Very interesting story, dd -- I decided to post the whole thing!
June 22, 1998,
Wintel directs moves in video workstations
By Alexander Wolfe and Junko Yoshida
New York - The race to set the technological agenda for the video workstation-the rapidly emerging new category of professional-level systems used to create digital content for Hollywood and for television-ratcheted up a notch last week. On the engineering front, the playing field appears to have shifted from RISC-based Unix boxes to machines equipped with Intel's Xeon processor, which is set to debut next week, and Microsoft's Windows NT operating system.
Among the developments:
- RISC vendor Silicon Graphics Inc. quietly previewed its first Intel-architecture systems in closed-door briefings for select
customers at PC Expo, EE Times has learned. The machines could show up as early as next month at Siggraph in Orlando, Fla. SGI declined to comment.
- Intel Corp. publicly demonstrated the first Xeon-equipped graphics workstations.
- Avid Technology Inc., which is partially owned by Intel, acquired key graphics-software technology through a deal to buy Softimage Inc. from Microsoft for $285 million in cash and stock.
- Intergraph Corp., stung by an ongoing legal battle with Intel, secured some much-needed marketing support from the microprocessor maker: Intel showcased Intergraph's TDZ 2000 video workstation in a dazzling demo at its PC Expo booth.
The events underscore the fact that the video workstation, once a highly differentiated platform, is looking more and more like a high-end, commodity Wintel box. To make their machines stand out from the pack, vendors are touting specially engineered subsystems, including enhanced graphics accelerators that enable the workstations to render millions of polygons each second, and fast buses to manage multiple streams of live video in real-time.
That's the tack SGI is taking as it readies its first Intel-based workstation after more than a decade of fielding machines equipped with MIPS-architecture CPUs. "We're differentiating it [the Intel box] with software, drivers and hardware-the whole thing," said Geoff Stedman, manager of market development at the Mountain View, Calif., company's computer-systems division. He noted that SGI engineers worked particularly hard on the graphics subsystem.
SGI previewed the systems for a steady stream of high-level customers at its PC Expo briefings, which were held under strict non-disclosure restrictions. "We're getting lots of customer interest-people want the machines now," Stedman said. He wouldn't comment on a report that SGI will unveil the machine at the Siggraph computer-graphics conference.
Interestingly, the effort to design the system took place outside of the engineering organization that has pulled together previous workstations at SGI, sources close to the company said. Instead it was developed by a specially formed team consisting of many engineers who had previously worked at Compaq and other PC manufacturers. Stedman declined to comment.
Stedman said the machine will fit in at the low end of SGI's lineup of workstations equipped with MIPS processors and the Irix operating system. These include the O2, Octane and Onyx2 families. Rick Belluzzo, SGI chairman and chief executive, said in April the company will ultimately leave MIPS behind in favor of exclusively Intel systems. However, Stedman said SGI isn't bailing out on MIPS just yet and will maintain a dual-platform strategy for the next several years-something that could help differentiate its offerings from the likes of Intel and Intergraph.
Indeed, the tilt toward Intel-based video workstations was the hidden subtext behind Avid Technology's deal last week to acquire Softimage from Microsoft Corp. Avid, based in Tewksbury, Mass., is a leading developer of digital tools running on the Macintosh platform. Softimage makes respected 3-D graphics software packages that run on SGI's Irix and on NT. By acquiring Softimage, Avid will be able to accelerate its plans to field software for digital-content creation on Windows NT systems. "By virtue of this acquisition, we believe we can significantly enhance our collaborative work with Microsoft," said D.J. Long, director of business development at Avid. He pointed to several joint projects under way-notably, the migration of Avid's Open Media Framework Interchange format to the emerging Advanced Authoring Format. The professional video community sees AAF as critical for enabling the exchange of digital media across many platforms.
What's less clear is why Microsoft would part with Softimage. Microsoft acquired the company less than three years ago, amid a high-profile announcement of plans for professional-grade graphics software. Asked at PC Expo why it was selling, Jim Allchin, Microsoft senior vice president, said: "It's simply a question of horizontal markets vs. vertical markets and where we want to be. Softimage didn't fit in with our long-term plans."
But Microsoft will have a stake in Avid's NT plans, as will Intel. (Avid's Long stressed that his company won't abandon the Macintosh.) Intel currently owns 6.75 percent of Avid, the result of a strategy deal struck last year under which Avid began offering its video-editing tools on NT workstations. With its sale of Softimage, Microsoft will own 9.1 percent of Avid.
With such stakeholders, it's no surprise Avid is rushing to get its Symphony software-a high-end uncompressed finishing system for the creation of TV shows and commercials-up and running on NT. Softimage's DS video-production solution may be marketed as a complementary offering.
Intergraph demo
Meanwhile, Intergraph may be an unexpected beneficiary of Avid's embrace of NT. To date, Avid has no software products that run on Intergraph workstations, but Symphony will become available on Intergraph's Studio Z systems by yearend.
The Huntsville, Ala., company's strategic plan to beat back SGI and up its own share of the video market got sidetracked last fall when it filed suit in U.S. District Court in Alabama charging Intel with "anticompetitive practices," including allegations that Intel sought to obtain rights to a series of Intergraph cache-management patents.
In April, a judge ruled that Intel must provide technical info and sell microprocessors to Intergraph while the case moves through the courts.
Last week at PC Expo, Intergraph got perhaps the biggest boost it could have hoped for. There, a prominent section of Intel's booth was devoted to an Intergraph TDZ2000 GL2 workstation equipped with dual Pentium II processors. The setup included graphics accelerators based on the Real3D chip from 3dfx Inc. and three monitors tied together to display sequential views of motion video generated by the Realimation software from Realimation Inc.
Though product literature was not on hand, an Intel representative at the booth touted the demo as an example of a heavy-duty multithreaded application delivering on the promise of "real-time visualization."
Intel's own plans didn't get short shrift, however. In a quiet corner without any banners to draw attention, Intel displayed an early system built around its 400-MHz Xeon processor. The system included two CPUs and 256 Mbytes of main memory. The demo showcased Inspire 3D, an advanced rendering application from NewTek Inc.
Todd Buckley, the Intel representative running the demo, said 256 Mbytes was sufficient for Inspire, "but if you were running Softimage, you'd probably want a full 2 Gbytes of memory." The ability to address such a large memory complement is one of the big selling points of the new processor, as is its large level-two cache.
By showcasing Xeon in a professional-video application, Intel is telegraphing some unexpected thinking. Namely, that it is positioning Xeon not just for servers and engineering workstations, but as a powerful engine for professional digital-content creation as well.
Copyright r 1998 CMP Media Inc. |
