SGI: Hardware

I've seen other people say that as well. Yet, I have three linux machines here, one with 1 gig, and 2 with 2 gigs, and I don't recall doing anything to make them see and use the entire ram. One of the machines is using a stock RHEL 3 kernel, one is using the stock RH9 kernel (because I haven't changed it yet), and one is running a custom compiled kernel with the bigphysarea patch (but I don't recall doing anything fancy in the configuration).

Is the real issue that a single application can't use more than 800 megs? Even still, on the RHEL box I've run a program that used 900 megs.



OpenGL performance on linux is a major agrevation. Everytime I'm doing it on linux I wish I was back on my Octane at home. And OpenGL is one of the major issues keeping me from being whole hearted about moving most of my work at home to OS X.

No, this is not the issue... It "sees" the memory, can't address bigger chunks...

Besides recompiling the kernel?


That's more like it. Quote from the NX Nastran Installation & Operation Guide:

So maybe RH bought a clue and uses the bigmem patch by default then.

This whole linux thing is pretty irritating anywhich way around.

I used to love linux, but as I've gotten deaper into it over the years, my love turned rapidly to loathing.

Though it does do some very handy things, like read efs CDs and do loopback devices (OK, lots of OSs do that, except Irix), and support hardware that is otherwise Windows only. I certainly can't go do away with linux much as doing heavy work on it drives me batty.

That's an excellent point about in-house software. I hadn't considered that, but you're absolutely right. I guess the real question is:

What could SGI offer in a Linux workstation that isn't already available? Massive throughput and scalable graphics (multiple cards working in parallel?) would be my guess, but how far can you go before you have a Prism? How much would potential customers be willing to pay, and what kind of performance increase over commodity PCs would be enough to lure new customers? I guess we'll find out, if the rumors are true.

-zolo

I happen to have my dual 300 Octane with Media Illusion next to a Sempron 2500+ with Combustion 3. I set up a crude comparision, more of a race than a benchmark, just running the same footage through a keyer, a blur, an invert. The results were basically identical, maybe not pixel-for-pixel. The Octane rendered the sequence about 10% faster. I was pretty alarmed by that... shouldn't a PC with all that vector and SIMD stuff, and DDR RAM, completely kick ass at this? I don't think it could have been disk-bound. I'll try and do some better benchmarks, maybe with a dual G4 as well, especially if I can get an old flint rig involved. It's probably just crap software, but even so - people seem to drool over Combustion a lot, yet Avid dropped Illusion ;-)

Who buys UNIX workstations anymore?

- Clueful and Rich people.

quality loving people and those who wanna get work done

sgi is in computer world the same as is:

-Conrad-Johnson in audio amplifier world
-Wilson audio in lodspeaker world
-THX in cinema sound world
-Gibson in electric guitar world
-Lamborghini in car world
-Omega in wristwatch world
-Gulfstream in business-jet world

Quality and veeery expencive

edit:



..who says I don't like "quality"

I just wish SGI wasn't selling so much to governement dummies (they don't really know how to use computers so they need support contract, can't have them use an opensource OS, they wouldn't be able to install/configure it, or even recompile/modify a kernel) that would seriously reduce the taxes we all have to pay.

No it wouldn't, the boneheads would just find something else to blow it on.

Apparently, the hardware upgrade is aparently not necessary anymore... A nice display of our tax dollars in action...
http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/space/02/0 ... index.html

Last time I attended a dinner with some members of a very well known agency, it was like: "Damn, what can we buy this year, we already have thousands of nodes collecting dust, if we don't buy anything over a few hundred million dollars, next year we're not going to get any funding." Well, I guess that's a good thing for SGI federal, bad thing for 250.000,000 tax payers.

Oh, yeah, and the dinner was great too, thank you tax payers, I think I'm going to get more of this 1998 Chateau Sauvergnon and some of this cheesecake as well. Put it on the government's tab, thanks.

This is unfortunately true (but the wine and cheesecake.)

And who cares about hubble, it's watching the sky, no terrorists there, therefore, we don't need it, if only they could make it do a U-turn and watch iraq, damn that would get a hell of a funding. More cheesecake please.

That's what the fricking shuttle is all about A majority of the shuttle 'missions' are military in nature. The scientific end of things is gingerbread plastered over the spy satellite maintenancemobile to make it palatable to the public. Sad Burrrrp. Good cheesecake, thanks !

Unix workstations aren't dead at HP.
Even if I think that Shrek 2 was redered on a linux render farm, HP recently made available the C8000 with 2 PA8800 1Ghz cores (3MB L1 cache and 32MB level 2 cache!) and 32GB of memory.
Likely someone is still buying this type of Unix Workstation instead of PIV PC on steroids.

Marco/Sat

Who knows, with Carly out of the way , they might make a comeback ....

But it isn't for lack of trying .... HP tried to jam the same Itanic shit down their customers' throats that SGI is pushing now.

However, HP customers were apparently smarter than SGI customers. They refused to buy so HP had to back out of Itanic instead

ooh, I see that Carly is gone ! Maybe ... nah. Too late for Silicon Graphics.

Well, the impact of Carly leaving is still to be measured.
I, as a shareowner, have seen only the little spike in stock price, not any real change of direction. Likely it will be the new CEO to really take (or not) a new direction.
Until them nothing is going to change.
As an employee I hope that they will not wipe out the promised pay raise.

Marco/Sat