Silicon Graphics Inc is set to announce the availability of its latest MIPS R12000 processors for the Origin and Onyx lines of ccNUMA servers today. Delays in volume shipments of the R12000s have affected the company’s server business over the last few quarters as customers held off buying the older R10000 systems. The R12000 boosts the clock speed of the MIPS processor up to 300MHz from the R10000’s 250MHz, and doubles the size of the secondary cache. The workstation division got hold of the first R12000s back in February (CI No 3,605).
SGI will upgrade its Origin 200, 2000 and Onyx 2 lines of multiprocessors in what it says are the first of a series of upgrades to both its servers and workstation lines. There is now expected to be a 400MHz R12000 by the end of the year. Beyond that, in an extended roadmap disclosed recently (CI No 3,647), there will be a 500MHz R14000, a 600MHz R16000 and an 800MHz R18000 (sometimes referred to as an R16000 shrink). Meanwhile, the company is also extending the number of processors its ccNUMA servers support, with 256 processor versions expected to be announced shortly, and 512 way versions under development.
Ben Passarelli, platform marketing manager for Origin servers, said there had been lots of built-up anticipation for the R12000 and while some early systems were shipped last quarter, lots were held back by availability restraints. The chips are now shipping in volume, he said. Performance gains are said to be around 40%, based on industry benchmarks.
The Origin 200 line gets a 270MHz R12000 with 4Mb secondary cache, while the Origin 2000 and Onyx systems use the 300MHz version with 8Mb secondary cache. Systems can also include a mixture of R10000 and R12000s. Entry-level prices for the Origins are $17,660 for the 200 and $75,800 for the 2000. Onyx systems start at $87,000.
Meanwhile, SGI continues to work on the development of a new range of ccNUMA machines using Intel Corp’s Merced and McKinley 64-bit processors (CI No 3,517). Passarelli said that he believes SGI is the only company that will have chipsets available to support very large numbers of processors next year, with most of its competitors waiting for McKinley. He said SGI would not offer customers binary translation software, as HP is doing, because of the performance penalties. Instead SGI plans to offer compatible programming libraries to help with recompilation. But, he said, the MIPS-based systems would continue to be extended with next generation processors, software and tools until people are ready to make the transition.
