Sadly won't ship outside of the US. These CPU's are like rocking-horse droppings here in the UK...
The collected works of clavileno
I just missed a 4xR10K 195 Onyx on eBay UK last week for 500.00 (ukp) - I could have had it, I just didn't have the space for it. That beast had the Sirius video option, 2Gb RAM, etc. What was the price of one of those in the pricing book...?
link here
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I needed to edit a text file of 180MB so I started an editor on my windows laptop: after about half an hour I was greeted with a message stating that I had not enough virtual memory.
Windows still contains a perfectly good tool for this, and has done since the early DOS days - EDLIN! It is a line editor, so less intuitive to use than more modern solutions, but it will work on very large files. All in the OS, no need for downloaded tools.
EDLIN can read and write a file of ANY length - it basically loads in as much of the file as will fit into 75% of available (to DOS) memory and then lets you work from there.
Use DOS FIND command to output the line number(s) you're interested in, then fire up EDLIN and jump to the relevant lines. Works really well in Windows with multiple DOS boxes open - one for FIND, one for EDLIN.
Look at http://home.earthlink.net/~rlively/MANUALS/COMMANDS/ for full syntax (since the DOS help stuff no longer works in XP).
All the best
I wonder if anyone has any thoughts on this comment from Greg Matter over at Sun? (Permalink:
http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/Gregp? ... e_confused
)
By 2010 microprocessors will seem like really old ideas. Motherboards will end up in museum collections. And the whole ecology that we have around so-called industry standard systems will collapse as it becomes increasingly obvious that the only place that computer design actually happens is by those who are designing chips. Everything downstream is just sheet metal. The apparent diversity of computer manufactures is a shattered illusion. In 2010, if you can't craft silicon, you can't add value to computer systems. You'd be about as innovative as a company in the 90's who couldn't design a printed circuit board.
jimmer wrote: As to the original post asking to comment on: "chips is where it's at, mobo's are obsolete."
I'm not sure I understand what this greg chap is on about in his blog. As I understand things, chips need interconnects - no? Mobo's are simply surfaces that support and implement interconnects - no?
If so, if you've got chips you'll have mobo's. Though it's unlikely that the classic PC _architecture_ will still be around in 2010.
On the other hand, wasn't the whole point of the Origin 3xxx architecture to make a system with upgradable interconnects? Even so, somewhere along the line, a 'chip' will have to be stuck onto some kind of connector-to-the-rest-of-the-system thing, and that's a Mobo in my book.
As to the original blog entry, the point was about the accelerated integration of more and more of the interconnects, subsystems, etc. onto one or a few pieces of silicon in order, partly, to keep up with the advancing speed of processors. But the key phrase was "add value".
squeen wrote: So I now add: "Where did SGI go wrong?"
Continuing this line, SGI stopped innovating in silicon. If all the component parts of the system are off-the-shelf devices, there's obviously a limit to what value you can add. As squeen points out, for instance, Prism's ATI gfx are a retrograde step in a market which is supposed to be moving forward, and never mind that SGI once owned the market.
For my own part, the "Where did SGI go wrong" is a little more complicated. I think they fell into a classic trap of not knowing what business they were actually in. All their early work involving gfx involved throwing large amounts of data around to support visual output, so they got very good at that. However they seem to have interpreted that as being in the business of high-bandwidth data processing when much of their market thought they were in visual computing. "Their" perception took them towards HPC, whilst many of their customers expected them to stay in visual computing.
Having bought Cray, they owned 2 iconic brands. They could easily have taken all of the gfx knowledge, kept it branded as Silicon Graphics, and been what nvidia are today. Or they could have extended the Indy approach and owned what is now Apple's market. Meanwhile who wouldn't want to have a Cray in their datacentre? The way they've gone they've just squandered decades of IP, hard work, development, testing and customer loyalty.
And from here? Well, they don't seem to be able to innovate at anything more than motherboard design (or bolting on RASC, or refining old interconnects) so where is the value they're adding? Right now they're good at making very large HPC machines, but all it will really take is for IBM say to decide to own that market for PR purposes and sell machines at no margin for that market to vanish.
Now, if somebody wants to port Darwin to Itanium then I'll happily pay big bucks for a "big iron" machine with an SGI cube on the front and MacOS X on the desktop to run some video editing jobs, even if it isn't the best thing out there
Oskar45 wrote: A comment by Sweetman:
The R10000 was a major departure for MIPS from the traditional simple pipeline; it was the first CPU to make truly heroic use of out-of-order execution. Although this was probably the right direction (Pentium II and HP's PA-8x00 series followed its lead and are now on top of their respective trees), the sheer difficulty of debugging R10000 may have set Silicon Graphics up to conclude that sponsoring its own high-end chips was a mistake.
That's a very interesting observation. However that's a little like climbing, say, K2, reaching the top, and then deciding that Everest should be left to somebody else. The next chap up Everest just picks over how you got up K2 and then takes all the glory. I remember sitting in front of Indys a dozen years ago, reading R10K information, and thinking "someday all computing will be this good".
GeneratriX wrote: Of course, even if they decided to stop their own production of custom graphic chips, what one could expect today from a brand with the importance of SGI is at least something as an onboard 256-chip graphic cluster based on NVidia, to have on the size of an Onyx4 or Prism Deskside a graphic engine board with 256 graphic cores working on a collaborative SMP way, but as a single high-power graphic pipeline... then just add the possibility to add more of those baords to have a multi-pipe graphic monstruosity... then of course, just write excellent drivers, and you're set.
And that's what I could call a relatively innovative thing.
Agreed... but that's also something which could easily be copied by others if there were a market for it. It would help reinforce SGI sales, but it wouldn't necessarily be noticed fast enough, or for long enough, to sustain a high price or deliver conquest sales. And, forgive me, but isn't the market for really "HPG" just as small as that for "HPC"? Now if they were still cutting Silicon, and could put that network of cores down, they could use it themselves, license it to others, all those revenue-enhancing things that companies with good IP can actually do
Interestingly I happened to find this http://sunsite.uakom.sk/sunworldonline/ ... ation.html showing SGI with 10% of the 1995 sales volume (but about 13% of revenues) from workstation sales in the marketplace - larger than, say, IBM in that market. Sun, unsurprisingly, had 40% of the market.
Today Sun still sells a lot of Unix workstations, IBM still sells a lot of Unix workstations, SGI decided the future wasn't in Unix workstations... I wonder if the turning point was when SGI management stopped believing they were right to innovate, that they were too small, that they had to "follow the market" - and their competitors didn't read the same book, so just carried on innovating...
All the best
The one thing I'm most impressed by in all of this is that SGI (the outgoing one) managed to find a company to purchase it which actually shared one of the key competitive differentiators SGI had in the marketplace: Rackable, like SGI,
don't put any bloody prices on their website
.
Is it really so difficult for these companies to download a copy of OSCommerce, Freeway or whatever and knock up a pricing matrix? If I want to buy a server, I want to buy a server, not engage in "a sales process". If Rackable can't offer that, I'll just click on through to another vendor who can offer that for me.
Utterly farcical.
Is it really so difficult for these companies to download a copy of OSCommerce, Freeway or whatever and knock up a pricing matrix? If I want to buy a server, I want to buy a server, not engage in "a sales process". If Rackable can't offer that, I'll just click on through to another vendor who can offer that for me.
Utterly farcical.
hamei wrote:
SAQ wrote:
Why would someone bother licensing? Didn't Intel run off with "Extreme Graphics" and "vPro" for free?
Little bullies have to pay. Bigger bullies get the free ride. You know, "We need rich people to give jobs to the poor people."
Not wishing to entirely derail the topic, but, err, yes, that's the basis of a market economy - those with money are called customers. It is no less noble to build Rolls Royce cars or Sony Vaios than it is to build VWs or Dell Inspirons. In fact "the rich" traditionally have helped to keep the more beautiful, and difficult, crafts alive by virtue of creating demand.
There really is no utopian ideal of even-close-to-equality and, frankly, nor should there be - humans are not alike in ability, aptitude, or - frankly, brutally, but honestly - value to each other or to society as a whole. That doesn't detract from their fundamental rights as humans, nor prevent them from making valid and often huge contributions to society, but neither does it provide a justification for the dull hand of "levelling".
Every conceivable model of society relies upon this differentiation in ability; if not rich vs poor then intelligent vs less so, or strong vs weak, or fertile vs barren, and so on. There will be division, and society does in fact need people at all strata in order to function properly.
So, in the context of a market economy, we do, in fact, need the rich in order to provide (some of the) jobs for the poor!
Of course, as SGI's history shows us, being rich and remaining rich are 2 very different things. To paraphrase an age-old quote, SGI is the prime example of "if you want to make a small fortune in the computer business, start with a large fortune"
hamei wrote:
clavileno wrote:
So, in the context of a market economy, we do, in fact, need the rich in order to provide (some of the) jobs for the poor!
Sorry but you do not understand a "market economy" in the slightest. The wealthy do not do shit to advance an economy. They are pretty much parasites. There will always be the wealthy and they do provide nice decorations but almost ALL advances come from the middle class.
Wealthy people and companies do not create anything new : they manipulate whatever comes along to provide the maximum profit for themselves and kill anything that interferes with their own selfish desires in the process. It's the middle class which is the "market economy." Crush the middle class and you get Mexico or China or India.
Please, people, use your own brains and eyes instead of just regurgitating the swill you've been fed by the CEO's and Wall Street brokers.
Ah-hem, thank you for that. Contrary to what you may think, I've spent many decades using my eyes, ears, and brain to examine the world and form my own opinions. Those opinions may not match yours, but that is the way of the world, and it would be a pretty dull place if we all agreed on everything.
Whether we like it or not, the desire for wealth has facilitated some of the most important technological advances. Without the desire for wealth, there would have been no industrial revolution, no explosion in technology and, yes, no SGI. Without access to existing wealth (capital), those advances would have been slower coming.
The market economy provides efficient means by which wealth may be acquired, and products / services distributed. Without a market economy, wealth creation becomes more difficult; without some pre-existing wealth, a dynamic market economy cannot realistically flourish. At least, it cannot in the longer term; in the short term there has, of late, always been borrowing.
Where you see parasites, I see self-interest on the part of some participants in an efficient market. Just as a mixture of abilities, of resources, of means, and so on is important to both the diversity and the movement of the economy (and, lest we forget, it is economic entropy which keeps things moving), so the varied motivations and ambitions of the market's participants also stimulate movement and development.
Now, socially - or at least, politically - it may be expedient (or even desirable!) to limit or otherwise temper by regulation the operation of some market participants, so as to allow the market to meet other, not-necessarily-market-related goals. But that is the role of the regulation; the lack of self-regulation on the part of individual participants does not render them somehow deficient or deserving of our ire, in my opinion at least.
To brand "the wealthy" "parasites" is as pointless as calling "the poor" "lazy" or "stupid". Each participant (in society, as in the market economy) plays their part, within constraints both of their own making and imposed by others. We all need (almost) all of the various types and flavours of participants; remove some, and the rest operates - at best - inefficiently.
hamei wrote:
clavileno wrote:
Ah-hem, thank you for that. Contrary to what you may think, I've spent many decades using my eyes, ears, and brain to examine the world and form my own opinions. Those opinions may not match yours, but that is the way of the world, and it would be a pretty dull place if we all agreed on everything.
Whether we like it or not, the desire for wealth has facilitated some of the most important technological advances. Without the desire for wealth, there would have been no industrial revolution, no explosion in technology and, yes, no SGI. Without access to existing wealth (capital), those advances would have been slower coming.
The market economy provides efficient means by which wealth may be acquired, and products / services distributed. Without a market economy, wealth creation becomes more difficult; without some pre-existing wealth, a dynamic market economy cannot realistically flourish. At least, it cannot in the longer term; in the short term there has, of late, always been borrowing.
Where you see parasites, I see self-interest on the part of some participants in an efficient market. Just as a mixture of abilities, of resources, of means, and so on is important to both the diversity and the movement of the economy (and, lest we forget, it is economic entropy which keeps things moving), so the varied motivations and ambitions of the market's participants also stimulate movement and development.
Now, socially - or at least, politically - it may be expedient (or even desirable!) to limit or otherwise temper by regulation the operation of some market participants, so as to allow the market to meet other, not-necessarily-market-related goals. But that is the role of the regulation; the lack of self-regulation on the part of individual participants does not render them somehow deficient or deserving of our ire, in my opinion at least.
To brand "the wealthy" "parasites" is as pointless as calling "the poor" "lazy" or "stupid". Each participant (in society, as in the market economy) plays their part, within constraints both of their own making and imposed by others. We all need (almost) all of the various types and flavours of participants; remove some, and the rest operates - at best - inefficiently.
Whether we like it or not, the desire for wealth has facilitated some of the most important technological advances. Without the desire for wealth, there would have been no industrial revolution, no explosion in technology and, yes, no SGI. Without access to existing wealth (capital), those advances would have been slower coming.
The market economy provides efficient means by which wealth may be acquired, and products / services distributed. Without a market economy, wealth creation becomes more difficult; without some pre-existing wealth, a dynamic market economy cannot realistically flourish. At least, it cannot in the longer term; in the short term there has, of late, always been borrowing.
Where you see parasites, I see self-interest on the part of some participants in an efficient market. Just as a mixture of abilities, of resources, of means, and so on is important to both the diversity and the movement of the economy (and, lest we forget, it is economic entropy which keeps things moving), so the varied motivations and ambitions of the market's participants also stimulate movement and development.
Now, socially - or at least, politically - it may be expedient (or even desirable!) to limit or otherwise temper by regulation the operation of some market participants, so as to allow the market to meet other, not-necessarily-market-related goals. But that is the role of the regulation; the lack of self-regulation on the part of individual participants does not render them somehow deficient or deserving of our ire, in my opinion at least.
To brand "the wealthy" "parasites" is as pointless as calling "the poor" "lazy" or "stupid". Each participant (in society, as in the market economy) plays their part, within constraints both of their own making and imposed by others. We all need (almost) all of the various types and flavours of participants; remove some, and the rest operates - at best - inefficiently.
Hogwash and sophistry. Believe these fairy tales all you like but in fact, they are pure nonsense. We've had 30 years of this crap and look where we are directly because of it. Greed is not good.
Nothing but corruption comes from avarice and that's been true even before King Midas.
Well, I can't fault you on your brevity nor your succinctness. However, I'm somewhat at a loss as to why you think my views are sophisms whilst yours are not! Or is this one of the Churchill-esque irregular verbs; something like: "I am right, you are wrong, he or she is a sophist"?
I would suggest it is hardly 30 years we have to worry about; in the context of, say, the rise and fall of SGI, we must, at the very least, look back over the period since around 1780 (a reasonable date for the start of the industrial revolution), or even as far back as the 16th century (the start of what has become modern capitalism). In terms of "greed is good" and, perhaps, unfettered avarice, one must cast aside Gordon Gecko in favour of such ne'er-do-wells as the early Venetian bankers, with their pocket armies and orchestration of wars.
I'm really not sure how to put this; capitalism and the market economy are the only proven engines of technological development. We are not all here to enthuse over the work of Siliconski Grafiks. The planned economy, socialist (or further left-wing) ideals, the curtailment of the entrepreneurial imperative; these are all important pillars of systems which have demonstrably failed to deliver on so many levels.
That said, it is not I who am extolling the virtues of "greed is good" as a mantra; I have merely pointed out that avarice is just one part of a complex capitalist ecosystem, which must be balanced by other positions in order to create a healthy economy, and which must be tempered by society (whose will in this regard is represented by the authority delegated to legislators and regulators) in the interests of society's wider aims and objectives.
Incidentally, for what it is worth, I've spent the last dozen years running social enterprises and not-for-profit organisations. My personal objectives owe more to giving back than to taking away from society, but that doesn't prevent me from understanding the world nor supporting that which I believe to be right.
Rather than throwing accusations of character flaws and lack of analysis my way, perhaps you can articulate your idea of how the economy should function so as to meet the needs of society and continue the path of technological development?
Hi, as per title, what commercial (or, indeed, non-commercial) software made practical use of the O2's video-as-texture capabilities? There are obviously some SGI demos, and I'm sure developers made use of it for specific (client-specific) applications, but what else was out there?
In particular, were there any more generalised framworks or toolkits which made use of the facilities, or was it purely down to developers to make use (or not) of the features provided by SGI?
In particular, were there any more generalised framworks or toolkits which made use of the facilities, or was it purely down to developers to make use (or not) of the features provided by SGI?