking my email..
Though its worth bearing in mind that you can still pick up some half decent SGI workstations on eBay.. seen some SGI Octane / 20" Monitor / 768MB RAM bundles on UK eBay for around £350 which is a superb deal.. these things might be getting on a bit, but they certainly do shift.
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.. but they still cruised along even on the latest version of Irix, and were surprisingly usable:)
Really must get another SGI some day..
-- "Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
Re:Nice...
by
sql*kitten
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· Score: 4, Interesting
Though its worth bearing in mind that you can still pick up some half decent SGI workstations on eBay.. seen some SGI Octane / 20" Monitor / 768MB RAM bundles on UK eBay for around £350 which is a superb deal.. these things might be getting on a bit, but they certainly do shift.
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.. but they still cruised along even on the latest version of Irix, and were surprisingly usable:)
A PC is a general purpose device that is designed not to suck too badly at anything in particular. A workstation is a specialist device that is designed to retain some general purpose capability. Back in its day, the Indigo2 IMPACT was an impressive machine... you couldn't buy a PC that could do what it could do at any price. Even now, they can hold their own in solid modelling and CAD.
I have an Octane SE here, 1997 vintage, and my 2002-issue Dell beats it for small CPU bound jobs... but for anything involving a lot of memory accesses, or disk I/O the Octane wins hands down every time. And if I'm not using textures, SE graphics can easily beat a GeForce2.
Nah, Apple has been dying for far longer than SGI. The question is whether they can KEEP dying the way Apple does...
-- Have you seen my stapler?
Reason for ATI - Re:ATI !!!
by
bazik
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Reason for this change is that a InfiniteReality4 can calculate 3 millionen polygons/s, a ATI chip can do about 10 millionen polygons/s in immediate mode or 75 millionen polygons/s in display list mode.
The presence of the old "bug" logo warms the cockles of my heart, even if the desktop Tezro looks much like a subwoofer
What is a computer supposed to look like, and why?
I thought the Tezro was kind of nifty looking, other than its Nintendo Purple color scheme.
A few notes...
by
green+pizza
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· Score: 5, Informative
Tezro comes in both desktop and rackmount form factors. 1 - 4 MIPS R16000 processors, up to 16 GB RAM, 7 PCI-X slots from 3 busses. Based on Origin 350 architecture.
Onyx4 "supports" up to 32 graphics GPUs, but more can be added. Each pipe can drive one or two displays or up to 16 GPUs can be used together in parallel for increased performance. Onyx4 is essentially a new graphics brick to be used on Origin 300 or 3000 class host systems.
There are gobs of new SD and HD video card available for both new systems, as well as new audio card offerings. Both machines will seem to require at least IRIX 6.5.21 (the August 2003 quarterly release) to run.
you're right. from now on slashdot should only feature stories abut the latest wal-mart pc's.
A very GOOD THING [TM]
by
green+pizza
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· Score: 4, Interesting
By using ATI GPUs, SGI can focus on their architecture, I/O, and SD/HD video options, rather than try to fight the ATI/NVIDIA 3D battle.
The new Onyx4 systems are able to drive multiple GPUs independently or in parallel for even more performance. All of this is backed by gobs of CPUs an many GB of RAM to feed the gfx.
Re:A very GOOD THING [TM]
by
Alan+Partridge
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· Score: 4, Informative
700Mhz
3.2Ghz
32/7=4.57
maybe you should master your calculator before graduating to a personal computer?
-- That was classic intercourse!
Re:A very GOOD THING [TM]
by
fgodfrey
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· Score: 4, Insightful
So I assume that your Pentium 4 comes with up to 1 Terabyte of RAM and 512 processors (well, ok, so you'd have to go to an Origin 3800 with the graphics pipe to get 512p) in a single system? 'Cause that's what the Onyx4 can be purchased with. Also, SGI hasn't used 400 MHz processors for a few years. I'm not up on their current CPU's but another reply to your post indicates that it's 700 MHz.
Also, this thing can move more bandwidth back and forth to memory than your PC can dream of. The link between nodes is 1.6GB/sec full duplex ( Of course, we over at Cray can do 16 times that but I digress So the moral is, while you can sort of get away with doing a MHz-MHz comparison on two different processors, the overall architecture of the system is what counts if you really want to get work done. This is why SGI and Cray are still in business.
-- Go Badgers! -- #include "std/disclaimer.h"
Re:How relevant are these boxes?
by
SuiteSisterMary
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Well, can your cheap lintel/wintel solution do on-the-fly manipulation of HDTV streams, for example?
-- Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
Onyx and LOTR
by
GillBates0
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· Score: 5, Interesting
They have an interesting page about the success stories of SGI graphics workstations.
A particularly interestingone about their role in the making of the LOTR:
The Wellington, New Zealand, company is using a full complement of IRIX OS-based Silicon Graphics® Octane® and Silicon Graphics® Onyx2® visual workstations, SGI® Origin® family servers, and SGI Linux OS-based visual workstations and servers to create and manage up to 100TB of data. Cool pictures too.
-- An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
In other news, scientists from the English speaking world are concerned about the increasing rarity of regsitered trademark symbols. Overharvesting for use in press releases and other marketing mediums is considered a prime cause of this shortage.
Up to 4 700 MHZ MIPS R4000 processors in the rackmount, or up to 2 in the tower. 12-bit alpha channel, 24-bit Z buffer. 128MB graphics memory. p to 8 GB main RAM in the tower, up to 16GB in the rackmount. Nice. SGI's were once the pinnacle of graphics performance, but one has to wonder with the predeominance of cheaper Wintel or Lintel boxes that have practically comparable performance, how relevant are these boxes still?
If you have gobs of IRIX code you need to run today, or if you need gobs of I/O on a desktop machine today, there isn't much other choice.
You're quoting specs from the Tezro workstation, which BTW, uses R16000 processors, not R4000. The Tezro uses Origin 350 architecture and has 3 PCI-X buses and two XIO buses (for gfx and HD/SD video I/O) as well as two builtin channels of SCSI. The thing is a full fledged data pump that I certainly don't need, but some folks do.
The new Onyx4 also uses Origin 350 and Origin 3000 host architecture, but can use all of that to feed 32+ ATI gfx cores per system. Can have each core drive one or two displays or can have multiple cores working in parallel. Two major uses -- doing crazy high end 3D or for visualizing big supercomputing data.
Abyss Nostalgia
by
nacturation
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· Score: 4, Interesting
I remember at university when SGI came around with their trailer full of cool boxes. This was around 1990 - 1991. The one thing I remember about that event was the real-time demonstration of the water tentacle effect from The Abyss.
No other machine could even come close to rendering this kind of thing real-time. These days, we're spoiled by high-end graphics cards costing only hundreds of dollars which eclipse what SGI could do back then by a factor of 10.
-- Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
Any bigger pictures of the Onyx 4?
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 4, Funny
It's just too hard to masturbate to these small images.
Re:SGI Problems
by
claudius0425
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· Score: 5, Funny
thank you, dear troll, for revealing your ineptitude so blatently. there is so such thing as a 3000 mhz MIPS chip, you (one is led to assume) are using a MIPS R3000, the second chip produced by MIPS, running at (at most) 33mhz. The R3000 is vintage 1990 at best. as to your sugggestion of 64gigs of ram, i will give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you meant 64 megs. now, my little troll, go back to your cave.
I have two on my desk right now (an O2 and an Octane), and a couple servers in colo.
You seem to be forgetting that some people use their computers for work at work rather than playing the latest game at home. SGI systems are extremely good at what they do, and they make bad-ass systems for almost any problem that needs a lot of memory bandwidth.
But, yes, it'd be hard to justify a $40k workstation to play Unreal Tournament. It'd also be hard to justify an 18-wheeler to drive to the office every morning. It's all about situation and perspective.
However, used SGIs can be had for cheap-cheap on eBay. Try one sometime. If you keep an open mind, the SGI bug will bite you, and someday, you too might have an Onyx XL in your dining room.:)
-- Pining for the days when The Glorious MEEPT!!! graced SlapDash with his wisdom.
Hmm, let's see a 8086 do realtime capturing and displaying of an ntsc video source on a 24bit 1280x1024 display. Now to be honest, 486 to low end Pentium would be a better comparison. Of course assuming these machines had some type of video capture board installed and a pretty kick butt scsi setup. Not the best things in the world for day to day tasks, but if you're doing the right thing, then they are quite nice (Indy less so since it's not as expandable, but one can create a pretty beefy I2. Not to mention the O2.
Infinite Reality 4 has 1 GB of texture ram and 10 GB of frame buffer memory... so it doe have its advantages for a few specific users. But for the most part, using ATI gfx GPUs (working either independently or in parallel) makes far more sense than having SGI use the last of their resources to fight the ATI/NVIDIA 3D war.
SGI's strengths are with architecture and I/O. ATI's strenghts are in pixel and polygon pumps. Looks like a perfect union to me.
What ATI need's is an army working on their drivers.
My favorite is when trying to install the driver for an ATI card (only card in the system) the program telling you that "You do not have an ATI card installed."
Know what - it's right now - I no longer have an ATI card installed.
And very few of us will drive a Ferrari, but they are still heavily promoted on the front pages of MoterTrend and Road and Track many months. I guess no one wants to read a magazine about the rusty, sputtering 75 hp Dodge Dart. Why should computers be any different?
-- Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
A Very Odd Datasheet. Where's the processor?
by
Nova+Express
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· Score: 4, Interesting
I actually downloaded the datasheet for the "Silicon Graphics Onyx4 Ultimate Vision Family," and found it a very curious document indeed. It has some interesting hard facts about the system (OpenGL 1.4, 8-32 graphic processor pipes on the "Extreme," up to 8 GB of graphic memory (sweet!), etc.), but what I was looking was the type and speed of the processors used. So I kept looking.
And looking.
And looking.
It's not there.
SGI's own datasheet for the Onyx4 Family doesn't tell you what processor it runs! Others in the thread have said it uses MIPS chips, but the word "MIPS" never appears in the datasheet (nor "RISC," for that matter). It tells you how many processors the system uses, but not what they are or how fast they are.
This is not just odd; for a datasheet, it's nearly unprecedented. Only three explanations for this abscence occur to me:
They have the world's most incompetent technical writers. (Very unlikely.)
They're actually ashamed of their CPU, and don't want to tell you what it is or how fast in runs. (Most likely.)
They're desperately working behind the scenes to port their software to commodity hardware (mostly likely x86, but the 970/G5 might be a smarter choice). (Unlikely, but not impossible.)
I have no idea how fast the current generation of MIPS chips are (I think the last time I saw a benchmark, they were slower than Alphas, which tells you it was back when they were still benchmarking Alphas rather than letting them die a quiet and undeserved death), but the fact that SGI isn't even willing to mention them in their datasheet doesn't give me confidence.
-- Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
Re:A Very Odd Datasheet. Where's the processor?
by
dutky
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· Score: 4, Insightful
I noticed that too (but you beat me to the post). I think that there is another explanation, however:
The Onyx4 either currently is, or will soon be, based on the Itanium rather than the MIPS. HP did something simlar with their recent platforms (shipped with PA-RISC but were plug-compatible with Itanium).
The marketing-speak "Industry Leading Processors" is awfully suspicious. The sad part is, SGI doesn't have any good options:
They already discredited the MIPS, so they can't admit to using that.
They can't brag about the Itanium, since it's not doing all that stellarly well (not, at least, as well as it was hyped to do).
They can't transition to x86, since they already tried that once and it was a disaster.
They can't transition to some other platform, since they haven't got any residual credability with which to fund such a move (anyone still using SGIs would rather jump ship entirely).
SGI has tried just about every dumb trick in the book (most pioneered by DEC) to find some way to move from thier ever shrinking niche (data visualization and computer animation) to something broader and more profitable. At each step along the way they have annoyed and alienated their loyal customers.
If you keep an open mind, the SGI bug will bite you, and someday, you too might have an Onyx XL in your dining room.:)
Does one in your garage count? Don't have 220v in the dining room so that's a no go (that and the thought of being bludgened to death by my wife with a 4 processor R4400 board).
Re:How relevant are these boxes?
by
SuiteSisterMary
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Out of the box, with the addition of a HD i/o card, probably a good SCSI RAID disk pack.
SGI's always been about moving massive amounts of data internally; your (and my) multi-ghz systems are still spending the vast amount of time stroking off while waiting for disk reads, memory copies, that sort of stuff.
I remember getting my shiny new Gefore3 and running the Zoltar demo for the first time. Amazing detail and quality and what not, but it actually pops up a, well, popup, saying 'please wait while we transfer an ungodly amount of data to your video card!'
What's the point of having a whomping video card when it takes a good thirty seconds to a minute just to transfer the data required to render a head and neck?
-- Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
Re:So where can I buy the machine?
by
Dominic_Mazzoni
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· Score: 4, Informative
All I see it "contact a sales rep" crap. T-e-l-e-p-h-o-n-e, what's that? Fill out a form so you can get back with me if I'm a good enough customer?
What are the prices?
Why can't I just order up a couple machines off their web pages?
I was going to order 3 or 4 machines for a graphics project ohwell... Sorry SGI, you lose 'cause I couldn't get pricing information for even order the machines. Guess I'll stick with Dell or Apple.
(I'm being sarcastic, but I think I made my point)
SGI lost the battle for low-end machines long ago. Nobody in their right mind is purchasing low-end SGIs unless they already have a lab full of high-end ones and simply want compatibility - in which case they already have an established relationship with SGI.
The point is that if you want to render 3-D graphics on a wall of 36 LCD displays in a 6x6 grid, fed from a 2-TB server of image data, you can't buy Dell or Apple. You can't even put together a Linux box to do that. SGI is simply the only game in town that builds machines with graphics pipes that big.
You make a good point
by
Performer+Guy
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· Score: 4, Insightful
It's a sad fact that SGI sales are embarrassingly bad. I used to work for SGI, while I was still there I knew ex-SGI employees who tried to buy machines for REAL projects and couldn't, it was just too difficult with the whole sales rep runaround. Very frustrating! Don't believe me? Call them up and tell them you want to buy an Onyx4 system. You WILL get the runaround, especially if you want a few technical details or need to discuss configuration options. They couldn't sell popcorn in a cinema lobby.
Its the Software that's expensive...
by
cutecub
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· Score: 5, Interesting
I used to work for SGI and also did freelance video animation ( a very long time ago ) on an SGI Indy.
As an individual, the biggest problem I encountered wasn't the cost of the SGI system (a one-time cost), it was the cost of the system software and drivers.
OS upgrades were expensive.
Print drivers were expensive.
Networking options were expensive.
The compilers were unbundled.
Most of the software Open Source geeks nowadays take for granted as being free, cheap, and readily available was expensive and exotic on the SGI.
I ultimately switched to a high-end Macintosh. Today, the Mac is an even more compelling alternative to a low-end SGI for media production.
I don't know about SGI's other niches, such as Scientific Visualization, but I would expect high-end PCs to have the edge over low-end SGIs in other areas.
When I worked at SGI (1998) everything had weird color schemes, the walls, the furniture, everything. And strange architecture too. Though the strangest set of buildings just got subleased to Google. Which I guess is about getting away from their "Star Wars" image.
Which is they rebranded in 1998 to make the company logo the letters sgi with the bottoms cut off, as if they were appearing over the horizon. (New motto: "The Solution is in Sight!") But I guess that's even more obscure then the original logo, because now they just use the three letters.
And the original logo is very obscure. It's not a bug! It's the Chrome Cube! The whole point being that you need an SGI workstation to render the damn thing. But nobody ever got that. So sad!
They're actually ashamed of their CPU, and don't want to tell you what it is or how fast in runs. (Most likely.)
Not likely at all imho. SGI's use MIPS as someone pointed out. The latest ones are 700MHz I believe. Another cool feature with the MIPS processors are that they don't consume much power. I seem to remember that they about 17w or so, allowing you to put a lot of cpus together without the need for a lot of cooling.
And when it comes to specs, I'm sure that someone can point out that the processor speed is not nearly as important as the architecture of the machine. I think it was spec.org who did some test a few years ago comparing the 400mhz MIPS and a 1GHz AMD/Intel and found that the MIPS had about 70% of the computing power to the AMD/Intel, but when You put this in a multiprocessor machine (4 I think) the MIPS was 120% to the AMD/Intel and when scaled up even further(16-32), AMD/Intel wasn't even on the charts.
No, SGI has NOTHING to be ashamed of when it comes to their MIPS.
.haeger
-- You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion.
-- Harlan Ellison
Re:Tezro VS. G5
by
Alan+Partridge
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· Score: 4, Informative
So? SGI doesn't have Photoshop, Graphic Coverter, Illustrator, Freehand, Pro Tools, Logic, Xpress, InDesign, MS Office etc etc etc
If you want applications, I think MacOS can safely hold its own against IRIX.
Slashdot Mirror
The huge news with the new systems does not seem to be mentioned on SGIs site. They use ATI chips/cards for the graphics .... SGI has given up on doing proprietary graphics solutions it would seem .. and with good reason imnsho!
news.com story
Thoughts on tech, Software Engineering, and stuff
Yet more machines for geeks to dribble over.. I know I wouldn't mind one of those on my desk, even if all I used it for was browsing the net and checking my email..
:)
Though its worth bearing in mind that you can still pick up some half decent SGI workstations on eBay.. seen some SGI Octane / 20" Monitor / 768MB RAM bundles on UK eBay for around £350 which is a superb deal.. these things might be getting on a bit, but they certainly do shift.
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.. but they still cruised along even on the latest version of Irix, and were surprisingly usable
Really must get another SGI some day..
"Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
Nah, Apple has been dying for far longer than SGI. The question is whether they can KEEP dying the way Apple does...
Have you seen my stapler?
Reason for this change is that a InfiniteReality4 can calculate 3 millionen polygons/s, a ATI chip can do about 10 millionen polygons/s in immediate mode or 75 millionen polygons/s in display list mode.
More information in this article, translation here.
--
One by one the penguins steal my sanity...
The presence of the old "bug" logo warms the cockles of my heart, even if the desktop Tezro looks much like a subwoofer
What is a computer supposed to look like, and why?
I thought the Tezro was kind of nifty looking, other than its Nintendo Purple color scheme.
Tezro comes in both desktop and rackmount form factors. 1 - 4 MIPS R16000 processors, up to 16 GB RAM, 7 PCI-X slots from 3 busses. Based on Origin 350 architecture.
u ly/lanl.html
Onyx4 "supports" up to 32 graphics GPUs, but more can be added. Each pipe can drive one or two displays or up to 16 GPUs can be used together in parallel for increased performance. Onyx4 is essentially a new graphics brick to be used on Origin 300 or 3000 class host systems.
SGI has issued a press release discussing a monster Onyx4 they've already sold:
http://www.sgi.com/newsroom/press_releases/2003/j
There are gobs of new SD and HD video card available for both new systems, as well as new audio card offerings. Both machines will seem to require at least IRIX 6.5.21 (the August 2003 quarterly release) to run.
you're right. from now on slashdot should only feature stories abut the latest wal-mart pc's.
By using ATI GPUs, SGI can focus on their architecture, I/O, and SD/HD video options, rather than try to fight the ATI/NVIDIA 3D battle.
The new Onyx4 systems are able to drive multiple GPUs independently or in parallel for even more performance. All of this is backed by gobs of CPUs an many GB of RAM to feed the gfx.
Well, can your cheap lintel/wintel solution do on-the-fly manipulation of HDTV streams, for example?
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
A particularly interestingone about their role in the making of the LOTR:
The Wellington, New Zealand, company is using a full complement of IRIX OS-based Silicon Graphics® Octane® and Silicon Graphics® Onyx2® visual workstations, SGI® Origin® family servers, and SGI Linux OS-based visual workstations and servers to create and manage up to 100TB of data. Cool pictures too.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
Up to 4 700 MHZ MIPS R4000 processors in the rackmount, or up to 2 in the tower. 12-bit alpha channel, 24-bit Z buffer. 128MB graphics memory. p to 8 GB main RAM in the tower, up to 16GB in the rackmount. Nice. SGI's were once the pinnacle of graphics performance, but one has to wonder with the predeominance of cheaper Wintel or Lintel boxes that have practically comparable performance, how relevant are these boxes still?
If you have gobs of IRIX code you need to run today, or if you need gobs of I/O on a desktop machine today, there isn't much other choice.
You're quoting specs from the Tezro workstation, which BTW, uses R16000 processors, not R4000. The Tezro uses Origin 350 architecture and has 3 PCI-X buses and two XIO buses (for gfx and HD/SD video I/O) as well as two builtin channels of SCSI. The thing is a full fledged data pump that I certainly don't need, but some folks do.
The new Onyx4 also uses Origin 350 and Origin 3000 host architecture, but can use all of that to feed 32+ ATI gfx cores per system. Can have each core drive one or two displays or can have multiple cores working in parallel. Two major uses -- doing crazy high end 3D or for visualizing big supercomputing data.
I remember at university when SGI came around with their trailer full of cool boxes. This was around 1990 - 1991. The one thing I remember about that event was the real-time demonstration of the water tentacle effect from The Abyss.
No other machine could even come close to rendering this kind of thing real-time. These days, we're spoiled by high-end graphics cards costing only hundreds of dollars which eclipse what SGI could do back then by a factor of 10.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
It's just too hard to masturbate to these small images.
thank you, dear troll, for revealing your ineptitude so blatently. there is so such thing as a 3000 mhz MIPS chip, you (one is led to assume) are using a MIPS R3000, the second chip produced by MIPS, running at (at most) 33mhz. The R3000 is vintage 1990 at best.
as to your sugggestion of 64gigs of ram, i will give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you meant 64 megs.
now, my little troll, go back to your cave.
Phus. Sysiphus.
I have two on my desk right now (an O2 and an Octane), and a couple servers in colo.
You seem to be forgetting that some people use their computers for work at work rather than playing the latest game at home. SGI systems are extremely good at what they do, and they make bad-ass systems for almost any problem that needs a lot of memory bandwidth.
But, yes, it'd be hard to justify a $40k workstation to play Unreal Tournament. It'd also be hard to justify an 18-wheeler to drive to the office every morning. It's all about situation and perspective.
However, used SGIs can be had for cheap-cheap on eBay. Try one sometime. If you keep an open mind, the SGI bug will bite you, and someday, you too might have an Onyx XL in your dining room. :)
Pining for the days when The Glorious MEEPT!!! graced SlapDash with his wisdom.
Hmm, let's see a 8086 do realtime capturing and displaying of an ntsc video source on a 24bit 1280x1024 display. Now to be honest, 486 to low end Pentium would be a better comparison. Of course assuming these machines had some type of video capture board installed and a pretty kick butt scsi setup. Not the best things in the world for day to day tasks, but if you're doing the right thing, then they are quite nice (Indy less so since it's not as expandable, but one can create a pretty beefy I2. Not to mention the O2.
Infinite Reality 4 has 1 GB of texture ram and 10 GB of frame buffer memory... so it doe have its advantages for a few specific users. But for the most part, using ATI gfx GPUs (working either independently or in parallel) makes far more sense than having SGI use the last of their resources to fight the ATI/NVIDIA 3D war.
SGI's strengths are with architecture and I/O. ATI's strenghts are in pixel and polygon pumps. Looks like a perfect union to me.
And very few of us will drive a Ferrari, but they are still heavily promoted on the front pages of MoterTrend and Road and Track many months. I guess no one wants to read a magazine about the rusty, sputtering 75 hp Dodge Dart. Why should computers be any different?
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
If you are spending $3000+ then you can afford another $50 for a good three button mouse. The one-button argument is baseless.
...Erwin will be getting an upgrade?
And looking.
And looking.
It's not there.
SGI's own datasheet for the Onyx4 Family doesn't tell you what processor it runs! Others in the thread have said it uses MIPS chips, but the word "MIPS" never appears in the datasheet (nor "RISC," for that matter). It tells you how many processors the system uses, but not what they are or how fast they are.
This is not just odd; for a datasheet, it's nearly unprecedented. Only three explanations for this abscence occur to me:
I have no idea how fast the current generation of MIPS chips are (I think the last time I saw a benchmark, they were slower than Alphas, which tells you it was back when they were still benchmarking Alphas rather than letting them die a quiet and undeserved death), but the fact that SGI isn't even willing to mention them in their datasheet doesn't give me confidence.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
If you keep an open mind, the SGI bug will bite you, and someday, you too might have an Onyx XL in your dining room. :)
Does one in your garage count? Don't have 220v in the dining room so that's a no go (that and the thought of being bludgened to death by my wife with a 4 processor R4400 board).
Out of the box, with the addition of a HD i/o card, probably a good SCSI RAID disk pack.
SGI's always been about moving massive amounts of data internally; your (and my) multi-ghz systems are still spending the vast amount of time stroking off while waiting for disk reads, memory copies, that sort of stuff.
I remember getting my shiny new Gefore3 and running the Zoltar demo for the first time. Amazing detail and quality and what not, but it actually pops up a, well, popup, saying 'please wait while we transfer an ungodly amount of data to your video card!'
What's the point of having a whomping video card when it takes a good thirty seconds to a minute just to transfer the data required to render a head and neck?
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
All I see it "contact a sales rep" crap. T-e-l-e-p-h-o-n-e, what's that? Fill out a form so you can get back with me if I'm a good enough customer?
What are the prices?
Why can't I just order up a couple machines off their web pages?
I was going to order 3 or 4 machines for a graphics project ohwell... Sorry SGI, you lose 'cause I couldn't get pricing information for even order the machines. Guess I'll stick with Dell or Apple.
(I'm being sarcastic, but I think I made my point)
SGI lost the battle for low-end machines long ago. Nobody in their right mind is purchasing low-end SGIs unless they already have a lab full of high-end ones and simply want compatibility - in which case they already have an established relationship with SGI.
The point is that if you want to render 3-D graphics on a wall of 36 LCD displays in a 6x6 grid, fed from a 2-TB server of image data, you can't buy Dell or Apple. You can't even put together a Linux box to do that. SGI is simply the only game in town that builds machines with graphics pipes that big.
It's a sad fact that SGI sales are embarrassingly bad. I used to work for SGI, while I was still there I knew ex-SGI employees who tried to buy machines for REAL projects and couldn't, it was just too difficult with the whole sales rep runaround. Very frustrating! Don't believe me? Call them up and tell them you want to buy an Onyx4 system. You WILL get the runaround, especially if you want a few technical details or need to discuss configuration options. They couldn't sell popcorn in a cinema lobby.
I used to work for SGI and also did freelance video animation ( a very long time ago ) on an SGI Indy.
As an individual, the biggest problem I encountered wasn't the cost of the SGI system (a one-time cost), it was the cost of the system software and drivers.
OS upgrades were expensive.
Print drivers were expensive.
Networking options were expensive.
The compilers were unbundled.
Most of the software Open Source geeks nowadays take for granted as being free, cheap, and readily available was expensive and exotic on the SGI.
I ultimately switched to a high-end Macintosh. Today, the Mac is an even more compelling alternative to a low-end SGI for media production.
I don't know about SGI's other niches, such as Scientific Visualization, but I would expect high-end PCs to have the edge over low-end SGIs in other areas.
-S
Which is they rebranded in 1998 to make the company logo the letters sgi with the bottoms cut off, as if they were appearing over the horizon. (New motto: "The Solution is in Sight!") But I guess that's even more obscure then the original logo, because now they just use the three letters.
And the original logo is very obscure. It's not a bug! It's the Chrome Cube! The whole point being that you need an SGI workstation to render the damn thing. But nobody ever got that. So sad!
They're actually ashamed of their CPU, and don't want to tell you what it is or how fast in runs. (Most likely.)
.haeger
Not likely at all imho. SGI's use MIPS as someone pointed out. The latest ones are 700MHz I believe. Another cool feature with the MIPS processors are that they don't consume much power. I seem to remember that they about 17w or so, allowing you to put a lot of cpus together without the need for a lot of cooling.
And when it comes to specs, I'm sure that someone can point out that the processor speed is not nearly as important as the architecture of the machine.
I think it was spec.org who did some test a few years ago comparing the 400mhz MIPS and a 1GHz AMD/Intel and found that the MIPS had about 70% of the computing power to the AMD/Intel, but when You put this in a multiprocessor machine (4 I think) the MIPS was 120% to the AMD/Intel and when scaled up even further(16-32), AMD/Intel wasn't even on the charts.
No, SGI has NOTHING to be ashamed of when it comes to their MIPS.
You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. -- Harlan Ellison
So? SGI doesn't have Photoshop, Graphic Coverter, Illustrator, Freehand, Pro Tools, Logic, Xpress, InDesign, MS Office etc etc etc
If you want applications, I think MacOS can safely hold its own against IRIX.
That was classic intercourse!