Silicon Graphics, the leading name in high-performance visual computing with 20% of the Canadian entertainment post market, has announced a series of new products that take post-production capabilities to the next level.

sgi, based in Mountain View, California, will release new products powered by 64-bit R5000 and R10000 reduced instruction-set computing (risc) microprocessors, made by wholly owned subsidiary, MIPS Technologies.

The new sgi hardware includes the Onyx Infinite Reality visualization supercomputer, the POWER CHALLENGE 10000 supercomputer, the Indigo2 IMPACT 10000 workstation family, the Indigo2 Solid IMPACT workstation, the Indy R5000 and Indy Studio desktop systems, the CHALLENGE 10000 server family, and the CHALLENGE R5000 and CHALLENGE DM R4400 servers. The company’s third-generation, 64-bit operating system, IRIX 6.2, will also be available across its entire product line.

The Onyx Infinite Reality, which concurrently processes geometry, imaging and video data up to 100 times faster than the Onyx Reality Engine2 graphics supercomputer, previous holder of world’s fastest system title, will be available this quarter.

An Onyx with two R10000 processors and Infinite Reality graphics is priced $330,300 for the deskside version and $380,200 for the rack configuration.

The Indigo2 IMPACT 10000 line of workstations, which utilizes the MIPS R10000 RISC processor, offers two to three times the performance of systems based on MIPS R4400 processors, the current standard.

Rich Gaasenbeeck, marketing director at Mississauga, Ont.-based SGI Canada, says the Maximum IMPACT delivers the same graphics performance that was available in the Onyx last year with the Reality Engine2.

On the desktop, it gives almost supercomputing graphics power, and then the Infinite Reality takes it to another level,’ says Gaasenbeek.

According to Gaasenbeek, entertainment applications of the new technology drive the state of the art in the computer industry.

‘Film and video and visual simulation are markets where there is no limit to the amount of graphics horsepower the market can absorb,’ says Gaasenbeeck. ‘Our partners like Industrial Light and Magic, Alias and Discreet Logic are the first to say, ‘About time!’ whenever we come out with a new piece of equipment that offers unparalleled graphics performance.’

Phil Neray, director of product marketing at Discreet Logic, says the products represent a level of performance several times what has been available in the past, adding that facility owners can upgrade their systems at much less cost than buying a whole new box.

‘One can take an existing Onyx and upgrade to the Infinite Reality subsystem and upgrade the processor to the R10000 and now they have a system that is several times faster,’ says Neray. He says the advance is another argument in favor of open-architecture systems versus closed, proprietary ‘black boxes.’

Neray says the new technology will result in a previously unheard of level of effects. ‘When you give people realtime feedback for complex effects, they try complex effects; they start going over the edge,’ he says.