In article <Pine.LNX.4.44.0901071358220.22563-100000 at pinhead.binfone.com>,
JP Hindin <jplist2008 at kiwigeek.com> writes:
I was asked recently what my Onyx rack was good for.
And it occurred to me
beyond the easy answer of "running Maya"... I wasn't really sure. So, if
you used one of these bigger machines in production (particularly the
Onyx, Onyx2, etc graphics "Visualisation" systems)... I'd sure love to
know what -you- used it for.
The University of Utah was using these until recently for high-end
visualization. Boeing most likely used them for flight simulator type
uses like the F-15 built by McDonnell Douglasi (Boeing absorbed them
in 1997).
SGI machines still beat out PCs on I/O bandwidth and some other
qualities, so these large O2K or O3K machines are not without current
commercial users. However, PCs and the Cell broadband engine are
giving them a run for their money and its much more cost effective to
use more compact equipment for these things. Only certain
applications where the I/O and timing guarantees are important make
sense for the big SGI iron anymore. Of course, SGI has completely
abandoned that market anyway, so you'd be using these machines in
'legacy' mode these days and preparing some sort of replacement setup
for when they die.
--
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