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75-473: The Indy , code-named "Guinness", is a low-end multimedia workstation introduced on July 12, 1993 by Silicon Graphics Incorporated (SGI). SGI developed, manufactured, and marketed Indy as the lowest end of its product line, for computer-aided design (CAD), desktop publishing , and multimedia markets. It competed with Intel x86 computers, and with Windows and Macintosh , including using their files and running their applications via software emulation. It

150-503: A $ 12,000 (equivalent to $ 29,000 in 2023) "personal workstation" might be a high-end PC like Macintosh II or IBM PS/2 Model 80 , low-end workstation, or a hybrid device like the NeXT Computer , all with similar, overlapping specifications. One differentiator between PC and workstation was that the latter was much more likely to have a graphics accelerator with support for a graphics standard like PHIGS or X Window , while

225-455: A 32-byte line size, and are virtually indexed, physically tagged . Instructions were predecoded as they enter the instruction cache by appending four bits to each instruction. These four bits specify whether can be issued together and which execution unit they are executed by. This assisted superscalar instruction issue by moving some of the dependency and conflict checking out of the critical path. The integer unit executes most instructions with

300-542: A computer. With the bundled software, it can be used for video conferencing, video editing, or video email. None of the Indy models support a video output by default, and that would require the Indy Video GIO32 card. An optional CosmoCompress module offers real-time JPEG video compression and decompression and uses another GIO32 slot. The Indy has two drive bays for 1-inch tall 3.5" drives. The upper drive bay

375-460: A four-transistor SRAM cell, resulting in a transistor count of 3.6 million and a die that measured 8.7 mm by 9.7 mm (84.39 mm ). NEC and NKK fabricated the R5000 in a process with one level of polysilicon and three levels of aluminium interconnect. Without an extra level of polysilicon, both companies had to use a six-transistor SRAM cell, resulting in a transistor count of 5.0 million and

450-504: A hard drive, or diskless, and is intended for networked use. The model with 2 GB hard drive was launched at $ 7,500 . The base model was launched with 16 MB of RAM and can be expanded to 256 MB. Later in 1993, that duo was updated to have the base model with a 535 MB hard drive ( $ 5,995 in January 1994) and the high end with 24-bit color, 32 MB RAM, and 1 GB hard drive ( $ 16,495 in January 1994). In March 1994,

525-442: A larger die with an area of around 87 mm . Die sizes in the range of 80 to 90 mm were claimed by MTI. 0.8 million of the transistors in both versions were for logic, and the remainder contained in the caches. It was packaged in a 272-ball plastic ball grid array (BGA) or 223-pin ceramic pin grid array (PGA). It was not pin-compatible with any previous MIPS microprocessor. In the late 1990s, Quantum Effect Design acquired

600-515: A license to manufacture and sell MIPS microprocessors from MTI and became a microprocessor vendor, changing its name to Quantum Effect Devices to reflect its new business model. The company's first products were members of the RM52xx family, which initially consisted of two models, the RM5230 and RM5260. These were announced on 24 March 1997. The RM5230 was initially available at 100 and 133 MHz, and

675-411: A megapixel display (roughly 1000×1000 pixels), and one " MegaFLOPS " compute performance (at least one million floating-point operations per second). RFC 782 defines the workstation environment more generally as "hardware and software dedicated to serve a single user", and that it provisions additional shared resources. This is at least one order of magnitude beyond the capacity of the personal computer of

750-950: A much higher price. Workstations have typically driven advancements in CPU technology. All computers benefit from multi-processor and multicore designs (essentially, multiple processors on a die ). The multicore design was pioneered by IBM's POWER4 ; it and Intel Xeon have multiple CPUs, more on-die cache, and ECC memory. Some workstations are designed or certified for use with only one specific application such as AutoCAD , Avid Xpress Studio HD, or 3D Studio Max . The certification process increases workstation prices. Modern workstations are typically desktop computers with AMD or NVIDIA GPUs to do high-performance computing on software programs such as video editing , 3D modeling , computer-aided design , and rendering . By January 2009, all RISC -based workstation product lines had been discontinued: In early 2018, RISC workstations were reintroduced in

825-574: A one cycle latency and throughput except for multiply and divide. 32-bit multiplies have a five-cycle latency and a four-cycle throughput. 64-bit multiplies have an extra four cycles of latency and half the throughput. Divides have a 36-cycle latency and throughput for 32-bit integers, and for 64-bit integers, they are increased to 68 cycles. The floating-point unit (FPU) was a fast single-precision (32-bit) design, for reduced cost and to benefit SGI, whose mid-range 3D graphics workstations relied mostly on single-precision math for 3D graphics applications. It

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900-509: A personal workstation suitable for 2D CAD costing $ 5,000 (equivalent to $ 12,000 in 2023) to $ 25,000 (equivalent to $ 61,000 in 2023) was available from multiple vendors. Mid-range models capable of 3D graphics cost from $ 35,000 (equivalent to $ 86,000 in 2023) to $ 60,000 (equivalent to $ 147,000 in 2023), while high-end models overlapping with minicomputers cost from $ 80,000 (equivalent to $ 197,000 in 2023) to $ 100,000 (equivalent to $ 246,000 in 2023) or more. By then

975-661: A series of IBM POWER9 -based systems by Raptor Computing Systems. In October of 2024 System 76 introduces The Thelio Astra an Arm workstation aim for autonomous car industry. Most of the current workstation market uses x86-64 microprocessors. Operating systems include Windows , FreeBSD , Linux distributions , macOS , and Solaris . Some vendors also market commodity mono-socket systems as workstations. These are three types of workstations: A high-end desktop market segment includes workstations, with PC operating systems and components. Component product lines may be segmented, with premium components that are functionally similar to

1050-500: A serious case of techno-lust by the Indy." He said the Indy positioned SGI at the forefront of the birth of the major industry of desktop multimedia, as the best recent multimedia computer next to the Macintosh Quadra 840AV and Centris 660AV . Machine Design magazine called Indy "the only computer to come standard with a color digital video camera, IndyCam". Mechanical Engineering magazine said "the most unique feature of

1125-475: A similar role for technical computing. Sun's thin clients include the Sun Ray product line. However, traditional workstations and PCs continued to drop in price and complexity as remote management tools for IT staff became available, undercutting this market. A high-end workstation of the early 1980s with the three Ms, or a "3M computer" (coined by Raj Reddy and his colleagues at CMU), has one megabyte of RAM,

1200-402: A single person sitting at the console. It was introduced in 1959. One peculiar feature of the machine is that it lacks any arithmetic circuitry. To perform addition, it requires a memory-resident table of decimal addition rules. This reduced the cost of logic circuitry, enabling IBM to make it inexpensive. The machine is codenamed CADET and was initially rented for $ 1000 per month. In 1965,

1275-526: A socket for the Processor Module (PM). Indy was launched with a 100 MHz MIPS R4000 PC microprocessor upgrade option. The Indy, at the bottom of SGI's price list, was then upgraded with the MIPS R4400 and the low-cost, low-power-consumption Quantum Effect Devices (QED) R4600 . The R4600 has higher integer performance, but lesser floating-point capability. The R4600 appears outside

1350-525: A static approach, utilizing the hints encoded by the compiler in the branch-likely instructions first introduced in the MIPS II architecture to determine how likely a branch is taken. The R5000 had large L1 caches , a distinct characteristic of QED, whose designers favored simple designs with large caches. The R5000 had two L1 caches, one for instructions and the other for data. Both have a capacity of 32 KB. The caches are two-way set-associative , have

1425-423: A traditional operating system and perform computations locally, with storage on a remote server . These are intended to reduce the initial system purchase cost, and the total cost of ownership , by reducing the amount of administration required per user. This approach was first attempted as a replacement for PCs in office productivity applications, with the 3Station by 3Com . In the 1990s, X terminals filled

1500-684: A workstation in the modern sense), is the Alto developed at Xerox PARC in 1973. Other early workstations include the Terak 8510/a (1977), Three Rivers PERQ (1979), and the later Xerox Star (1981). In the early 1980s, with the advent of 32-bit microprocessors such as the Motorola 68000 , several new competitors appeared, including Apollo Computer and Sun Microsystems , with workstations based on 68000 and Unix . Meanwhile, DARPA 's VLSI Project created several spinoff graphics products, such as

1575-595: Is binary-compatible across the entire SGI family. 5.1 does not take full advantage of the hardware due to inadequate memory management. Later in 1993, SGI increased the base specification to 32 MB. IRIX 5.2 and later have much more efficient memory usage. The latest release of IRIX available for the Indy workstations is 6.5.22. Indy includes a CD of video games. Indy competed with Windows and Macintosh , including using their files and running their applications via software emulation. One commentator remarked that using Quorum's Latitude technology, "Indy blows Macs away using

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1650-415: Is externally accessible and may hold a SCSI floptical drive. All external and internal drives share a single Fast SCSI bus (unless a GIO32 SCSI card has been installed). External CD-ROM drives connect via SCSI connector at the rear side of the box. The typical drive supports boot, OS install, audio. A special ROM is required to boot from for certain device types. A small number of CD-ROM drives have

1725-473: Is intended to fit underneath a large CRT monitor. Designed for multimedia use, the Indy includes analog and digital I/O, 6-channel digital audio processing, SCSI , and inputs for composite and S-Video . It has ISDN and Ethernet ports. It is the first computer to include a video camera, called IndyCam. The base Indy model was launched in July 1993 at US$ 5,000 (equivalent to about $ 10,500 in 2023), without

1800-421: Is the first computer to come standard with a video camera, called IndyCam. Indy was repackaged as a server model called Challenge S. Indy was discontinued on June 30, 1997 and support ended on December 31, 2011. The Indy is one of the smaller form factors of the time (41 cm × 36 cm × 8 cm). The sturdy, electric-blue colored " pizza box " chassis is comparable to a contemporary small desktop PC, and

1875-429: Is the first computer to have a standard video camera, and the first SGI computer to have standard video inputs. Each Indy has an amateur quality composite , S-Video , and digital video input built into the motherboard, which collectively are known as "Vino" (video input, no output) video. The digital input is a SGI Digital Video Interface (proprietary D-sub connector) with a rectangular high density array of 60 pins, and

1950-520: Is used by the IndyCam. The connector incorporates two digital video ports, but only uses the first one for input on the Indy. The protocol is similar to the CCIR 601 Parallel Video interface. The maximum supported input resolution is 640×480 for NTSC or 768×576 for PAL . A fast machine is required to capture at either of these resolutions, though; an Indy with slower R4600PC CPU, for example, may require

2025-557: Is used to add 512K of L2 cache. R4600s processor modules, both with an L2 cache (SC) and without (PC), have been produced for the Indy. At the same clock rate, the SC version of the processor module is generally 20 to 40 percent faster than the PC version, due to the memory cache. The Indy is the first SGI machine to utilize the QED R5000 microprocessor, which offers significant advantages over

2100-634: The Cobalt Qube and Cobalt RaQ used a derivative model, the RM5230 and RM5231. The Qube 2700 used the RM5230 microprocessor, whereas the Qube 2 used the RM5231. The original RaQ systems were equipped with RM5230 or RM5231 CPUs but later models used AMD K6-2 chips and then eventually Intel Pentium III CPUs for the final models. The original roadmap called for 200 MHz operation in early 1996, 250 MHz in late 1996, succeeded in 1997 by R5000A. The R5000

2175-455: The IBM 1130 scientific computer became the successor to 1620. Both of these systems run Fortran and other languages. They are built into roughly desk-sized cabinets, with console typewriters. They have optional add-on disk drives, printers, and both paper-tape and punched-card I/O. Early workstations were generally dedicated minicomputers , a multiuser system reserved for one user. For example,

2250-618: The PDP-8 from Digital Equipment Corporation , is regarded as the first commercial minicomputer. Workstations have historically been more advanced than contemporary PCs, with more powerful CPU architectures, earlier networking, more advanced graphics, more memory, and multitasking with sophisticated operating systems like Unix. Because of their minicomputer heritage, from the start workstations have run professional and expensive software such as CAD and graphics design, as opposed to PCs' games and text editors. The Lisp machines developed at MIT in

2325-516: The Silicon Graphics 3130 . Target markets were differentiated, with Sun and Apollo considered to be network workstations and SGI as graphics workstations. RISC CPUs increased in the mid-1980s, typical of workstation vendors. Competition between RISC vendors lowered CPU prices to as little as $ 10 per MIPS, much less expensive than the Intel 80386 ; after large price cuts in 1987 and 1988,

SGI Indy - Misplaced Pages Continue

2400-477: The firmware needed to do audio over SCSI . All Indy models shipped with AUI / 10BASE-T Ethernet and ISDN as standard equipment. The Ethernet ports are half-duplex only. The 10BASE-T port takes precedence over the AUI port; if the system detects a carrier on both ports, it will use the 10BASE-T. Two different manufacturers produced 100BASE-TX Ethernet cards compatible with the Indy, both of which attached to

2475-453: The form factor is that of a desktop computer , which consists of a high-resolution display, a keyboard , and a mouse at a minimum, but also offers multiple displays, graphics tablets , and 3D mice for manipulating objects and navigating scenes. Workstations were the first segment of the computer market to present advanced accessories, and collaboration tools like videoconferencing . The increasing capabilities of mainstream PCs since

2550-575: The CPU to perform other rendering-related calculations. If the application is not transform-limited (limited by the speed of coordinate transformation), then the XZ option can provide significant rasterization performance advantages over the XL boards. These graphics take the form of two boards, vertically layered, and block both GIO option slots, making them less favorable because options such as 10/100 Ethernet and JPEG compression boards cannot be installed. The Indy

2625-468: The Indy at launch in July 1993, saying that the IndyCam and video input marked a new standard for workstations. Jonathan Chevreau of the National Post wrote several articles at Indy's launch, making a headline out of the standardization of a video camera on a personal computer, speculating this could mark the convergence of consumer electronics with the computer industry. On August 21, 1993, he said

2700-607: The Indy line briefly once, in the SGI Indigo² . A number of limits, such as the series of microprocessor issues, the relatively low-powered graphics boards, lower maximum RAM amount, and relative lack of internal expansion ability compared to the SGI Indigo , led to the Indy being pejoratively described by industry insiders as "An Indigo without the 'go'." As the R4600 chip itself has no L2 cache controller, an external controller

2775-503: The Indy series with two models: the Indy Modeler PC and SC systems starting at $ 15,800 with a 133  MHz R4600 CPU, 1 GB hard drive, 32 MB of RAM, and 20-inch monitor. Time Warner Cable and US West created an experimental interactive video-on-demand service via cable television, based on Indy. The optional floptical drive uses 21 MB disks and standard 3.5" magnetic floppy disks. Indy's motherboard has

2850-523: The Indy system is its integrated digital media capabilities", such as IndyCam, video input port, and applications for video conferencing and multimedia creation. Byte magazine said in September 1993 that Apple and SGI were trailblazers by setting audio and video as default features of the Macintosh and Indy desktop PCs, which "could change the way businesspeople communicate". In 1994, Byte called

2925-498: The Indy was "one of the most interesting new products in the personal computer industry" as SGI's first price breakthrough for individuals. He said Indy's video power and Indigo Magic Desktop GUI make it "much more than a personal computer", with a sophistication that "clone companies will be slow in imitating". He summarized, "Anyone interested in the booming new field of multimedia and the convergence of personal computers with consumer electronics and telecommunications would be smitten by

3000-530: The Mac's own software", also expressing similar sentiments about Windows support provided by SoftPC . AutoCAD Designer was priced at $ 1,500 (equivalent to $ 3,100 in 2023) to target the affordable CAD market, including Indy. The Challenge S is a variant of the Indy for low-end server usage. It has an identical case as the Indy except for the name badge, with a nearly identical motherboard, but without any graphics or sound hardware. Vestigial volume control buttons on

3075-637: The Quadra 700 was an intriguing option at a fraction of the cost" as resource-intensive software such as Infini-D brought "studio-quality 3D rendering and animations to the home desktop". The Quadra 700 can run A/UX 3.0, making it a Unix workstation. Another example is the Nvidia GeForce 256 consumer graphics card, which spawned the Quadro workstation card, which has the same GPU but different driver support and certifications for CAD applications and

SGI Indy - Misplaced Pages Continue

3150-513: The R4400 and R4600 it replaced. The performance of the 100 MHz R4000 in conjunction with 500 KB of secondary cache, this cache not being provided on the base model, was described as broadly comparable to Intel 's 66 MHz Pentium, at least in terms of published benchmark results, although that particular version of the Pentium was "still a few months off" at the time of early reviews of

3225-462: The R5000 are still in production today for embedded systems. Users of the R5000 in workstation and server computers were Silicon Graphics, Inc. (SGI) and Siemens-Nixdorf . SGI used the R5000 in their O2 and Indy low-end workstations. The R5000 was also used in embedded systems such as network routers and high-end printers. The R5000 found its way into the arcade gaming industry, R5000 powered mainboards were used by Atari and Midway. Initially

3300-563: The RM5231A and RM5261A, on 4 April 2001. These microprocessors were fabricated by TSMC in its 0.18 μm process and differ from the previous devices by featuring higher clock rates and lower power consumption. The RM5231A was available at clock rates of 250 to 350 MHz, and the RM5261A from 250 to 400 MHz. R5900 used in Sony's PlayStation 2 is a modified version of R5000 CPU dubbed

3375-481: The RM5260 at 133 and 150 MHz. On 29 September 1997, new 150 and 175 MHz RM5230s were introduced, as were 175 and 200 MHz RM5260s. Both the RM5230 and RM5260 are derivatives of the R5000 and differ in the size of their primary caches (16 KB each instead of 32 KB), the width of their system interfaces (the RM5230 has a 32-bit 67 MHz SysAD bus, and the RM5260 a 64-bit 75 MHz SysAD bus), and

3450-521: The RM5261 and RM5271 were available at 250 and 266 MHz. On 6 July 1999, a 300 MHz RM5271 was introduced, priced at US$ 140 in quantities of 10,000. The RM52x1 improved upon the previous family with larger 32 KB primary caches and a faster SysAD bus that supported clock rates up to 125 MHz. After QED was acquired by PMC-Sierra , the RM52xx and RM52x1 families were continued as PMC-Sierra products. PMC-Sierra introduced two RM52x1 derivatives,

3525-473: The SysAD bus with the external interface. The cache was built with custom synchronous SRAMs (SSRAMs). The microprocessor uses the SysAD bus that is also used by several other MIPS microprocessors. The bus is multiplexed (address and data share the same set of wires) and can operate at clock frequencies up to 100 MHz. The initial R5000 did not support multiprocessing , but the package reserved eight pins for

3600-496: The XZ subsystems's four Geometry Engines. As a result, all 3D is done in software. The situation is, however, reversed when the calculations are done for full-screen rendering and involve z-buffer operations (which XL does not possess). XZ graphics are rarely paired with the R5000 for this reason. This graphics option is a conversion of the Indigo² 's XZ ( Elan ) graphics into Indy. They offer very good non-textured 3D performance for

3675-535: The addition of multiply-add and three-operand multiply instructions for digital signal processing applications. These microprocessors were fabricated by the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) in its 0.35 μm process with three levels of interconnect. They were packaged by Amkor Technology in its Power-Quad 4 packages, the RM5230 in a 128-pin version, and the RM5260 in a 208-pin version. The RM52xx family

3750-449: The companies that make the products tend to have comprehensive repair/replacement plans. As the distinction between workstation and PC fades, however, workstation manufacturers have increasingly employed "off-the-shelf" PC components and graphics solutions rather than proprietary hardware or software. Some "low-cost" workstations are still expensive by PC standards but offer binary compatibility with higher-end workstations and servers made by

3825-489: The consumer models but with higher robustness or performance. A workstation-class PC may have some of the following features: R5000 The R5000 is a 64-bit, bi-endian , superscalar , in-order execution 2-issue design microprocessor that implements the MIPS IV instruction set architecture (ISA) developed by Quantum Effect Design (QED) in 1996. The project was funded by MIPS Technologies, Inc (MTI), also

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3900-531: The early 1970s pioneered some workstation principles, as high-performance, networked, single-user systems intended for heavily interactive use. Lisp Machines were commercialized beginning 1980 by companies like Symbolics , Lisp Machines , Texas Instruments (the TI Explorer ), and Xerox (the Interlisp-D workstations). The first computer designed for a single user, with high-resolution graphics (and so

3975-449: The early 2000s, this difference largely disappeared, since workstations use highly commoditized hardware dominated by large PC vendors, such as Dell , Hewlett-Packard , and Fujitsu , selling x86-64 systems running Windows or Linux . Workstations are older than the first personal computer (PC). The first computer that might qualify as a workstation is the IBM 1620 , a small scientific computer designed to be used interactively by

4050-421: The former usually depended on software rendering or proprietary accelerators. The computer animation industry's needs typically caused improvements in graphical technology, with CAD using the same improvements later. BYTE predicted in 1989 "Soon, the only way we'll be able to tell the difference between traditional workstations and PCs will be by the operating system they run", with the former running Unix and

4125-474: The front are not connected to anything. The Challenge S comes with an ISDN port and a 10 Mbit/s AUI Ethernet port. All local administration is performed by serial console to one of the two DIN-8 serial ports, which can be used to reach the PROM prompt and uses the same pin-out found on Macintosh serial ports. At launch, SGI said it expected to sell $ 1 billion worth of Indy units. Electronic Design reviewed

4200-481: The future addition of this feature. QED was a fabless company and did not fabricate their own designs. The R5000 was fabricated by IDT, NEC and NKK. All three companies fabricated the R5000 in a 0.35 μm complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS) process, but with different process features. IDT fabricated the R5000 in a process with two levels of polysilicon and three levels of aluminium interconnect . The two levels of polysilicon enabled IDT to use

4275-467: The input resolution to be reduced before storage or processing. However, the Vino hardware is capable of DMAing video fields directly into the framebuffer with minimal CPU overhead. The IndyCam is a small fixed-focus digital video camera, co-developed by SGI and Teleview Research. It can be mounted above the monitor, or hand-held. It is one of the first desktop video cameras and the first to come standard on

4350-468: The late 1990s have reduced distinction between the PCs and workstations. Typical 1980s workstations have expensive proprietary hardware and operating systems to categorically distinguish from standardized PCs. From the 1990s and 2000s, IBM 's RS/6000 and IntelliStation have RISC -based POWER CPUs running AIX , and its IBM PC Series and Aptiva corporate and consumer PCs have Intel x86 CPUs. However, by

4425-598: The latter running OS/2 , classic Mac OS , and/or Unix. Many workstations by then had some method to run increasingly popular and powerful PC software such as Lotus 1-2-3 or Microsoft Word . The magazine demonstrated that year that an individual could build a workstation with commodity components with specifications comparable to commercially available low-end workstations. Workstations often featured SCSI or Fibre Channel disk storage systems, high-end 3D accelerators , single or multiple 64-bit processors , large amounts of RAM , and well-designed cooling. Additionally,

4500-572: The licensor. MTI then licensed the design to Integrated Device Technology (IDT), NEC , NKK , and Toshiba . The R5000 succeeded the QED R4600 and R4700 as their flagship high-end embedded microprocessor. IDT marketed its version of the R5000 as the 79RV5000, NEC as VR5000, NKK as the NR5000, and Toshiba as the TX5000. The R5000 was sold to PMC-Sierra when the company acquired QED. Derivatives of

4575-484: The machine. Indy was reportedly seen by SGI as a rival to high-end Macs in the graphics rendering market, with claims of "40 times the performance of a machine with a 68030". Three graphics subsystems have been produced for the Indy: 8-bit XL, 24-bit XL, and 24-bit XZ. Each support a maximum resolution of 1280 × 1024 pixels at a refresh rate of 76 Hz, and have a 13W3 monitor connection. Graphics options are connected to

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4650-710: The new Indy "low on price but high on graphics performance", noting its interoperability with Windows and Macintosh. Workstation Workstations formerly offered higher performance than mainstream personal computers , especially in CPU , graphics , memory, and multitasking. Workstations are optimized for the visualization and manipulation of different types of complex data such as 3D mechanical design, engineering simulations like computational fluid dynamics , animation , video editing , image editing , medical imaging , image rendering, computational science , generating mathematical plots , and software development . Typically,

4725-476: The same as the consumer market, and the price differential narrowed. For example, most Macintosh Quadra computers were originally intended for scientific or design work, all with the Motorola 68040 CPU, backward compatible with 68000 Macintoshes. The consumer Macintosh IIcx and Macintosh IIci models can be upgraded to the Quadra 700 . "In an era when many professionals preferred Silicon Graphics workstations,

4800-422: The same vendor. This allows software development to take place on low-cost (relative to the server) desktop machines. Workstations diversified to the lowest possible price point as opposed to performance, called the thin client or network computer . Dependent upon a network and server, this reduces the machine to having no hard drive, and only the CPU, keyboard, mouse, and screen. Some diskless nodes still run

4875-589: The series was refreshed with a new 150 MHz R4400 CPU, and the low end model has 8-bit color, 32 MB RAM, 535 MB hard drive, and 16-inch 1280 x 1024 monitor for $ 15,495 (equivalent to $ 31,900 in 2023) and the high end has 24-bit color, 64 MB RAM, 1 GB hard drive for $ 22,995 (equivalent to $ 47,300 in 2023). Sales of low-cost high-performance workstations were projected to triple from 1994 to 1999, and competition for that market increased between Sun and SGI. In February 1995, SGI targeted "high-performance iron" at junior engineers by refreshing

4950-671: The system using a GIO32bis bus. Also known as "Newport" graphics and based on the REX3 chipset, these were designed for general 2D X11 applications; no hardware 3D acceleration is included. This is the first accelerator to demonstrate object-based antialiasing and exact sub-pixel lines using Bresenham's line algorithm . Using a circuit board identical to that of the 8-bit XL, the 24-bit XL includes three times as much framebuffer memory to accommodate 24-bit color. In an Indy with an R5000 CPU, these graphics options are called XGE, because an R5000 CPU can perform 3D geometry calculations faster than

5025-788: The system using the GIO32 bus. Set Engineering produced one such fast Ethernet card, based on the Texas Instruments ThunderLAN chipset, under contract with SGI. Phobos also produced models of fast Ethernet cards for the Indy (the G100 and G130). The ISDN port provided on the Indy has no NT1 . An external NT1 is required to use the ISDN port in North America. Indy was launched with the IRIX 5.1 operating system , by which it

5100-471: The time, sacrificing a bit of 2D performance in return. The XZ graphics option has not been popular in Indy models that used the R5000 microprocessor. This is mostly due to the R5000's MIPS IV architecture, which enhanced MIPS' floating-point arithmetic capabilities, allowing coordinate transformations to be performed faster than the XZ graphics board. However, using XZ to perform coordinate transforms does free

5175-486: The time. The original 1981 IBM Personal Computer has 16 KB memory, a text-only display, and floating-point performance around 1  kFLOPS ( 30 kFLOPS with the optional 8087 math coprocessor. Other features beyond the typical personal computer include networking, graphics acceleration, and high-speed internal and peripheral data buses. Another goal was to bring the price below one " megapenny ", that is, less than $ 10,000 (equivalent to $ 28,000 in 2023), which

5250-448: Was achieved in the late 1980s. Throughout the early to mid-1990s, many workstations cost from $ 15,000 to $ 100,000 (equivalent to $ 200,000 in 2023) or more. The more widespread adoption of these technologies into mainstream PCs was a direct factor in the decline of the workstation as a separate market segment: Since the late 1990s, the workstation and consumer markets have further merged. Many low-end workstation components are now

5325-539: Was fully pipelined, which made it significantly better than that of the R4700 . The R5000 implements the multiply-add instruction of the MIPS IV ISA. Single-precision adds, multiplies and multiply-adds have a four-cycle latency and a one cycle throughput. Single-precision divides have a 21-cycle latency and a 19-cycle throughput, while square roots have a 26-cycle latency and a 38-cycle throughput. Division and square-root

5400-828: Was introduced in January 1996 and failed to achieve 200 MHz, topping out at 180 MHz. When positioned as a low-end workstation microprocessor, the competition included the IBM and Motorola PowerPC 604 , the HP PA-7300LC and the Intel Pentium Pro . The R5000 is a two-way superscalar design that executes instructions in-order . The R5000 could simultaneously issue an integer and a floating-point instruction. It had one simple pipeline for integer instructions and another for floating-point to save transistors and die area to reduce cost. The R5000 did not perform dynamic branch prediction for cost reasons. Instead it uses

5475-621: Was later joined by the RM5270, which was announced at the Embedded Systems Conference on 29 September 1997. Intended for high-end embedded applications, the RM5270 was available at 150 and 200 MHz. Improvements were the addition of an on-chip secondary cache controller that supported up to 2 MB of cache. The SysAD bus is 64 bits wide and can operate at 100 MHz. It was packaged in a 304-pin Super-BGA (SBGA) that

5550-551: Was not pipelined. Instructions that operate on double precision numbers have a significantly higher latency and lower throughput except for add, which has identical latency and throughput with single-precision add. Multiply and multiply-add have a five-cycle latency and a two-cycle throughput. Divide has a 36-cycle latency and a 34-cycle throughput. Square root has a 68-cycle latency and a 66-cycle throughput. The R5000 had an integrated L2 cache controller that supported capacities of 512 KB, 1 MB and 2 MB. The L2 cache shares

5625-635: Was pin-compatible with the RM7000 and was offered as a migration path to the RM7000. On 20 July 1998, the RM52x1 family was announced. The family consisted of the RM5231, RM5261, and RM5271. These microprocessors were derivatives of the corresponding devices from the RM52x0 family fabricated in a 0.25 μm process with four levels of metal. The RM5231 was initially available at 150, 200, and 250 MHz; whereas

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