SGI Unveils Prism Deskside

By DE Editors

The Silicon Graphics Prism deskside from Silicon Graphics(SGI; Mountain View, CA) is a high-bandwidth, memory-rich system thatenables engineers and scientists to build a fully interactive Linuxvisualization environment without cluster technology, limited memory,sluggish I/O. With a starting price under $8,500, the Silicon GraphicsPrism packs up to 24GB of memory and two full bandwidth graphicspipeline in a deskside case.

The new Prism deskside offers roll-your-own flexibility forcompute-and data-intensive environments, such as CAE, oil and gasresearch, and scientific research. For example, the Prism desksideallows scientific researchers to interactively study large data sets,such as molecules and cosmology models, all at once, rather than insegmented data sets. Oil and gas researchers could view 20GB of data ina single session.

And in CAE environments the new system can enable engineers to view andanalyze more time steps in a fully interactive workspace. For moregranular analysis, the Prism deskside can be equipped with two graphicspipelines, giving it the ability to support dual projection and stereoviewing.

Leveraging single or dual Intel Itanium 2 processors, the Prismdeskside allows complex calculations to be handled locally, thus easingthe burden placed on servers. System features include up to two64-bit Intel Itanium 2 processors running at 1.3 GHz or 1.6 GHz, 3MB L3cache, and from to 2GB to 24GB DDR I SRAM. Graphics options include upto a pair of ATIFireGL T2 graphics accelerators with128MB memory, one DVI-I port, andone analog port. The system can also be outfitted with up to two ATIFireGL X3 graphics with 256MB memory and two DVI-I ports.

Internal storage options include up to two 80GB or 160GB 7200RPM SATAdrives and a DVD-ROM. Three internal SATA channels, four RS-232/RS-422serial ports, one 10/100/1000 BaseT Ethernet port, five USB-A 2.0ports, and six 133 MHz, 64-bit 3.3V slots (provide room for expansion). PCI expansion options include single and dual-port 2GB Fibre Channel,dual-port LVD Ultra SCSI adapter, single-port HVD Differential UltraSCSI adapter, dual-port serial card, four-port USB card, 10 GB Ethernetcard, and dual-port gigabit Ethernet card.

The Silicon Graphics Prism is said to run IRIX applications withsignificant performance improvements over prior systems and, throughQuickTransit software, IRIX applications can run concurrently withLinux applications. (QuickTransit is a hardware virtualizationtechnology from Transitive Corp. The Silicon Graphics Prism system uses QuickTransit to provide access to more than 140 key IRIX utilities.)

The new Silicon Graphics Prism deskside system is available today starting at under $8,500. For more information, click here.