sgi workstations
 

Hey gang,

If one were to have ideas about buying an old sgi model off of ebay, what would be the minimum model/specs one would suggest go for to make it actually worth it?...and not something I could get in a new PC.

Thanks.

Ross.

What will you be using it for? Just to tinker with in IRIX?

I was thinking about picking one up a long time ago, to play with IRIX, maybe setup a personal webserver, etc. I think a decent one is an Octane, with an R10k processor, above 250-300. Depending on the graphics configurations, and dual procs., it could cost more.

I would ideally get (if this were me and I were shopping on ebay):

300MHZ R12K IP30 CPU
1GB RAM
MXE Graphics (top of the line graphics, which are rare on ebay)

Other than that, the OS is usually IRIX 6.5 or similar. Actually, I just checked and there are at least two MXE machines on ebay right now!

This one I'd look at, and it's around 2300. This one as well looks nice, for 1900. Once you get the pieces, you could theoretically get an I/O board, a nice RAID array, and build yourself a flint or flame. Course you'd still have to buy a license and software, which is a bit more. :)

Happy bidding. :) Make sure you're not bidding on the same one I am! Hehe.

Oh, forgot to add, you could also go for an SGI O2 if you don't like the Octanes, or they're too pricey. The ebay listings for O2s are quite plentiful. If you need any heads up or help, let me know. If you're really adventurous, an Origin 2000 Rack is great dinner conversation. :)

But this is much more impressive. And it's only $500 dollars! Wow! You could use it as a coffee table AND a supercomputer!

Thanks a lot for the heads up Aruna, its made my goal somewhat more clearer:D

In fact, I searched through pretty much everything on there, even coming across those you listed, but I really had no idea how to compare them all of off eachother. Being more familiar with the setups would have helped.

Having never touched one, how does a system like this:

300MHZ R12K IP30 CPU
1GB RAM
MXE Graphics

...compare with modern high performance pc's?

Thanks for all your help:niceone:

(don't worry, I'll try not to bid on yours:rolleyes: )

Ross

Personal Video Card (EVO)?

Well, since I was using SGIs for different purposes than my PC, I can't really point out a head to head comparison between the two in terms of speed. You can do a search on google that would probably be more fruitful. I can say that a 300MHz R12k CPU with 2MB of cache is faster than an equivalent 300MHz P4 Intel CPU. The CPU of the SGI is RISC based, while that of a PC is CISC based, but the boundaries between the two have been narrowing continuously.

CISC vs RISC

Also at ars technica, more RISC and CISC differences.

Most of the SGIs I've worked with are real time computing machines. They can churn out numbers quickly, which makes them ideal visualization boxes. Coupled with the way the architecture of the mainboard is laid out, there are some very quick CPU to RAM, RAM to HD, RAM to I/O calculations. Real time HD editing is a feasability with an out of the box Octane with an array, while on the PC side, it'll take a bit more oomph to get it right. SGIs are built for visualization. Browse through SGI's website if you haven't already. It gives some features and ideas about what you can do on an SGI, that you can't do quickly on a PC.

Hopefully I answered that question, of maybe confused you even more! Let me know.

Octane Personal Video -- The Octane Personal Video board provides uncompressed composite, S-Video, and digital video (Silicon Graphics® O2® Camera connector) input and output for NTSC and PAL standards with real-time graphics-to-video output. Media tools and the O2 Camera with a built-in microphone are bundled with the product. Applications for Octane Personal Video include real-time image playback to video, video conferencing, video capture, and Web authoring.

Aright, so here is a question to display my naivety...

If SGI machines are Dual 64-bit RISC processors running on average at 600mhz (like the tezro) and apple computers are also Dual 64-bit RISC processors, but running at dual 2Ghz, then how do SGI's pull there weight in computing power? Is it the graphics boards and other hardware they come with? I wouldn’t say that I am narrow minded...I understand that SGI's are used because they must out perform other PC or Mac based solutions, but exactly how do they out perform if I can't compare vital stats?

Note: I have always hated comparing computers with Mhz/Ghz, I was once told that these measures are more like RPMS in a car and not horsepower. No one would buy a sports car based on RPMS...Anyone care to comment on this.


Thanks in advance,

Russell

It's the product as a whole. If you isolate individual parts of PCs and SGIs, you'll find that they do have things in common. However, it's when you put those pieces together as a whole do SGIs really shine.

SGIs are built from the ground up for high performance number crunching and visualization. This can range from editing/vfx, to CAD/CAE, FAE simulations and even to weather and 'whole earth' modelling. All this can be had with one box (an Octane, Onyx, Origin, or any member of the SGI family).

To get this same type of performance on a PC, once would have to cater specificially to a certain type of application, and even then, you'd still be limited by the restrictions of the hardware. SGI, just like Apple, is a hardware solution.

Here's an example. Since we're on a visual effects forum, I'll stick with compositing. If I wanted to composite HD footage, what would I use? I could use a PC, SGI, or Apple box. Let's narrow it down. I want maximum resolution. All these boxes do that. I want speed, and I have deadlines that are same day. Ok, all these boxes can do that do. I want realtime interactivity and 99% uptime. Hmm. narrowing the field.. I think an SGI would fit the bill.

It's got a wide bus architecture, unlike a typical PC or Apple bus.

Apple, their top of the line G5.
The Power Mac G5 comes with three PCI-X slots, giving you the benefit of the newest advance in PCI technology. The PCI-X protocol supports high-performance PCI devices, increasing speeds from 33MHz to 133MHz and throughput from 266 Mbps to 2GBps.

PC, I'll go with an HP Itanium workstation for instance.
3 full-length 64-bit/133 MHz PCI-X

SGI, I'll go with an Octane2, since it's their current workstation.
Octane2 products also support the Peripheral Component interconnect (PCI) expansion bus at 266MB per second, giving you access to a wide range of network and I/O adapters. This is in addition to SGIs patented crossbar architecture which ties CPU/RAM/IO and HD together.

Graphics? What do we have available..

For both PC and MACs you can use AGP 8x compatible video cards.
I'll settle on something highend, like a NVIDIA Quadro4 980 XGL.

For an SGI, it is ingrained in the Octane2. Called V12: 128MB graphics memory, including up to 104MB texture memory.

Hard drives? All three systems can take the same HD.. U320 disks in an array.

Hmm. What else is there... Not sure.. Here are the pages that I used for this little clarification..

HP Workstation zx6000
Power Mac G5
SGI Octane2

Again, it's the product as a whole that counts, and the usability over time. You can buy a nice Octane on ebay, and it will keep up with PCs of today depending on the application you throw on it. Not only that, those Octanes are at least 2 years old. Try running a PC from two years ago and comparing it again now!

I think SGIs biggest selling point for their workstations is their unified architecture. Taken from SGI's website, this is an explanation:

Instead of competing for a shared bus, an ideal computer would allow every element of the computer to directly communicate with every other element using a private line that runs only between those two elements. This would allow the data transfer rate to be dramatically increased. It would also make the data transfer extremely predictable, since the connection between processing elements is not shared. This predictability would allow a stream of data, such as video playing off a disk, to avoid the risk of being interrupted by another random process such as the arrival of an e-mail. The challenge then becomes how to take the individual one-to-one links between components and turn them into a complete system. The answer to this problem is the crossbar switch. A crossbar switch uses advanced packet switching technology to route messages directly from one processing element of the computer, say the CPU, to another element such as the graphics system. A true non-blocking crossbar allows multiple streams of data to flow independently from one point to another; they will not interfere with or block each other. The OCTANE workstation from Silicon Graphics incorporates this kind of crossbar switch in its system architecture. The heart of the OCTANE workstation is built around an eight-port non-blocking crossbar.

The OCTANE workstation makes use of dedicated hardware processing elements to optimize the performance of key computing tasks such as graphics processing or video compression.

www.sgi.com/products/remarketed/octane/ent_wp.pdf

I hope that explains a bit, and hopefully doesn't faze you! If you've read this far.. Here.. Here's a :thumbsup: .

Thanks for the info, Aruna - an interesting read there - I always wondered what it actually was that made SGI machines so much faster at doing this kind of thing...

Aruna, thanks for all the info you have given. Its well appreciated.:thumbsup:

What model are you hoping to bid on?:D

Ross

how about this one?

My recommendation. Whenever you buy an SGI off of ebay, probably not all too often, make sure you ask for an hinv screenshot. Basically it stands for hardware inventory, and will list all the attached devices in the machine, and let you know exactly what is in there when you buy. I would always get an OS installed (IRIX). It's too much of a pain if you don't have one installed to start off with, since you'd have to buy it.

I would go for something like this.

SGI Octane MXE
R12000/400MHz w/ 2 MBytes Cache
1024 MBytes RAM
36.4 GBytes Disk

Here's the ebay link. Keep in mind that the Octane is no longer manufactured. SGI has their Octane2 if you want to buy new. I'm not in the market for an SGI, but if I were to get one, it'd be that one or similar. I'd go for a dual proc SGI instead of one proc. You can always upgrade to faster CPUs as well! I think SGI has an R14000 out now at 500MHz. I haven't used that yet.

dgoodbourn: that's not a shabby machine either.. It is only 225 (250, whatever) MHz, and it's an R10k IP30 (model and type), so that's not so shabby.

I found this workstation on ebay and it says that Win2k is installed. Does that mean you could install a flavor of Linux and would you still get the power of an SGI architecture....or should you stick with Octanes or better with Irix?

Aruna : Thanks for all the great information. I got through your post and then poured through SGI's website for everything I could read...also I checked out discreet's Inferno website and it indicated you could get a workstation with 4 to 8 procs! That must mean Inferno is running on SGI's top of the line visual workstation, the Onyx4. Is that correct? Wow... seems like an entire server system/render farm for a single seat of Inferno. Know wonder it is realtime!

Russell

Unfortunately, the SGI 320 and SGI 540 are both SGIs attempt to gain some foothold into the PC world. They are Win2K machines. You could possibly run linux on them. I haven't tried. If I had to choose between an SGI 320/540 and a homebuilt/storebought PC right now, I'd go with the PC. Of course, at that price, $100 bucks is a deal for a backup machine. :)

Yes, that is correct. inferno can run on Onyx3 and Onyx4. The cool thing about the new Onyx systems is that they can have separate video hardware, so basically you can run a couple infernos on one Onyx system! It's modular based, and so you can have two separate artists working on one big box, each with their own bandwidth and CPUs. Pretty neat.

Sorry for this, but what's the difference between an IP30 and an IP32 system, as I've seen an IP32 system for sale?

d.

IP30 Octane, Octane 2
IP32 O2, O2+

From SGIstuff. Doesn't seem to be updated though, since I did work on an Octane that had IP27 processors.. It could be a stepping cycle for the CPUs.

Hi.
For you guys in the look of SGI hardware.
A friend of mine got a really good price here on a Octane MXE:
http://www.xsnet.com

my 2 cents

Esteban

Hum...$17k for a referbished Dual 600 Octane2, is that good pricing on SGI hardware?

That's not so bad.. But does it include software? :) The software makes or breaks something like an Octane2. It could just be a 17 thousand dollar paperweight.