joem@nos850.UUCP (Joe Muller) (06/06/91)
I was just flipping through our cable channels trying to tell what from what (our cable company made the wise and boisterous decision of reshuffling 80 % of the channels around overnight) when I caught the last few minutes of one of the best computer graphics animations I have ever seen. The anim was called 'Evil Grinning Death' or something similiar and from what I surmised in the credits it was created at MIT. Turns out it was the last segment on a show on MTV called 'Liquid TV.' From what I can tell from the credits, it looks like the whole show is nothing but rock videos usings computer graphics. Anybody know anything else about the show ? When is it on regularly (my cable guide had something else listed on MTV at the time) ? How long has it been on ? Anybody have any on tape ? Also, if the guys who created that animation are out there, how about filling us in on what was used (in terms of computing power) to accomplish the feat ? Sign me stunned... ...uunet!coplex!nos850!joem .OR. jamull01@ulkyvx.bitnet
seanc@pro-party.cts.com (Sean Cunningham) (06/08/91)
In-Reply-To: message from joem@nos850.UUCP
You caught the PREMIERE (sp) episode of Liquid Television (a phrase coined
by Salvador Dali...only he said,"Liquid TV.")
The show will be on every Sunday night till who knows when, at 6:30pm
CST. I was alittle ticked that they showed a different episode at 9pm,
instead of repeating the first last Sunday (I wanted to tape "Grinning Evil
Death" :(
Also, it has nothing to do with rock videos, although they did do a top 20
countdown of videos that incorporated animation last Sunday as part of
their "Animation Invasion" motif for the day.
According to Ken Baer (I was curious about the platform and software
myself) the MIT crew wrote their own software for a Connection
Machine...which has a mere 64,000 processors crunching away...or more.
Sean
/\
RealWorld: Sean Cunningham / \ "Doing our business is what
INET: seanc@pro-party.cts.com VISION Amigas are for."
Voice: (512) 992-2810 \ /
// \/ "Holy #@*!" - any Psygnosis
KEEP THE COMPETITION UNDER \X/ GRAPHICS game playerjet@karazm.math.uh.edu (J Eric Townsend) (06/08/91)
In article <1991Jun8.011614.7206@crash.cts.com> seanc@pro-party.cts.com (Sean Cunningham) writes: >According to Ken Baer (I was curious about the platform and software >myself) the MIT crew wrote their own software for a Connection >Machine...which has a mere 64,000 processors crunching away...or more. Don't let yourself be deceived. That's 64K *integer* processing units. There's only one floating point unit for every N>4 processors. (I think its something like one fp unit for every 8 processors.) -- J. Eric Townsend - jet@uh.edu - bitnet: jet@UHOU - vox: (713) 749-2126 Skate UNIX! (curb fault: skater dumped) -- If you're hacking PowerGloves and Amigas, drop me a line. --
seanc@pro-party.cts.com (Sean Cunningham) (06/10/91)
In-Reply-To: message from jet@karazm.math.uh.edu
Regardless of the number of FPUs, those 64,000 integer units make a big
difference as well. And according to one article written about the CM,
each processor is assigned to an individual pixel.
Anyone interested in designing a CM Bridgecard? Eh? What do you say? :)
Sean
/\
RealWorld: Sean Cunningham / \ "Doing our business is what
INET: seanc@pro-party.cts.com VISION Amigas are for."
Voice: (512) 992-2810 \ /
// \/ "Holy #@*!" - any Psygnosis
KEEP THE COMPETITION UNDER \X/ GRAPHICS game playerrivero@dev8.mdcbbs.com (06/12/91)
In article <1991Jun10.091609.8677@crash.cts.com>, seanc@pro-party.cts.com (Sean Cunningham) writes: > In-Reply-To: message from jet@karazm.math.uh.edu > > > Regardless of the number of FPUs, those 64,000 integer units make a big > difference as well. And according to one article written about the CM, > each processor is assigned to an individual pixel. > Close, 64000 pixels is a display that's only about 250x250 by 8 bitplanes deep. The way the CM is set up, you can assign a "virtual processor" per pixel onto the high resolution device, but that loads several pixels onto each seperate processor. Also recall that the CM is a SIMD machine, which means that if a particular pixel is not affected by the current instruction, that processor sits idle. There are no asynch operations on the CM or CM2. Also, while the CM is blindingly fast for problems with small isolated data sets, it really slows down for applications (such as rendering) where each processor has to traverse a large dataset. Because the 64000 integer processors are also the packet switchers for data communication, you can get into situations where 70% of the CM speed is used up just shipping the data around. For Mandelbrots (small localized data sets) it was amazing to watch. But for rendering and ray-tracing, the performance gain is not worth the cost. ========================================================================== \\\\ Michael Rivero | "I drank WHAT!" |"KILL EVERYBODY! Let GOD | (. rivero@dev8a.mdcbbs | Socrates -------------------sort 'em out!"| )> DISCLAIMER::: |-----------|"Nuke the unborn | Saint | == "Hey man, I wasn't |Looking4luv| gay whales | Dominic | ---/ even here then!" |Settle4sex!| for Jesus!" | | ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++-------------------+++++++++++++++