SGI: Discussion

I just kind of wandered in here, never having used an SGI workstation. I've been trying to understand the whole SGI and Nekochan thing, but I don't quite "get" it yet. When I was younger, I didn't quite have a broad view of which Unix systems were out there, and so I was mostly aware of Sun, IBM, HP, Compaq, and DEC as some of the main commercial Unix vendors. I saw some SGI workstations, but the ones I saw looked kind of ugly to me, and I assumed they were nothing special. I was kind of surprised then when I found a whole Internet community of people who are SGI workstation enthusiasts, even though SGI hasn't been making those machines for years.

So what gives? Why isn't there similar support for AIX, HP-UX, or Solaris? Is the attraction more in the hardware of the machines and collecting these boxes as a hobby? Or is it the graphics software available that is the big draw? And do more people come to IRIX for the graphics software or for the Unix aspect? Do many people use IRIX only for the traditional Unix type work rather than for 3D modeling, CAD, animation, video, etc.? For example, would many people here write shell scripts on a regular basis, or schedule cron jobs?

Own one any you'll understand the obsession

My shrink keeps asking me the exact same question.

There was a time, a certain era when Babylon 5 was being produced on Amiga and SGI stuff did high end rendering of things like Jurassic Park and the liquid metal terminator... things other platforms couldn't... I had a DEC Alpha and Pentium 90 running Linux kernel 0.99pl12 in an office I shared with another post grad student, I wandered over to the main computing center where the mainframes used to be and caught a demo with a SGI sales representative demoing stereo glasses on an O2 or Indy or Something. It seemed like a kinda magic... SGI, 4DWM and everything seemed like a kinda magic....

R.

T1000 from terminator 2 was done with SGI??? wow!! really become more proud with my SGIs hehe i always ignore critics and tease here in our office every time i receive a new package for my Octane or O2

I think at least part of it was if not all of it... The black and white tile morph into the security guard sequence was somewhere, I think SIGGRAPH a graphics text book or something. I can't remember what exactly.

R.

oh!! i see.. still awesome! thanks PS, i think will watch T2 tonight just to remind the old days.. Jurrasic and Congo also

0.99pl12, thats along time ago I was on 0.99pl13 for a loong time
Even the first? "live" CD Yggdrasil comes to my mind!

For me with SGI I got my first of two SGI in order to run FSN http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFUlAQZB9Ng !

SGI has wonderful hardware design(both aesthetic and functional) and quite a bit of lore around it. Many movies and tv-series used SGI hardware to produce effects.

Those are two things that put SGI ahead, otherwise it's just another Unix.

Interesting.... I have to say, the SGI Fuel is a pretty awesome looking workstation, regardless of what it's used for.

A closed mouth gathers no feet.

I almost find the questions offensive, isn't it obvious? Nah, just kidding.

What's so special with silicon graphics? Well, in it's day, for graphics work, basically nothing came close, and that kinda stick with you even today. Even if it's just for the occasional retro computing, having fun and remembering the nice days. But got to say that the Octane2 and especially the Fuel still is nice to work with despite their age. Besides, Irix is really nice, and I mean really nice.

But if you know what Sun, IBM, HP, Compaq, and DEC was, I find it somewhat strange that you don't know what Silicon graphics is, or what makes them so special?

But I'm not gonna fool myself, or anyone else for that matter, and try to compare them with a modern computer and pretend they are more powerful or better for a particualar work. Time has moved on.

Heck, right now writing this, I'm working with a 3d scene with over 15 million polygons combined with sevral GBs of texture data together weighting in at 10.5 GB. And all in realtime.

But funny thing is, once I hit render and all cores starts to work, the computer feels sluggish making it hard to do other things at the same time. Never experience that on any of my SGI's.

Ops, gotta go, my render just completed.

Cheers!

Well, don't just leave us hanging... show us the render already!



Jimmer

Would love to, but don't think I'm allowed to do that yet.

In all fairness, it isn't that spectacular in itself. It's a company making packaging for food and beverage here in Sweden that's pretty famous in the world (I think) that wants an interactive way of explaining their procedures of manufacturing and handling of food and stuff.


So we have made an application where you can touch a screen and have stuff explained to you. Zooming down in a landscape all the way into a factory. Pretty cartoonish looking with bright and "fresh" colors. They already have one version that they used for a giant Expo in Anuga earlier this year where they used six 47 inch LCD touchscreens vertically mounted. Looked pretty cool in person I have to admit (had one of the setups in our office). I'm basically doing the same stuff over again, but now tailoring it for horizontal mode, which means new graphics and animations, plus fixing stuff that bugged me with the first one we made.

We also made a "paper toss" game for them to be used on the screens while at Anuga, but throwing fruits instead to make juice.

Tried to find images of it on the internet, but noone showing those screens. Ah well

Pretty sure the Onyx 3200 would have no problem doing that today. Of course you'd be stuck with OpenGL 1.2, but it could still do it...

Yeah, it could probably do it without even breaking sweat. Wouldn't mind one, if I could fit it in my house and pay the electric bills.

But I think what I meant is that such thing today isn't even something you get impressed by anymore, it's just as trivial as writing an email or playing a movie on the computer. It's all so mainstream, everyone and his mother is doing 3D graphics today it seems. I miss the days when serious 3D graphics was run on serious 3D hardware and you felt important

My main workstation is fast, and can handle more polygons per second than I can count, and I actually don't care how many it can handle nowdays, since last time I checked the performance of top of the line graphics for about 5 years ago it could handle more than I would ever need anyway, pretty sure my current is a couple gazillions time faster than that. But I don't enjoy using it, it's all just meh! I much rather fire up my Octane2 and fiddle around in Maya or for some real retro computing, Softimage on my Indigo2 Extreme. But I guess it's because when I'm using my PC it's serious business, and my Silicon graphics is for playing around. Oh, it's so ironic, the PC is for the serious work now?

Man, now I'm depressed.

Better start up my Octane so I feel good again.

Maybe I should revisit the Amiga world again, at least it's still evolving. Or would I just end up missing those day's too?

I just remember lusting over the Indy when it was advertised and for sale. No chance of buying one then. Many years later, I finally got one. I like the rest for what they are, but the Indy has a place in my internal fluid circulation pump.

I understand exactly what you mean, except that is what I feel for the Indigo. Maybe time to get one soon before they are all gone.

Same for me. I still remember SGI advertisements. Or the article when O2 was introduced. It's really a great feeling when you get an Octane for $10, check the original price and realize, that you have a computer, which once was worth $30000 and was then a dream in terms of performance.

Ah, I know what SGI is, and about the general history, but I never fully understood their niche. To me, Unix is closely associated with working in a terminal, as well as networking, multi-user environments, system automation, etc. It still seems a strange match to me that a company would specialize in Unix workstations geared so heavily toward monolithic GUI applications. This is probably a generational thing too -- I was in high school when SGI was really starting to go downhill, and I was never really exposed to their advertisements.

As an anecdote, an interview with Brian Kernighan mentions using SGI workstations at Bell Labs. I'm not sure how pervasive they were, or how long they were used for, though. I can see why the company would buy versatile workstations like that for their research group -- all the flexibility of Unix, and graphics capabilities on the top. In another interview, he mentions that FreeBSD is pretty popular in that group, but Linux also has quite a few supporters throughout the company. Maybe there was a shift at some point?