karsh@sgi.com (Bruce Karsh) (10/27/88)
Silicon Graphics Announces New Multiprocessing IRIS
POWER Series
Mountain View, CA (Oct 4 1988) - Silicon Graphics, Inc. (SGIC-NASDAQ) today
announced the IRIS POWER Series, a series of high end multiprocessor
systems which integrate Silicon Graphics' industry leading graphics
technology with a level of computational power that provides the highest
performance in both graphics and general computing available today.
The IRIS POWER Series consists of graphics systems and supercomputing
servers and represents the new high end of the series of products
available from Silicon Graphics. The Personal IRIS, the industry's first
personal 3D graphics workstation was also introduced today.
The IRIS POWER Series is a series of six systems. Three are Supercomputing
Servers which utilize the new POWERpath multiprocessing architecture from
Silicon Graphics. The remaining three are Graphics Supercomputing
Workstations which integrate the same multiprocessing technology with
Silicon Graphics' industry leading graphics capability. The systems
support up to four RISC CPU/FPU chip sets and use the newly introduced
R3000 from MIPS Computer Systems. Large, sophisticated applications
demonstrate the ability of the POWERpath architecture to sustain 80 MIPS
and 16 MFLOPS (double precision Linpack) of delivered performance; an order
of magnitude higher performance than currently available on engineering
workstations.
Unlike other systems which tie up the same CPU for both computational and
graphics processing, the IRIS POWER Series systems process graphics on a
dedicated subsystem. This leaves the main CPUs with more power for
computation and analysis and provides users with 'immediate mode graphics
-- graphics that are interactive with the evolution of the analysis being
performed.
Several major advances in technology have made this price/performance
breakthrough possible: five new proprietary VLSI chips; the innovative
POWERpath multi-processing architecture; IRIX, a state-of-the-art
multi-processing implementation of the UNIX operating system and an
automatic parallelizing compiler.
"The POWERpath architecture has been designed to serve as the basis for
future generations of higher performance systems from Silicon Graphics, "
commented Thomas Jermoluk, Vice President and General Manager of the
Advanced Systems Division. "It will meet the needs of the most
power-hungry users in computationally and graphically demanding fields such
as visual simulation, molecular modeling, computational fluid dynamics, and
medical imaging.
The IRIS POWER Series of multiprocessing systems includes a variety of
models in both server and graphics configurations with prices beginning at
$54,900, including, for the first time, a system that offers 80 MIPS and 16
MFLOPS for under $100,000.
For further information contact:
Silicon Graphics, Inc.
Debra Harrison (415) 962-3365
Wendy Hasler (415) 962-3139
Silicon Graphics is the leading manufacturer of high performance
workstation and computing systems for three dimensional applications.
These workstations are used by engineers, scientists and creative
professionals in the design, analysis, manufacture and simulation of three
dimensional objects and products.
-end-
IRIS POWER Series, POWERpath and the Personal IRIS, IRIX are trademarks of
Silicon Graphics, Inc.
Unix is a trademark of AT&T.