New IBM Graphics Workstations

[Peter S. Shenkin]

In article <1990Jul30.210557.6255 at portia.Stanford.EDU> dhinds at portia.Stanford.EDU (David Hinds) writes:
>In article <11111 at odin.corp.sgi.com> ciemo at bananaPC.wpd.sgi.com (Dave Ciemiewicz) writes:
>>In article <1990Jul29.165033.22289 at portia.Stanford.EDU>,
>>dhinds at portia.Stanford.EDU (David Hinds) writes:
>>>     The IBM RS6000's have several levels of graphics support.  The 8-bit
>>> color 3D graphics level is quoted as doing 90K 3D vectors/sec, and 10K 3D
>>> polygons/sec.  The 24-bit color 3D graphics system is quoted as doing
>>> 990K 3D vectors/sec and 120K 3D polygons/sec.
>>
>>Has it been released yet or is it still vaporware?  Something else to
>>consider is that IBM's high-end graphics board is an IBM proprietary
>>and does not run the GL.
>
>    Is this right?  I thought that all the 3D graphics options for the IBM's
>were SGI technology.  An IBM rep told me they would support GL.  I don't
>know if it has been shipped yet.

It's definitely true that IBM's high-end, 990K-vector/sec graphics board set is
IBM-proprietary.  They claim that it can do certain things that the GL library
does not support, namely the entire PHIGS model.  (I don't even know exactly 
what this means, so don't flame me if this seems not to make sense.  I'm
just repeating what I was told by an IBM rep!)  But more recently I've seen
literature that seems to imply that IBM has a software library of GL calls
which have been ported to these boards as well.  The SGI rep told me that
the IBM low-end graphics board (90k 3D vectors/sec) is the basic 4D/20 set
which SGI has licensed to IBM, and that this is the only hardware that SGI
has licensed to IBM.

As computational engines, the IBM machines seem superb, especially the
Model 540, which is designed as a number-cruncher, with very fast clock and
memory, and is not available with fancy graphics.  I have been told second-hand
that people are getting Cray-1 speeds for vectorizable floating-point code out
of this workstation.  The graphics models also seem very fast, and all are
priced very competitively.  It seems to me that there aren't enough of these 
machines out there yet to know how they really stack up, though;  until then,
you gotta decide if you want to take a risk with RISC-6000.  And SGI's
strong software support base, as much as anything else, has made me decide
to go with SGI for my upcoming purchase.

	-P.
************************f*u*cn*rd*ths*u*cn*gt*a*gd*jb**************************
Peter S. Shenkin, Department of Chemistry, Barnard College, New York, NY  10027
(212)854-1418  shenkin at cunixc.cc.columbia.edu(Internet)  shenkin at cunixc(Bitnet)
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