SGI: Discussion

Sarcasm doesn't suit you at all! There's a full size drive in the Tezro isn't there? Wonder how long it will be before people are trying to squeeze them into Prism too!

Sorry But at least Duesenberg went broke building expensive good stuff. This is just overpriced poop with a pretty paint job - exactly what you'd expect from a bunch of corporados who thought fifty million for an effing font was a good investment. Very discouraging.

Hmm. I wonder if you could run HP-UX on it ?

Does that mean you're gonna buy one? I think the fact is that those of us who really want SGI systems, will either have to put up with increasingly dated systems or get on the IA64 bandwagon. Don't think we have much choice do we?

Do you think SGI might consider releasing IRIX source so someone can have a go at porting it one day!

Well;

I think the new SGI's box has very good specs, and by the way, I think it looks REALLY fantastic! ...I like it a lot!

...So, and I hate to say it against my IRIX/MIPS devotion/religion, the new box seems a really good candidate for many desktops, despites the price. I could be very happy indeed with OpenGL v1.5 and all these FPU torque.

SGI: Congratullations by the new son!

I like too. Shame it doesn't support 48-bit RGBA. Still think that's something of a backwards step, but hey, it's not like your eyes can see that many colours anyway!

I just noticed this: http://www.sgi.com/products/visualizati ... vices.html

It mentions the IRIX® Implementation service:

"Get on the fast track to productivity. Includes IRIX software installation and configuration, disk/tape management, serial device connectivity, and a range of system administration services."

Now, why would that be on the Prism pages I wonder?

Looks very nice tell you that. /me wonders, probably wouldn't.

More shots, see how it dwarfes the 23" LCD... For some reason, they're pushing CFD visualization quite a bit!

Hmmm. Looking at this page, if this works well, it may be just as likely to bite SGI in the ass as not. One reason to buy an SGI machine is the fact that some software only runs on Irix. Given that a Sun Opteron flat kicks the Itanic's ass - at least for Pro/E, documented over at Orlaf Corten's - it's quite possible that a lot of people would rather run Transitived Irix on an HP at 1/3 the cost, or on a proven Opteron from a fairly dependable supplier like Sun rather than crappy-ass Gnome-Linux (check out what Jorg Schilling has to say about Alan Cox) on a box from a company with a history of hostility to its customers. In fact, IF it works well, that's a possible future for Irix-lovers ...

Gonna be interesting. Can we say VW320 deja vu ?

Yes we can, sadly...

I was recently up at the BAR HQ near Silverstone. They have a lot of nice kit for CFD work. They were saying that the Onyx 3s they have didn't give them the performance they needed.

The CFD crowd will be big customers for this sort of kit, especially given the sort of insane bandwidth it can handle.

Cheers,
TOM

What is the significance of having two graphics cards in the "deskside" Prism? Can they work together in parallel and output to one monitor, or is the configuration only useful for multiple monitor setups? If it's the latter, it seems like a waste.

Also, unless I'm missing something, SGI have not announced any digital media (read: video) I/O hardware for the Prism series. Without said hardware, it seems these systems would be worthless to a company like discreet (oops, I mean Autodesk Media and Entertainment--pfft, whatever).

So without particularly special graphics abilities or digital media hardware options, who would buy the Prism "deskside" vs. a cheaper Linux box from another vendor?

-zolo

i cant wait to turn one into a speakerbox!

and WTF IS WITH THAT SATA SHIT???
who the hell is gonna spend 8500 on a box and then buy shitty 1year-warranty crap neon-case-boy type drives for it!

Well, the CFD crowd will not really get excited over a dual CPU, I know, I'm part of this crowd

A 16x would for sure, provided the CFD code is designed for this... I guess the only reason they put CFD on screens is that with the right post-processing tool you can create some amazing pictures... These were taken off the different CFD vendors websites though, nothing more than a little photoshop...

I believe there are Linux drivers for the Hauppauge WinTV-PVR cards ... hth

EXACTLY!

well, I suppose if there are linux drivers you could add on these boys... though how that makes this prism deskside special...

http://www.pinnaclesys.com/OEMDivision. ... angue_ID=7
http://www.canopus.us/US/products/EDIUS ... rdware.asp
http://www.canopus.us/US/products/EDIUS ... IUS_HD.asp
http://www.canopus.us/US/Products/EDIUS ... rdware.asp

and if you want out, but not in
http://www.nvidia.com/page/qfx_4000sdi.html

This guy has been working on a Linux clone of 4dwm, I wonder if SGI will pick this up?

I doubt it. His development pace is slooooooow. His binaries are for Red hat 7.3 (!). He doesn't respond to email and who knows when the next beta will be out.

No, actually the line of DigitalMedia (OpenML) professional option boards for LINUX (or even IRIX) based SGI(s) is:

SkyMicro Merlin

..but wait, ..isn't "Novell SUSE Enterprise server" the "default" version of Linux on SGI Itanium2 systems (supplied on CDs with system purchase)? If so, than, at least by looking at packages included in their Linux distribution at Novell website, OpenMotif should be one of the choices so you can set Motif during the installation instead of Gnome?

Edit:

..maby I better ask: What Linux do you get on CDs and installed on disk with SGI Itanium2 system purchase? Is it Novell (with all those GNU packages and OpenMotif) or some kind of SGIs own Linux distribution?