It's tough for techies to tell from PR materials, there's a lot there and I got lost too.
Table of Contents:
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Summary : of the E+S HW announcements
Bottom Line : my opinions based on the following section
(The shocking conclusion ... Sun loses!)
Hairy Scary Details: filled with technical gibberish and ramblings
Summary:
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E+S is announcing 2 new graphics subsystems
"REAL" image boards
"Harmony" image generator
The REAL image boards (starting at $2000) are PCI NT graphics board with claimed 3D performance somewhere in the O2 - Impact range, but real pricing, real performance, and real availability are in real question. (I wouldn't trust PR #'s or dates.)
The Harmony is vapor. No hardware exsists yet, and none will ship until Q3. When the Harmony appears, it will be a $150,000, mid range Infinite Reality class IG. It is crippled by being attach to a PCI bus for general applications. (Think dragster engine installed in Yugo, stuck in mud. If your application is mud spraying, it can't be beat, but it's not generally usable).
Bottom Line:
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If the E+S REALimage cards really are $2000, and available Q197 with OpenGL performance matching their claims. The E+S card should be "competitive" with the O2 and Impact line. E+S track record is not particularly good of late, and their "application" performance has rarely come close to their benchmarks. So while this isn't a SGI killer (or even wounder) product, clearly it's another sign that SGI can't afford to slow down, either.
The Harmony is interesting, probably very nice, and a long way off. Some, but not many, beautiful high-end sims will be done on Harmony + NT vs. the some, but not many, beatiful sims that were done on Freedom + Sun. Net impact to SGI, 0. Net impact to Sun, loss of high-end sim (essentially 0 too, though.)
Sun loses a differentiator vs. NT, as it had used the E+S graphics to shore up it's graphics positioning vs. NT. The E+S competition is no new news for SGI, as they face that earlier generation on Sun, and this new generation has many of the same limitations as it is still bus bound.
Hairy Scary details:
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The REAL board are probably of most interest here, as the discussion at hand is whether SGI low-end strategy is a winner or loser vs. NT -- the high end is generally ceded to SGI. (The I/O limitations of the PC architecture do that anyway.) The loser here (as usual vs. NT) is Sun. In moving it's CIG hardware to NT, E+S removes another differentiator for Sun vs. NT. Sun has never focused on the I/O etc. needed for decent gfx, so E+S's low-bandwidth (display list) approach (on the Freedom series) gave them a "buy" on the issue and allowed them psuedo-high-end gfx. E+S moving this approach to NT is a lost differentiator for Sun.
Let me see if I can summarize (and sanitize) from some sgi internal discussions.
The starting price point of the "REAL" is $2,000 -- though the price for a usable config is probably 2x given E+S history--, which plus a $3,000-$6000 PC is in the O2 price band. Note that as taxing as high-end (for NT) graphics are, the $899 Fry's Special Pentium 120, isn't going to cut it.
On the REAL image (quoting an Alias|Wavefront developer)
|> REALimage boards are capable of polygon vertex rates
|> of 2 million per second, with bi-linear fill rates of 60 million
|> pixels per second and tri-linear rates of 30 million pixels per
|> second.
| So it has the geometry rate of a Max Impact, the BiLinear texture
| rate of a High Impact, and the Tri-Linear rate of an O2. YAWN.
Note that it says "are capable of" not, "are capable of in base configuration." Also note that these rates (even if achievable) need to move 30-100MB/s (minimum) over the PCI bus. While modern PCI chipsets are capable of peak throughput of 60-100MB/s, this is still enormously taxing on a PC, require "server" class PC with fast processors just to keep up with the gfx board.
E+S claims the board supports OpenGL, yet provides NO viewperf (the SPEC group OpenGL benchmark numbers. Either or both of the following
could be reasonably inferred.
* They're a long way from volume shipments (they claim Q197, but
OpenGL and viewperf ought to be running well by now if so.
* They're having trouble with their OpenGL performance. As E+S
is a OpenGL licensee, they should have design the board for OGL,
though it is their first...
On the Harmony (quoting an SGI engineer)
>I was at I/ITSEC for the announcement and preview of the E+S Harmony.
>The key word here is "preview". The hardware does not exist yet. It
>may be available mid to late next year. E+S showed HDTV tape of
>simulations of the hardware. The images were very nice.
>It remains to be seen if E+S can produce it at a reasonable cost.
(ibid.)
The PCI bus speed will limit most application performance to barely better than the REAL boards. Though applications tune for the Harmony should look very nice indeed. From the history with the "Freedom" product the amount of tuning could also be very large, very difficult, and very rarely done. Mass market NT SW producers are loathe to customize their apps for low volume peripherals.
The "Harmony" is probably a file cabinet sized "sidecar" dedicated IG (like the "Freedom series" before it).
Speaking strictly for myself, and disclosing no confidential information.
John. |
