http://www.sgi.com/Headlines/1995/Jan/cut_cost.html (Einblicke ins Internet, 10/1995)

SGI Introduces Low-cost Graphics Through Reality Station

Silicon Graphics Cuts Cost of World's Fastest Graphics With Introduction of Reality Station

Company Breaks Price/Performance Barrier With Access To RealityEngine2 Graphics

On January 16, 1995, Silicon Graphics, Inc. introduced the Reality Station(tm) graphics workstation, a new deskside workstation that reduces the entry price of the world's fastest graphics by 40 percent. The latest member of the Onyx(tm) family, Reality Station, is a single-processor graphics workstation targeted at customers in the advanced design/manufacturing, image processing and visual simulation markets who seek access to leading graphics performance at the lowest possible cost.

"Once again, Silicon Graphics delivers on its mission to develop the world's most advanced visual computing technology and systematically make it more and more accessible," said Dave Orton, general manager of Silicon Graphics' Advanced Graphics Division. "By taking the fastest workstation graphics anywhere and nearly making it twice as affordable with Reality Station, Silicon Graphics continues to lead the industry in price/performance."

Reality Station features a single 200 MHz MIPS(r) R4400(tm) microprocessor and includes RealityEngine2(tm) graphics, the industry's top performing graphics subsystem. RealityEngine2 graphics subsystems are based on a scalable and expandable architecture and contain 1.2 GFLOPS of floating-point processing power dedicated to performing geometric transformation and image processing acceleration. Because of its advanced texturing and anti-aliasing capabilities, RealityEngine2 graphics subsystems set new standards for image quality and offer unprecedented performance and realism for complex 3D environments.

Reality Station has a real-time 3D graphics feature set, including real-time texture mapping; full-scene anti-aliasing of polygons, vectors and points; quad buffering for interactive high-resolution stereoscopy; hardware support for image processing; standard NTSC/PAL/S-video output; and broadcast video options. As an advanced visualization station, Reality Station is ideal for technical and creative professionals as well as engineers in a variety of diverse fields where design, imaging, modeling and data analysis are performed.

"We chose Onyx RealityEngine2 systems because we needed to simulate realistically the manufacturing of a submarine without incurring the cost burden of full-scale wooden mockups," said Jim Boudreaux, head of the Computer Systems Technology Department at General Dynamics' Electric Boat Division. "As we move forward, we would like to deliver the power of RealityEngine2 graphics to the individual more cost-effectively."

The Onyx Family

Silicon Graphics' flagship Onyx graphics supercomputer provides 3D graphics coupled with the power of symmetric multiprocessing to customers in a variety of industries such as visual simulation, computational chemistry, film/video, structural dynamics, image processing and geophysical research. Multiprocessor Onyx configurations support from two to 24 MIPS R4400 CPUs and provide a wide range of graphics options such as Extreme(tm), VTX(tm) and RealityEngine2. In addition to the Onyx supercomputer, Silicon Graphics recently introduced the POWER Onyx(tm), a graphics supercomputer based on the 64-bit MIPS R8000(tm) RISC microprocessor which provides peak floating-point performance of 3.6 GFLOPS.

New Audio/Serial Option

Silicon Graphics also announced that it is offering a new Audio/Serial Option for the Onyx graphics supercomputer and Challenge(tm) server families. This card provides both professional-quality audio processing and high-speed serial ports on one board. Accessed through Silicon Graphics audio library, the audio component allows users to record, edit and play four channels of 16-bit 48 kHz audio signals. This capability is important for film and video editors, visual simulation application developers, or anyone who needs to process audio. The serial component of the Audio/Serial Option has six high-speed, 115 Kbaud asynchronous serial ports with low latency for highly-interactive devices such as tablets, virtual reality equipment or motion tracking hardware.

Availability

The Reality Station systems featuring RealityEngine2 graphics, a single 200 MHz MIPS R4400 processor with 1 MB secondary cache, 64 MB of memory, 2 GB system disk and a 21-inch monitor with 1,280-by-1,024 resolution will be available from Silicon Graphics in March. The Audio/Serial Option will be available in May 1995.

Silicon Graphics, Inc. is the leading manufacturer of high-performance visual computing systems. The company delivers interactive 3D graphics, digital media and multiprocessing supercomputing technologies to technical, scientific and creative professionals. Its subsidiary, MIPS Technologies, Inc., designs and licenses RISC processor technology for the computer systems and embedded control markets. Silicon Graphics has offices worldwide and headquarters in Mountain View, California.

Silicon Graphics, and the Silicon Graphics logo are registered trademarks, and Reality Station, Onyx, RealityEngine2, VTX, POWER Onyx and CHALLENGE are trademarks of Silicon Graphics, Inc. Extreme is a trademark used by Silicon Graphics, Inc. under license. MIPS and R4000 are registered trademarks, and R4400 and R8000 are trademarks of MIPS Technologies, Inc. All other names mentioned are trademarks, registered trademarks or service marks to their respective companies.

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