Single-Processor POWER OnyxTM
Deskside Supercomputer
The single-processor POWER Onyx workstation gives researchers and scientists an affordable,
integrated visual supercomputer. POWER Onyx COmbines supercomputer processing capability
with the world's leading graphics. . Utilizing the 64-bit RISC MIPSr R8000 75MHz CPU and delivering
up to 300 peak MFLOPS, the single-processor POWER Onyx is the world's fastest uniprocessor
graphics workstation, bar none. Tightly coupled with either Extreme Graphics or RealityEngine2 graphics
subsystems, POWER Onyx creates an entirely new paradigm for affordable supercomputing and visualization.
At the core of POWER Onyx is the 64-bit RISC MIPS R8000 microprocessor--the fastest
microprocessor in production. Specifically optimized for floating-point performance, the R8000
delivers peak performance roughly equivalent to a Cray Y-MP processor unit.
The key difference between POWER Onyx and any other supercomputer is its integrated visualization
capabilities. POWER Onyx meets the wide-ranging needs of users in such diverse fields as computational chemistry,
oil/gas, molecular modeling, weather analysis and modeling, structural and fluid dynamics, image processing, animation
rendering, and more.
As the low-cost entry into the POWER Onyx family, Extreme Graphics provides fast
interactive 3D graphics and is based on a single graphics board design delivering 600K triangle-meshes
per second, 180K Gouraud shaded quads per second, and 1 million 3D lines per second.
RealityEngine2 graphics subsystems offer the highest performance and most advanced features of any
computer graphics system available. RealityEngine2 is based on a scalahie and expandable graphics
architecture containing 1.2 gigaflops of floatingpoint processing power dedicated solely to the task of
accelerating geometric and image processing functions. Its advanced texturing and anti-aliasing capabilities
deliver unprecedented performance and realism for complex 3D visualization tasks.
Of paramount importance to any computer is a well-balanced system architecture capable of providing
sufficient bandwidth for all key aspects of the system -- CPU, memory, I/O, graphics, and networking.
POWER Onyx is based on a 1.2GB per second system bus that allows for optimum
application throughput and maximum expandability. The singleprocessor POWER Onyx,
available in a compact deskside chassis, supports up to 2GB of main memory, 14GB of internal disk storage,
and can be easily upgraded to a dual R8000 processor configuration.
Deskside Visual Supercomputer