(sorry for the literary reference - had to put that in there).

Necro and I were talking about getting into what he calls more "heavy metal" stuff (servers, high performance computing (HPC), etc..) and in talking about how to dominate the ORB - there posses one problem.

First off, HPCs don't generally run Windows; which also means that running programs like sandra and any of the 3DMark posses a significant problem (since you can't run them in distributed fashion).

In any case, (more about that later), in looking for ways to deal with the lack of accelerated graphics for non-Windows platform, I went and stopped by over at SGI (Silicon Graphics), and found some "bad" news.

First off, for those that don't know, SGI is like the "father" to modern day computer graphics. They were the ones that started the OpenGL standard and were also the ones that (more or less) pioneered hardware graphics acceleration.

Some of their biggest accomplishments is in the film industry, where feature films such as "Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within" were rendered entirely on SGI servers and workstations. (4 Origin 3000-series servers, and 167 workstations) using Alias|Wavefront (now Autodesk) Maya. Other notable exceptions include George Lucas' special effects house, Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) which feature special effects in "Star Wars" series, and the "Titanic".

So why care?

Well, I just found out that apparently SGI was under Chapter 11 (i.e. I think that's the bankruptcy protection chapter) and they just emerged out of it. That bad because that means that as we move forward in the computing world (whether you're regular Joe at home or you're NSA spying on Joe), computer graphics is going to start losing it's edge.

I believe that you're going to see fewer and fewer performance and technology developments and improvements like we have seen over the past 5 years; where the performance of graphics cards (I am presuming) to have tripled.

AND; on top of that, I found this:

End of General Availability for MIPS® IRIX® Products -- December 2006

MIPS is a brand of high performance processors. Granted, they're not very fast processors (compared to what you can get with commodity hardware today), but they were extremely fast ('specially when combined in a cluster) for rendering.

IRIX is SGI's UNIX. Like Sun's Solaris, and IBM's AIX, it was originally derived from Bell Labs' System V, Release 4 (SVR4) UNIX.

The end of both these products not only eliminates one of the key players in the high end computing industry, but also means that for top-range servers, it is now REALLY down to Sun, IBM, and HP (not counting Dell, because Dell is just a builder - it doesn't necessarily make it's own hardware like the others).

Couple that with 3DLabs getting out of the professional graphics market, the AMD-ATi merger; now instead of having just a tiny segment (professional graphics card) missing, there's a BIG FAT GAPING HOLE for anything beyond the desktop.

That also means that for large scale vizualization projects - you're going to need a cluster of 128 "normal" computers with "normal" video cards just to drive the unit.

And that's bad, because death of innovation equates to....

The Death of A Salesman.

Hmm that is suprising news. Although I am a strong believer in capitalism and that where there is demand (aka money) someone will step in. I also think Moore's law will continue to pull through for us. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_law)

I would be interesting to see a trend line for graphical computing power over time.

Can't wait to take a crack at OC'ing some "Heavy Metal" with you bu-uddy
(In my best Pauly Shore Impersonation)

Gonna take that ORB and melt it to the ground!

Yeah.."Death of a salesman" sounds appropriate here...too bad, Maybe somewhere over in China the guys that are making the "Dragon" Cpu's are just licking there chops at the thought of taking on this market!

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Quote: Originally Posted by $SOLID$ Necro Headbangers and leather Sparks flyin' in the middle of the night It all comes together When they turn out the lights Fifty thousand watts of power And its pushin' overload The Beast is ready to devour All the metal they can hold 'Bout to overload To explode ! It's your one-way ticket to midnight Call it . . . Heavy Metal ! Eye-to-eye Feelin' just right Call it . . . Heavy Metal ! Desperation on the red line Call it . . . Heavy Metal noise ! Can't wait to take a crack at OC'ing some "Heavy Metal" with you bu-uddy (In my best Pauly Shore Impersonation) Gonna take that ORB and melt it to the ground! Yeah.."Death of a salesman" sounds appropriate here...too bad, Maybe somewhere over in China the guys that are making the "Dragon" Cpu's are just licking there chops at the thought of taking on this market!

WOW......IT'S BEEN YEARS since I've heard someone make a good Pauly Shore reference, let alone an impersonation!........ (you know you're old when....lol..)


Cray-2 cooling.

Google it.

Pictures of Cray cooling.

(to give you an idea of what we/you would probably be looking at).

Cray Patents
http://www.uspto.gov/web/patents/pat...-20060725.html
http://www.uspto.gov/web/patents/pat...-20051025.html
http://www.uspto.gov/web/patents/pat...-20060131.html
http://www.uspto.gov/web/patents/pat...-20060704.html
http://www.uspto.gov/web/patents/pat...-20060328.html

(nothing that I see (yet) on or about cooling or cooling apparatus, doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. Just means that we have to be more careful and more thorough in doing the patent search.)

(tee hee tee hee....."Cray's Anatomy". Sorry....it was there for the taking.)

Quote: Originally Posted by alpha754293 Couple that with 3DLabs getting out of the professional graphics market, the AMD-ATi merger; now instead of having just a tiny segment (professional graphics card) missing, there's a BIG FAT GAPING HOLE for anything beyond the desktop.

Sounds like a golden opportunity for a new company to emerge as leader for the others to catch up to.

"Hey, do we have any of that Plutonian Nyborg left?"

Yeah, though it's a bummer that SGI's out I would imagine that high end graphics aren't going to slow down. Considering that non-3d animation in cinema has pretty much gone extinct in favor of 3D, there's definitely a demand even outside the academic realm.

And as for innovation being passed down to the consumer market, there's enough ferocious competition between ATI and nVidia that I think things will still be crusin' right along.

Quote: Originally Posted by _Sexy_Pants_ Yeah, though it's a bummer that SGI's out I would imagine that high end graphics aren't going to slow down. Considering that non-3d animation in cinema has pretty much gone extinct in favor of 3D, there's definitely a demand even outside the academic realm. And as for innovation being passed down to the consumer market, there's enough ferocious competition between ATI and nVidia that I think things will still be crusin' right along.

In my recent "hangout" with Pimpette, DigiWorld, and Necro, one of things that I had mentioned is that being a researcher, we usually see a lot of stuff that a lot of people don't see.

Having said that, what I usually find (at least mildly amusing) is that what people think is such a new an innovative idea is more of a refinement of an idea that probably came out 20 years ago; made available to the general public. (Most of the time, that 20 year gap is because that's how long the government hold's the patent/licensing right and they're waiting for the patent to expire before public release).

While you're right, that there's enough competition on the consumer front to keep them fairly "occupied", my interpretation of that is that's just "busy work".

It's like going into battle with bayonettes, and no one's working on a muzzle-loader. And of course, those that HAVE a muzzle-loader gets the advantage of attack at range.

Or otherwise put, they're fighting for the sake of fighting - and often, as I see it, little innovation comes out of it.

WIth a lot of the stuff that i deal with (servers, HPC, etc.) we're always demanding more, pushing the evnvelope (or in some cases, completely changing the envelope), and then that in turns, drives the consumer market.

As godfoot mentioned, if there is any company that wants to bridge between consumer graphics market and high-end stuff - NOW would be the time since what was probably the two biggest leaders in that sector just left entirely.

Downside of course, is that 3DLabs still exist as an entity, so all patents are still valid, and alive.

There may be fewer and fewer 3D hardware companies left now, but let's not forget nVidia's Quadro Plex units that have just gone on sale. There's still decent professional 3D tech out there.

Quote: Originally Posted by reflux There may be fewer and fewer 3D hardware companies left now, but let's not forget nVidia's Quadro Plex units that have just gone on sale. There's still decent professional 3D tech out there.

You have no idea how many times I've heard people who's used the "professional" graphics cards from either ATi and nVidia and then sitting down in front of a system powered by something like 3DLabs are 3DLabs have ALWAYS won (from a user perspective).

Think about it this way, if you can mod your ATi consumer Radeon to a FireGL (without the premium price) or a GF6800 into a Quadro - what does that tell you about the architecture of the card and how it performs? (afterall, the physical board and GPUs are the same)???

Yes, they exist. Even with a "low-end" 3DLabs, it still beats anything that ATi or nVidia's got to offer.

That's all I'm saying.

I would say if 3D labs went under, it was due too poor marketing and management, it would appear the product itself was top of the line!

Looks like the 3D FX "Curse" finally caught up with them, even if it was for the opposite reasons!

(Good product, bad marketing, vs mediocre product and good marketing...both had bad management though)

Quote: Originally Posted by $SOLID$ Necro I would say if 3D labs went under, it was due too poor marketing and management, it would appear the product itself was top of the line! Looks like the 3D FX "Curse" finally caught up with them, even if it was for the opposite reasons! (Good product, bad marketing, vs mediocre product and good marketing...both had bad management though)

Actually 3DLabs is "shfting their focus on embedded market."

grrrr....*pissed off*

And just when they were prototyping 4 GPUs onboard, with 3 coherent HyperTransport links..... (such that it was begging for a 24-lane (or more) PCI-Express slot.

It is also the only card that I know of that can actually saturate the entire PCIe x16 bus such that they had to slow down the card because it was causing system fault/corruption.

ROFL..no kidding, I thought that there was still tons of room left in the 16X PCIE bus...

Would have been nice to see NVIDIA buy up that dividion and take a few of the engineers to complete the next gen of cards, probably could have probably used some of that "Heavy Metal" thinking in the desktop cards, the 8800GTX looks to be a real "Nut Buster"

(A follow up to the old 5800 Ultra "Dust Buster"?!?!?!)

The 2007 Box, Part II: Prescott, The Video? . . .

Wonderful, Simply Wonderful . . .

Quote: Originally Posted by alpha754293 You have no idea how many times I've heard people who's used the "professional" graphics cards from either ATi and nVidia and then sitting down in front of a system powered by something like 3DLabs are 3DLabs have ALWAYS won (from a user perspective). Think about it this way, if you can mod your ATi consumer Radeon to a FireGL (without the premium price) or a GF6800 into a Quadro - what does that tell you about the architecture of the card and how it performs? (afterall, the physical board and GPUs are the same)??? Yes, they exist. Even with a "low-end" 3DLabs, it still beats anything that ATi or nVidia's got to offer. That's all I'm saying.

Ah, yeah, I didn't realise that. Good point.