Silicon Graphics Inc has launched its most powerful system yet, a high-end multi-processor based on the MIPS Computer Systems Inc R3000 RISC CPU and R3010 floating point unit, plus a new mid-range system, a low-end server, and upgrades to its Personal Iris ranges. The top-end Iris Power 4D/280 server uses eight processors running at 25MHz, and delivers 160 MIPS and 28 MFLOPS for a base price of $172,000, claims the Mountain View, California-based company. It will be available in September. The mid-range 4D/210 has a single CPU and floating point unit for a computational performance of 20 MIPS and 3.3 MFLOPS, but also includes the Silicon Graphics GTX graphics subsystem, claimed to generate up to 100,000 independent polygons per second. Prices begin at $95,000 for the workstation, $54,000 for the server, now. The 4D/25S is a 16 MIPS, 1.6 M-FLOPS low-end server using the 20MHz set, at $13,000 with 8Mb CPU, 170Mb SCSI disk, the Irix Unix and Ethernet interface. There are upgrades for the Personal Iris line to the 20MHz R3000 set, with cache doubled to 64Kb, giving 60% more performance for an extra $5,000. It will now offer R2000 and R3000-based Personal Irises, cutting the low-end models by an average 31% for a new entry price of $13,500, 25% off. Turbo options up graphics performance threefold; it is now bundling the Wavefront Personal Visualiser with all Iris 4Ds, and has a new VoxelLab volume rendering product, developed with Fairfield, Iowa-based Vital Images Inc.
