A Modular Approach to the Ultimate in Visual Realism
The SGI® Onyx® 3000 series is the third-generation implementation of the revolutionary SGI® NUMA architecture using NUMAflex® technology. This tightly coupled architecture with inherent scaling of system and graphics bandwidth is central to the series' breakthrough visual performance.
The third-generation SGI NUMA architecture found in the Onyx 3000 series delivers up to 189GB per second in raw memory bandwidth and low memory latency. This combination enables applications running on the SGI Onyx 3000 series to achieve higher levels of performance and scaling than on any other platform. With the SGI Onyx 3000 series, a single application can directly drive up to 16 InfiniteReality4™ graphics pipes, focusing incredible power on solving a single visual problem without resorting to slower, higher-latency network connections to maintain synchronization.
While the SGI Onyx 3000 series architecture delivers a scalable infrastructure, it is the features of InfiniteReality4 graphics that deliver the ultimate in visual realism. From the beginning, InfiniteReality4 graphics were designed to enable the seamless integration of 2D, 3D, volumetric, and video data sources and to do so with the utmost in color precision and image fidelity. Each InfiniteReality4 graphics subsystem is implemented in a modular approach that allows you to select the amount of performance and the types of display options that you need, with up to 8.3 million pixels being displayed from each graphics subsystem.
High-Performance Connectivity Makes for Seamless Integration
SGI Onyx 3000 series graphics systems feature versatile networking options, including industry-standard Ethernet, HIPPI, FDDI, ATM-OC3, ATM-OC12, and GSN interfaces. SGI NUMA delivers unrivaled system bandwidth that scales with the system size so I/O devices in SGI Onyx 3000 series graphics systems operate at peak performance, avoiding bandwidth contentions among graphics, video, storage, and other I/O that plague other system architectures.
Extraordinary Processing Power
The 64-bit MIPS® RISC processor is the engine that drives the blazing compute performance of SGI Onyx 3000 series systems:
- High clock rate accelerates every system function
- Four-way superscalar architecture, dynamic out-of-order instruction issue, and speculative execution maximize utilization of processing units
- Large nonblocking cache keeps essential data in fast memory
InfiniteReality4 Graphics Architecture
Each InfiniteReality4 graphics subsystem, or pipe, is composed of a Geometry Engine® board, one, two, or four Raster Manager boards, and a Display Generator:
- Geometry Engine--Four high-performance Geometry Engine processors perform lighting calculations and geometric transformations such as translation, rotation, and scaling. Geometry Engine processors also execute image-processing functions such as convolution and histogram equalization--a more effective approach than that of CPUs.
- Raster Managers--Raster Managers scan-convert data from Geometry Engine processors into digital images. Raster Managers perform pixel operations, including Z buffer testing, color and transparency blending, 3D texture mapping, and texture lookups--and they do so with multisample anti-aliasing at real-time rates. Each Raster Manager holds an entire copy of the texture memory and a separate frame buffer. As opposed to mid-range graphics subsystem designs that unify the texture memory and frame buffer--forcing you to trade off resolution, image quality, and texturing capability--InfiniteReality4 graphics allow you to maximize all of the parameters that impact visual realism.
With InfiniteReality4, texture and frame buffer memory capacity soar to 1Gbyte of texture memory per graphics pipe and 2.5Gbyte of frame buffer per Raster Manager--enough to ensure that every application can take advantage of maximum color fidelity and image quality. Each InfiniteReality4 Graphics Pipe delivers up to 1.27 billion pixels per second of 8 subsample anti-alias fill (or 10.4 billion samples per second) across the full screen. This is enabled by the incredible internal bandwidth of InfiniteReality4, which is 192Gbytes per second in a full four-Raster Manager configuration.
InfiniteReality family graphics enable the creation of photo-realistic environments using image-based rendering and dynamic multipass shaders through the use of its incredible texture memory size, fill performance, and blending capabilities.
Interactive large-scale volume visualization can be achieved with InfiniteReality4 graphics because of their support of 3D texture memory and texture lookup tables, which allow the visual representation of the volume to change on a frame by frame basis without reloading the texture memory.
- Display Generator--The Display Generator converts digital data from the Raster Managers into analog or digital video signals for a maximum display of more than 8.3 million pixels per InfiniteReality4 graphics pipeline or more than 130 million pixels per system. A basic two-channel Display Generator provides one high-resolution analog output and a second high-resolution analog or NTSC/PAL output. Optional expansions enable up to eight distinct analog outputs, an HDTV/SDTV graphics-to-video output option, a digital video multiplexing option, and several custom capabilities. In many cases, multiple InfiniteReality4 graphics pipes, each with multiple channels, are used to drive SGI® Reality Center® displays, visual trainers, stereo devices, high-quality digital displays, and other advanced interfaces.
