Thursday May 8 8:00 AM EDT
Company Press Release
Source: Silicon Graphics Inc.
Silicon Graphics O2 Desktop Workstation Receives AIM
Technology's 'Hot Iron' Awards
O2 Workstation Recognized for Superior Performance and Value
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., May 8 /PRNewswire/ -- Silicon Graphics, Inc. (NYSE:SGI) today
announced that its O2(TM) desktop workstation has received two 1997 AIM Hot Iron Awards
for best overall performance and best price/performance ratio in the less than $10,000 UNIX(R)
workstation category. The AIM benchmark is conducted by AIM Technology, Inc., a leading
independent testing service for UNIX and Windows NT(R) workstations, to measure the
system-level performance of the CPU, I/O, memory, disk drives, operating system and compilers.
AIM Technology presented the award this week at NetWorld+Interop '97 in Las Vegas.
``As a strong measure of price performance, the AIM benchmark validates the industry
excitement around the O2 workstation,'' said Steve Proffitt, O2 marketing manager for Silicon
Graphics, Inc. ``By combining strong performance with a rich feature set, the O2 workstation is a
powerful tool for professionals in our core markets such as CAD and entertainment. With the O2
system, designers and content creators can bring better products and more compelling content to
market quickly.''
``Our benchmark has been designed to provide users with data that helps determine a system's
value in a given environment,'' said Phil Piserchio, director of performance measurement for AIM
Technology. ``This year, we found the O2 workstation provides the best performance and value
of all UNIX workstations tested in the less than $10,000 category.'' Other suppliers included in
the benchmark were Sun Microsystems, Digital Equipment Corporation, IBM Corporation and
Ross Technology.
AIM tested a Silicon Graphics(R) O2 workstation with a 180MHz MIPS(R) R5000(TM)
processor, 512KB of secondary cache, 64MB of memory, a 2GB hard disk, 17`` color monitor,
keyboard and mouse. The list price of this configuration is $8,495.
About the AIM Benchmark
Workstation tests were based on the AIM Workstation Benchmark Suite VI, designed by AIM
Technology to evaluate and predict UNIX-based applications performance. The workstation
benchmark includes 49 tests that simulate various single- and multi-user environments on UNIX
systems. Results are reported in peak performance, the system's highest performance level when a
significant amount of CPU, floating point and disk caching is used; and sustained performance, a
measurement of a system's multitasking application capacity.
O2: An Out-of-the-Box Desktop Solution
Introduced in October, 1996, the O2 desktop workstation features the industry's first
high-performance Unified Memory Architecture (UMA) that enables the system to integrate
advanced 3D graphics, image processing, video and compression capabilities. The system
provides an affordable entry point to the powerful Silicon Graphics platform. For $5,995, the O2
workstation comes standard with 32-bit, texture-mapped, double-buffered graphics, including
hardware-accelerated rendering for OpenGL(R) applications, and full motion JPEG video
compression.
AIM Technology is an independent organization, as opposed to a vendor consortium, which
allows AIM to bring an expert eye to performance measurement that is not restrained by the
objectives of the consortium members. AIM Technology, headquartered in Menlo Park, Calif.,
was founded in 1981. The company provides performance testing and performance management
tools for the UNIX and Windows NT systems markets.
SOURCE: Silicon Graphics Inc. |
