modern stuff - i860

[emanuel stiebler]

On 2018-10-26 16:26, Randy Dawson wrote:
> Two design wins I remember:
> 
> TrueVision, the AT&T computer graphics people that did the TARGA video
> boards had software to back the board sales up, a 3D animation package
> TOPAS.
> Beautiful, but dog slow even on the fastest 25MHz PCs at the time, so
> they had ported it to the i860 as an add in card.  I think render frame
> rates went from minutes to a few seconds.  I used TOPAS under DOSBox on
> a current PC, and it screams.  Its up on Vetusware if your interested.
> 
> The famous graphic supercomputer hardware war, Ardent / Stellar, the
> later merge and purchase by Kubota had two applications, Dore' and
> Advanced Visualization System, AVS.
> These impressive machines were canned, and Kubota came out with a i860
> desktop for graphics.  I remember the introduction in Houston, and the
> 3D geophysicists and petro exploration guys were all over it.  the
> graphics demos and computation capability was amazing.
> 

Most high end graphics on DecStations had an i860 on it. Rumor is, they
were made by Kubota, but never saw a drawing or schematics to prove it ...