SGI: Hardware

Okay le, I'm reading up on the SGI Compositor here

http://techpubs.sgi.com/library/tpl/cgi ... /ch01.html

and it looks very nifty, similar to Infinite Reality for us lesser beings. Lo and behold, if I do a /usr/gfx/sgcombine on the Fool up jumps the devil, software is installed already and it works well enough to mess around. The whole thing appears to be very trick BUT what's the point ? The output from this device is a single DVI connector. My understanding was that a single DVI connector is good for 1920 x 1200 max. Maybe a smidge more if you drop the refresh rate. So here's a very cool device that will take four graphics pipes, arrange them however you want, then output the thing onto a napkin ?

Is this an Alice in Wonderland gag or something ? .

Dual-link DVI can do better than that. I'm not sure quite how high, I'd have to ask El Goog. Though, it looks to me like the point of the beast is to stitch together multiple 3D images, not so much for high res.

The Compositor is distinctly and explicitly single-link at standard single-link frequencies though. I think the coolest application would be AA - and yeah, the idea isn't to get higher resolution but rather additional complexity (by splitting one complex scene into four).

bri3d wrote: ... the idea isn't to get higher resolution but rather additional complexity (by splitting one complex scene into four).

Four little postage stamps, whoop de doo. At the time this thing was designed there were already 2k projectors available and probably 4k ones so they go with a 640 x 480 CGA display. Be still, my heart !

This thing is 95% of a great idea. What the hell were they smoking ?

Perhaps it was more of a "proof of concept" intended to be fleshed out with the next generation of graphics?