Mountain View-based Silicon Graphics Inc last week upped the ante in the world of Unix graphics processing, putting the floating-point intensive R8000 TFP processor on the desktop in the form of the 75MHz Power Indigo2 (CI No 2,519). It is offered with Silicon Graphics’s XZ at $46,000, or Extreme, $57,500, graphics options with 64Mb RAM, 2Gb disk and 64-bit Irix 6.0 Unix performing at up to 256 MFLOPS, 270 SPECfp92 and 108 SPECin92, from this quarter. The R8000 is used in Silicon Graphics’s Power Challenge and Power Onyx graphics supercomputers. The company also replaced the processors in its existing Indigo2 systems, raising them to 200MHz R4400 and 133MHz R4600 configurations. The R4400/200 does 119 SPECint92 and 131 SPECfp92, and comes with 32Mb RAM, 1Gb disk and the 32-bit Irix 5.2. It starts from $24,500 with XL graphics, $28,500 with XZ, and $40,000 with Extreme. The R4600/133 goes to 109 SPECint92 and 72 SPECfp92, and with the same configuration as the R4400/200, it costs from $21,500 with XL graphics, $26,000, XZ, and $35,000, Extreme. Upgrades to the 200MHz R4400 microprocessor are now available for current Indigo2 system users. The company also added a 200MHz option to the R4400 version of its Onyx graphics supercomputer which supports up to 24 processors and up to 4Mb second level cache per processor, replacing the 150MHz model. It is from $104,000 for a dual-processor Onyx Extreme configuration and $763,000 for a 24-way Onyx Reality Engine2 system. There are also 200MHz versions of the R4400-based Challenge L and XL systems which go from two-to-12 and two-to-36 processor configurations respectively. Challenge L is from $89,000, XL is from $139,000. The R10000, codenamed the T5 and being developed by MIPS Technologies, the Silicon Graphics subsidiary, is announced this weeks. It is expected to be only design complete at present and unlikely to appear until next year. Silicon Graphics expect it to be a general purpose part, and it is seen as a logical extension of the R4400.
