IRIX

SPEC Viewperf on SGI Octane2 (2000)

Viewperf is an interesting set of real-world OpenGL benchmarks. The original version was developed by IBM but other companies (SGI, Digital…) quickly joined the development and Viewperf became an industry standard for OpenGL benchmarking focused on CAD, CAM, CAE, medical and scientific stuff. Unlike 3D Mark and other benchmarks you can see today, Viewperf simulates a rendering pipeline of real applications on real data.

The data (viewsets) were not developed by the project group. They were provided by independent software vendors. In fact this is true even today with the current version of Viewperf (12). I still use this benchmark when testing workstation-class laptops and NVIDIA GRID virtualized desktops.

The version 6.1.1 was released in 2000 and it was the last version with precompiled binaries for SGI IRIX (among many other systems like Windows NT, Compaq Tru64 UNIX and SunOS). I’ve used it to check the performance of the SGI VPro V6 graphics inside Octane2. VPro V6 is a single-chip graphics solution capable of processing OpenGL commands directly in hardware and it is equipped with 32 MB of memory (24 MB for buffers and 8 MB for textures). SGI VPro and NVIDIA Quadro (which is an ordinary GeForce 256 SDR card with CAD acceleration functions enabled) were introduced at the same time. Although the SGI’s hardware was very advanced in certain capabilities*, Quadro (as a chip born from the consumer segment of the market) was for the first time (slightly) faster even in the CAD/CAE market. This was the beginning of the end of custom professional graphics accelerators (3DLabs, Evans & Sutherland, SGI…). This was also perceived as another hard blow for UNIX workstations after the introduction of Pentium II.

*) High precision 48-bit framebuffer, accumulation buffer for depth of field, FSAA and motion blur effects

Hard Times With UNIX

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We have three SGI Octane2 workstations in our “lab” but none of them were in the ready-to-use state. I’ve decided to take a look on the one which looked like it could work (the only one with hard drives). Already installed IRIX was somehow corrupted and was accessible only by using a serial terminal. I realized after a few hours that the original installation couldn’t be fixed with my knowledge although the hardware (graphics card) was ok. The only way was to install a fresh IRIX.

I used a laptop with a serial terminal emulator instead of local peripherals and SGI O2 as a server containing all the installation files. For the first time I used BOOTP and TFTP to boot a computer over network. I was surprised how easy it was. The former (BOOTP) is intended to get a boot program to the memory of a target computer (to be executed then). The latter (TFTP) is intended for simple file transfer. Good thing is that you don’t need properly configured Ethernet interface to get this working. A server just needs to know the MAC address of a client and a file to be sent.

It took me more than ten hours but I have one fully working Octane2 now. Surprisingly, booting and accessing all files over the network was the easiest part. Most of the time was spent on identifying the initial issue, “package dependency hell” (typical for UNIX systems) and the fact that the IRIX 6.5.22 boot file didn’t work. I had to start with IRIX 6.5.5, install a special patch and then install IRIX 6.5.22 (which correctly recognized all the hardware inside Octane2).

It was definitely an interesting experience… but I hope I won’t need to do this all again soon. Anyway, for a moment I felt like a real UNIX geek.

Inside the SGI O2 UNIX Workstations

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SGI O2 was designed as a small low-cost workstation. This is clearly visible on its internal hardware architecture with unified memory shared between the graphics chipset, CPU, and add-on video grabber. I like the smart design of the case. Everything is easily accessible (except for the CD-ROM drive which needed to be fixed). You can replace the mainboard or hard drives quickly and without any tool.

Btw two of the three mainboards are alive so at least two machines will work. Two working boards are equipped with 180-MHz MIPS R5000 (one in a version without L2 cache). These CPUs were the lowest available options.

LightWave 3D Running on SGI Indigo2

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LightWave 3D started its life on Amiga as a part of the NewTek’s Video Toaster editing system. It evolved in a good stand-alone 3D modeling software and was very popular. However, when Commodore filed for bankruptcy (1994) nobody in the professional market believed in bright future of Amiga. NewTek needed to find a different OS for its products which resulted in support for Windows NT (x86, Alpha) and SGI IRIX (MIPS).

LightWave on SGI was not a very long story. There were only few versions released. The main problem was in price/performance ratio. SGI hardware was expensive and usually it didn’t make much sense to buy it for generic software that is also available for other CPU/OS platforms. LightWave offered way more performance for the same price on Alpha-based Windows NT workstations which was a preferred option for some time. One year later the market shifted to Intel Pentium Pro CPUs with similar performance and broader software support (Windows NT could run only 16bit Intel-x86 software on Alpha).

I have LightWave 3D 5.6 installed on SGI Indigo2 with 250-MHz MIPS R4400 CPU and the rendering performance is only slightly better than on my 133-MHz Pentium MMX-based Toshiba laptop. NewTek apparently didn’t optimize the program to take advantage of SGI hardware.

Interesting world of UNIX computers

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I’m always surprised how little I know about old UNIX computers. I started with Linux in late-90s but it was just a low-cost/low-end alternative. Silicon Graphics Inc. was the only company that came to my mind when somebody said: “UNIX graphics workstation”. Thanks to a nice article about BZFlag history (which began in 1992) I’ve realized that there were hi-end graphics workstations even from HP and they had impressive 3D capabilities. In addition to that, HP had four times bigger market share than Silicon Graphics Inc. (workstation market, 1991).

The PC market is more about stand-alone components. These UNIX workstations were about perfect integration of hardware and OS and that’s why even today it is very pleasant to work/play with them. I would be very happy to have modern Linux looking and behaving like old IRIX on SGI computers. After playing a lot with SGI Indigo2 (1995) and O2 (1998) I consider the system very intuitive, stable and easy to configure in comparison with modern Linux distros.