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Date: 2 Oct 1995 08:58:40 U
From: "Holman, Dimitri" <[e-mail]>
Subject: RE: Lightwave on an SGI Impact
To: "lightwave-posting" <[e-mail]>
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Bitch, Bitch, Bitch. Computers are Computers. The reason SGI machines are fast
is NOT only due to their Graphics Pipeline or the CPU. The slowest parts of a
computer aren't nessisarily the cards attached to the BUS but the BUS itself. I
don't know the transfer rates for ISA or PCI but from CPU to main memory my
INDY transfers data at the unbelievable rate of 400MB/sec and from CPU to
anything else on the BUS at 256MB/sec. Here lies the difference between SGI and
everyone else. SGI has had a very fast BUS from very early on. The bus
technology called GIO64 or graphics-input-output-at-64 bits makes the
difference. Furthermore, SGI's ONYX computers using Reality Engines DO NOT
SPEED UP RAY TRACED RENDERING.
Phong and gouraud shading, anti-aliasing, fog , alpha-blending and Z-buffering
are the only features I can think of that are supported by the RM or raster
manager portion of the hardware. The GE or geometry engine does speed up
geometric manipulations i.e. translation, scale CSG etc. All of this does make
for a very fast real-time, textured environment OR a very fast modeling
machine. Add to this the fact that you can have 24 R4400's in a rackmount onyx
AND assuming your software can run in PARALLEL makes the ONYX what it is today.
If and when LightWave actually supports openGL? We'll have to wait and see.

dimitri holman
Real Time visual simulation engineer and MultiGen modeler.
[e-mail]


<snip>
> Well, when the $5000 cards are out, SGI will have moved on into realtime
> and faster than realtime graphics cards. Unless someone can detect a peak
<snip>
> Not meaning to flame LW or be unduly supportive of SGI, but there is a
> reason they are succesful...
<snip>

This is mainly because of the SGI's graphics processor. Even though the
Alpha is a faster cpu than the R4600, a machine is only a fast as its
slowest link. In the Alpha case, the standard graphics card is no match
for the Reality engine, plus there are some things in the way modeler
refreshes, that make it appear slower than it is. This is all changing,
and I can tell you that you will be hearing a different tune from
<snip>
--
"Holman, Dimitri" <[e-mail]> sent this message.
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