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Technology Stocks : Silicon Graphics, Inc. (SGI) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ms. Baby Boomer who wrote (9675)	2/6/2002 1:13:53 PM
From: Thomas A Watson	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 14451

Maria, I been spending some time at the sig.com Currently they have a lot of new stuff on the VAN Visual Area Network. I think this is real new and interesting product concept. But this FAQ explains very well sgi.com Opengl is a widely used industry standard way of doing 3D modeling. Todays PC's have displays with speedy opengl capbility. But many problems in business are about processing multi giga to terrabytes of data. Even todays PC's cannot really both compute and display because of the need to access volumes of data. sgi.com 1. What is Visual Area Networking? Visual Area Networking from SGI delivers the power of SGI® Onyx® family systems to client computers using standard networking technology and existing multivendor desktop devices. The SGI Onyx family system is the visual server, and the clients can be desktop systems, portable tablets, and more. Visual Area Networking is achieved by running applications on the visual server, using OpenGL VizserverTM to compress the image that is generated on the graphics subsystem and transporting that image to the client. The client then decompresses (if necessary) and displays that image while sharing keyboard and mouse control of the application with the visual server. All communication takes place using commodity TCP/IP networks at rates that need not exceed those of 100Base-T, ATM, or Gigabit Ethernet networks. In fact, even T1 wide area networks are quite capable of delivering interactive visual serving sessions across intercontinental distances. In this way, the desktop user can have access to advanced rendering techniques (such as volume visualization), integrated high-performance computing, hundreds of gigabytes of memory, and multiple gigabytes per second of I/O that are available only on SGI Onyx family systems. 2. What is the relationship between Visual Area Networking and OpenGL VizserverTM? Visual Area Networking from SGI is the combination of hardware and software that delivers remote visualization capabilities anywhere. OpenGL Vizserver is the client/server software environment that has been developed by SGI and is at the core of each Visual Area Networking solution. A Visual Area Network has six parts: * An SGI Onyx family system, with InfiniteReality® series or InfinitePerformanceTM graphics, that acts as the visual server * An SGI® IRIX, SunTM SolarisTM, Linux®, or Microsoft® Windows NT®, Windows® 2000, or Windows XP system as a client * A commodity TCP/IP network to connect the visual server to the desktop client * OpenGL Vizserver software that runs on both the visual server and the client systems and provides compression, communications, and control over the network * The user's OpenGL® applications, running without modification * SGI Professional Services to customize the installation and integrate it into your operational environment How do individuals benefit from using OpenGL Vizserver? Individuals can gain deeper and more immediate insight into their science or engineering problems by working with full-scale, high-resolution data sets--which is possible only by using the scalable visualization capabilities of an SGI Onyx family system--rather than being confined to low-resolution and partial designs on a desktop computer. Individuals also become more productive because they no longer have to travel to use a high-end system. Even if a user has to walk down the hallway to use the scalable system, it is an unproductive use of time--and most high-end systems are not just down the hall but are more than likely located at least 30 minutes away. To take advantage of these systems, people must leave the comfort of their offices, forego access to the related data that typically resides there, and waste time traveling. OpenGL Vizserver brings the visualization resource to people, not the other way around. OpenGL Vizserver also allows multiple people to work with the same graphical data set at the same time, so they can reach better decisions faster. 4. How do organizations benefit from using OpenGL Vizserver? Organizations benefit because: * Their most important and expensive resources--their people--are more productive and generate more discoveries in less time * A single, scalable system is deployed as a shared resource instead of requiring multiple dedicated SGI Onyx family systems * The same SGI Onyx family system can be used to drive an SGI® Reality CenterTM facility with all of its associated benefits * The same system can be used as a supercomputer to solve large-scale problems, producing breakthrough results for the organization How are previous uses of computers different from a Visual Area Network? Certain limited types of remote visualization have been possible in the past. Some of these include: * Video conferencing: Video conferencing uses low-resolution NTSC or PAL inputs to deliver video to a remote system. This input is, at best, 640x480 resolution and is encoded in a very lossy fashion, so it delivers relatively poor image quality. As the content stream is unidirectional, there is no way to control the server from the client. * Redirection of X and OpenGL displays to a remote system: This solution sends all of the graphics commands to the desktop system for local execution--thereby limiting image quality and graphics performance to the capabilities of the desktop system--while loading the network with every piece of information necessary to do the rendering. If the scene is simple and the network fast and otherwise inactive, this solution can work very well. However, today's leading applications use large amounts of texture memory, large numbers of polygons, and advanced rendering techniques that are unavailable on desktop systems. For leading applications and current problems, compressed images created by OpenGL Vizserver can now take up less network bandwidth than the underlying streams of OpenGL data used to generate them. * Fiber-optic cabling to individual desktops: This solution provides high-quality images to directly connected desktops. However, this solution requires that special cabling be pulled to every office where the use of the scalable system will be needed. This cabling is limited to short distances of ~1 km. Visual serving solutions use general-purpose networks that are most likely already in place, thus eliminating the cost of pulling specialized cable and overcoming its distance limitations. * Shared desktop capabilities (e.g., Microsoft® NetMeeting® or SGImeetingTM): These solutions work in a manner similar to OpenGL Vizserver but are designed to work over low-speed lines, provide roughly 10% of the performance of OpenGL Vizserver, and do so with reduced image quality. ........ tom watson tosiwmee