The following documents are included herein:
- Optimization for Real-Time Graphics Applications, February, 1996
- MIPSpro(TM) Compiling and Performance Tuning Guide, March 1996
- IRIX 6.2 MIPSpro 64-Bit Porting and Transition Guide, March 1996
- REACT(TM) Real-Time Programmer's Guide, March 1996
- Build-time alternatives relating to ld
- overview of Quickstart, Requickstart and tasks performed by RLD
Real-time entertainment applications are very sensitive to image
quality, performance, and system cost. Graphics workstations provide
full product lines with a full range of price points and performance
options. At the high end, they provide many traditional Image
Generator features such as real-time texture mapping and full scene
antialiasing. They can also support many channels, or players, per
workstation to offset the cost of getting the high-end features. At
the low end, they have entry prices and performance that are often
competitive with PCs. Graphics workstations can provide a very
powerful, flexible solution with a rich development
environment. Additionally, because of binary compatibility across
product lines and standards in graphics APIs, graphics workstations
offer the possibility of portability of both applications and
databases to different and future architectures. However, this power
and flexibility increases the complexity for achieving the full
quoted performance from such a machine. This paper presents a strategy
for performance for developing and tuning real-time graphics
applications on graphics workstations.
The following topics are covered:
This guide discusses a variety of issues and tools
involved in programming under the IRIX operating
system. It describes the components of MIPSpro
compiler system, other programming tools and
interfaces, and dynamic shared objects. It also explains
ways to improve program performance.
The compiler system produces either 64-bit object code,
new 32-bit (n32) object code, or old 32-bit object code.
This guide describes the MIPSpro compilers that
produce n32-bit and 64-bit objects. For additional
information about n32, see the MIPSpro N32 ABI
Handbook. For information about compilers that
produce old 32-bit objects, refer to the MIPS
Compiling and Performance Tuning Guide.
This guide is for anyone who wants to program effectively using
the MIPSpro compilers. We assume you are familiar with the
IRIX (or UNIX) operating system and a programming language such
as C or Fortran. This guide does not explain how to write and
compile programs.
This guide does not cover the differences between n32-bit, 64-bit,
and 32-bit compilation modes. Refer to MIPSpro Application Porting
and Transition Guide and MIPSpro
N32 ABI Handbook for information about the differences between
these modes, language implementation differences, source code porting,
compilation issues, and run-time execution.
This document describes porting and transitioning to the
MIPSpro 32-bit, 64-bit and high performance 32-bit (N32)
compilers, and how to employ them with IRIX 6.2, as well
as providing techniques for tuning the performance of
your R8000 applications.
A real-time program is one that must maintain a fixed timing
relationship to external hardware. In order to respond to the
hardware quickly and reliably, a real-time program must have
special support from the system software and hardware.
This guide describes the support that IRIX and the Silicon
Graphics CHALLENGE, Onyx, and POWERCHALLENGE computers provide to
real-time programs. The support bundled with all versions of IRIX
is called REACT. A set of extra-cost features is called
REACT/Pro. This guide covers REACT for IRIX 6.2, and REACT/Pro 3.0.
This guide is designed to be read online, using IRIS InSight. You
are encouraged to read it in non-linear order using all the
navigation tools that Insight provides. In the online book, the
name of a reference page ("man page") is red in color (for
example: mpin(2), sproc(2)). You can click on these
names to cause the reference page to open
automatically in a separate terminal window.
This guide is written for real-time programmers. You,
a real-time programmer, are assumed to be
The below files are old, but still included until we get something more current.
OR, ...