SGI "Onyx4 UltimateVision" Uses ATI

Same here (the mysterious auto log-out), seen on on both XP and Win98 must be some odd IE patch that got installed since AFAIK the server config has not changed.

K-

 

I have a similar issue (specifically, where I often fail to log in at all when visiting some sites) with Netscape 7.1, actually, at both Rage3D and Beyond3D.

Reconfiguring cookie behavior (less restrictive) a bit for both sites helped very slightly...maybe. Cut down the frequency from every single instance of starting the program and visiting the site to more like every day.

Either something changed at both sites that affects Netscape 7.1 and IE in a very similar fashion and/or both the latest IE update and Netscape 7.1 changed some behavior having to do with cookies in similar ways (when this problem started makes it seem the latter is the most likely determining factor), or Netscape 7.1 uses some component of the operating system that Opera and Mozilla (and other unaffected browsers) do not, and which was updated as part of the IE 6 patching. That's my guess anyways.

 

I saw one of the E&S boards the last time I was in Silicon Valley. It's very large. And very fast.

 

Yes. Got to hand it to SGI, they know how to design a cool looking purple computer!

 

No cookie issues with moz 1.4 (I can't remember the last time I had to login). No popups either

 

Looks like it's up to 32 R3x0s at 300 MHz for the top-end Onyx4s. Not too shabby.

The Tezro appears to be using a custom SGI ASIC for graphics, not ATI chips.

 

Netscape - no worries.

Anyway, to keep it on topic, this sort of practice is not new - SGI once used a bucket load of Intel's i980 (apologies if I've got the chip code wrong) to build graphics boards.

 

Now if only the "clear" ones were real ..

...we'd have Orac from Blake's 7.

 

Looks uncannily like a bunch of modular storage boxes I bought from B&Q a few months back...

 

On the logging off thing: happens to me every once in a while with Opera. It always seemed to be something caused by the advertising banners to me i.e. some sort of glitch in the loading of an adbanner from whichever ad server is used caused the board to 'lose' my login.

 

Actually, I used to get related behaviour with Netscape that would (AFAICS) cause the B3D system to issue a new cookie thus losing track of what I had yet to read. I fixed it by turning off the "auto login" tick box feature of B3D and just letting Netscape remember the passwords and enter the information each session.

 

well that decides it for me then, everyone is using ATi for super high end 3d so an ATi is going in my next home workstation.

 

apache

I was pretty sure rage3d was run on IIS. I seem to remember they're server admin bragging about his Microsoft software.

 

Hmm we strayed off topic... . As for the comment on Linux Render farms, the reason alot of animation studios have moved to them is the fact that you can probably buy 10-20 high end PCs for the price of 1 Huge Onyx Box and all you really need to have is the RAM and CPU plus a place to store the rendered frames. Don't need to spend $500 on a video card. However I imagine that these visualization machines from SGI are meant to be used as a real time rendering platform while working on the film. Something a farm isn't used for.

 

A fairly interesting read on the state of the digital animation movie industry and its move to Linux can be found in an article in last weeks' E-Week magazine.
Some interesting excerpts:

You can read the whole article here: http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,1184620,00.asp

 

off topic
Logoff problem only happened to me once and never since
WinXP SP1 stuffed with all the latest patches availble on the M$ update site........

 

I don't know all the markets SGI intends to push Onyx 4 in but they recently proposed their system for some military flight simulator contracts.

 

It seems this MIPs (CPU) and ATI (VPU) powered Onyx4 UltimateVision is of a much better price/performance ratio than RealityEngine series and InfiniteReality series, in terms of pixel fillrate and polygon pushing. although it sacrificies some of the features like max memory and other things to keep the price more reasonable. iirc RE and IR launched at $100,000+ pricepoints.

SGI is finally going the 'console-chip route' like what Sega did with Naomi/Naomi2, instead of Model2,Model3

 

which version of the Onyx4 UV uses 32 ATI VPUs? and is this per board, or per system? or what.


if you recall, with Infinite Reality, you could have upto 16 pipelines (not pipes as in modern GPUs) maybe more than 16 pipes in some systems, and each pipe could have upto 4 RasterManager boards. Each pipeline could push 10-14 million polygons/sec and adding RasterManager boards would increase fillrate, texture memory, etc.


Since there are always customised extra-extra large SGI systems for certain costomers, (some with 256-512 CPUs) I wonder if they're will be any that use the R300s official limit of 256 VPUs in parallel