andyrose@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu (Andy Rose) (11/09/90)
If an SGI sales rep wants to straighten this list out feel free.
Take large salt grain before reading...
Products: Personal Iris 4D-25, new box since a few weeks 4D-35
20-35K$ range
Power Stations 4D-300 with 1,2,4, or 8 processors
45-100K$
Benchmarks?
VideoFramer $6K converts RGB to NTSC in _software_ so frame by
frame animation.
VideoCreator $9K realtime NTSC output also may have D1 and D2
digital video output.
I do not know where the VGX (fast 3D texture mapping) part comes in,
powerstation I think. Or it may be an add on.
The current graphics card on the IBMRS-6000 is licensed from SGI and appears
to be as fast as a personal iris. If IBM continues this strategy what's
to keep SGI from always being 2 years ahead of IBM in vector display?
On Monday Nov 5 Sun introduced Sparc 2, and Wavefront said they will port
their stuff to it. I don't know how fast, current rev. has 8 bit graphics,
24 bit to come (?).
If this hardware stuff wasn't driving me crazy I'd watch SGI, Stardent, Next,
IBM, HP/Apollo, Sun and DEC and souped up Macs.
If Motorola and intel project 4,000 MIPS in eight years why bother watching
the hardware market. Hardware is becoming a commodity (bought and sold used)
as SGI 3030s show up in high schools and nice new Tek equipment goes in
fire sales. Is it really true that people used to say "You never get fired
for buying IBM"?
Software note:
I understand that the Data Visualizer from Wavefront is the functional
equivalent of the "render geometry" module in AVS with some cool tools
thrown in like particle trace and data probe. It is priced around $9,500
and there are educational discounts. This sounds expensive although
compare to full blown Wavefront Advanced Visualizer which went for
around $50,000 for years.
The Data Visualizer reads data fields and produces objects and position lists
(PreView files) as well as an interactive display. It is currently
in Beta test. Readers have been developed for some standard CFD (computational
fluid dynamics) applications (not sure which, though).
It seems that the Data Vis. would fit nicely as an AVS or apE module itself.
Note that Wavefront writes software using an internal graphics description
language for portability's sake. This means their graphic code
runs on SGI, IBM,
HP, DEC, Stardent, and Sun. Don't know about Next.
The non graphic stuff (Image) runs all over the place.
--
Andrew Newkirk Rose '91 Department of Visualization CNSF/Theory Center
632 E & T Building, Hoy Road Ithaca, NY 14583
607 254 8686 andy@cornellf.tn.cornell.edu