I have in the past seen slashdot and it's subscribers bemoan the accuracy of reporting in the mainstream media. Unfortunately here we have an example of the sensationalist inaccuracy worthy of the lowest tabloid.
Nowhere in the article was dropping Irix or it's support announced. There is even less which attributes any statement even similar to an SGI representative.
In future at least read the referring article before choosing a title.
I work for SGI any you're post is completely inaccurate. SGI will continue to support MIPS and IRIX. SGI has NEVER announced dropping support for IRIX and it STILL doesn't intend to. Even this article points out that we have a MIPS roadmap for R12k R14k and R16k. The overall title of this slashdot article is completely misleading. The article isn't by SGI even it doesn't say SGI is dropping IRIX. I suppose to a salivating slashdot audience the notion of Linux displacing a grown up OS sounds exciting, but it just isn't ready to replace IRIX feature for feature so dropping that OS is NOT an option.
You are quite right. Performer is not an application, it is an API. It should allow graphics applications suited to this type of programming paradigm to maximize performance from Linux systems without requiring the developer to have the same level of expertise or spend the time which would otherwise be required for this kind of performance.
It should also facilitate the porting of a number of high performance graphics applications to Linux. You must understand that any application which sits on middleware like IRIS Performer must implement vast ammounts of functionality from scratch to be ported to another platform if the API does not exist there. Now Performer WILL exist on Linux. Do not underestimate the value of having this API ported to Linux.
I am a developer on the Performer team at SGI. IRIS Performer is not built under or over Open Inventor it runs on OpenGL. It cannot be used with Open Inventor within an application although it can load Inventor file formats into the scene graph. To support older SGI systems it can also run on IrisGL by linking to a different set of libraries. Mongoose is just a project code name so Performer on Linux is nicknamed mongoose.
IRIS Performer and Inventor have quite different design objectives. Performer focuses on maximum Performance and scalability (fast hardware, multiple processors and multiple graphics pipes), Inventor is designed for ease of use and user manipulation of 3D data. Performer also has more of an emphasis on features and file formats required by the simulation and training industries.
For tutorials on how to program with Performer as well as lots of screen shots & source code of some advanced Performer demos see:
Slashdot Mirror
I have in the past seen slashdot and it's subscribers bemoan the accuracy of reporting in the mainstream media. Unfortunately here we have an example of the sensationalist inaccuracy worthy of the lowest tabloid.
Nowhere in the article was dropping Irix or it's support announced. There is even less which attributes any statement even similar to an SGI representative.
In future at least read the referring article before choosing a title.
I work for SGI any you're post is completely inaccurate. SGI will continue to support MIPS and IRIX. SGI has NEVER announced dropping support for IRIX and it STILL doesn't intend to. Even this article points out that we have a MIPS roadmap for R12k R14k and R16k. The overall title of this slashdot article is completely misleading. The article isn't by SGI even it doesn't say SGI is dropping IRIX. I suppose to a salivating slashdot audience the notion of Linux displacing a grown up OS sounds exciting, but it just isn't ready to replace IRIX feature for feature so dropping that OS is NOT an option.
You are quite right. Performer is not an application, it is an API. It should allow graphics applications suited to this type of programming paradigm to maximize performance from Linux systems without requiring the developer to have the same level of expertise or spend the time which would otherwise be required for this kind of performance.
It should also facilitate the porting of a number of high performance graphics applications to Linux. You must understand that any application which sits on middleware like IRIS Performer must implement vast ammounts of functionality from scratch to be ported to another platform if the API does not exist there. Now Performer WILL exist on Linux. Do not underestimate the value of having this API ported to Linux.
Correct, it IS older than Doom, and about the same age and Wolfenstein 3D, but maybe Wolf'3D predates it slightly.
I am a developer on the Performer team at SGI. IRIS Performer is not built under or over Open Inventor it runs on OpenGL. It cannot be used with Open Inventor within an application although it can load Inventor file formats into the scene graph. To support older SGI systems it can also run on IrisGL by linking to a different set of libraries. Mongoose is just a project code name so Performer on Linux is nicknamed mongoose.
IRIS Performer and Inventor have quite different design objectives. Performer focuses on maximum Performance and scalability (fast hardware, multiple processors and multiple graphics pipes), Inventor is designed for ease of use and user manipulation of 3D data. Performer also has more of an emphasis on features and file formats required by the simulation and training industries.
For tutorials on how to program with Performer as well as lots of screen shots & source code of some advanced Performer demos see:
http://www.dorbie.com/
This should give you a taste of the kind of graphics empowered by IRIS Performer and how you go about writing code for them using the API.