SGI O2

The Silicon Graphics O2 (codename "Moosehead") is as an entry level workstation the successor to the Indy line of desktop workstations. It doesn't have the various graphics options that other Silicon Graphics machines have but it comes with built in graphics and support for more advanced digital media solutions (audio and video). The Silicon Graphics O2+ extends and updates the original O2 series from 1996, but offers no change in the underlying architecture.



History

1996, October: Introduction of O2 family
1998, February: Dual display solution announced
1998, May: 250 MHz R10000 processor introduced for O2 series
1998, July: 225 MHz R10000 processor replaces 175/195 systems
1999, April: 270 and 300 MHz R10000 processors announced. Standard system configurations enhanced.
1999, July: Availability of QED RM5200 processor running at 300 MHz announced
2000, July: New processor: 400 Mhz R12000A with 2MB secondary cache
2001, August: O2+ announced at SIGGRAPH 2001 in Los Angeles, California
2002, May: End of Production (EOP) announced for O2 and O2+
2002, October: O2 and O2+ have disappeared from the SGI website

Irix

SGI Irix

Irix History by Ryan Thoryk

IRIX is a computer operating system developed by Silicon Graphics, Inc. (SGI) to run natively on their 32- and 64-bit MIPS architecture workstations and servers. Based on UNIX System V with BSD extensions.

The current major version of IRIX is IRIX 6.5 which was released in May 1998. New minor versions are released every quarter. Through version 6.5.22, there were two branches of each release: a maintenance release that included only fixes to the original IRIX 6.5 code, and a feature release that included improvements and enhancements. An overlay upgrade from 6.5.x to the 6.5.22 maintenance release is available for free download, while version 6.5.23 and higher require an active Silicon Graphics support contract, despite only running on Silicon Graphics hardware.



The IRIX name was first used around the time of release 3.0 of the operating system for SGI's IRIS 4D series of workstations and servers, in 1988. Previous releases were identified only by the release number prefixed by "4D1-", eg. "4D1-2.2". The 4D1- prefix continued to be used in official documentation to prefix IRIX release numbers.



IRIX 3.x was based on UNIX System V Release 3 with 4.3BSD enhancements, and incorporated the 4Sight windowing system, based on NeWS and IRIS GL. SGI's own Extent File System (EFS) replaced the System V filesystem.

IRIX 4.0, released in 1991, replaced 4Sight with the X Window System (X11R4), the 4Dwm window manager providing a similar look and feel to 4Sight.



IRIX 5.0, released in 1993, incorporated certain features of UNIX System V Release 4, including ELF-format executables. IRIX 5.3 introduced the XFS journaling file system.

In 1994, IRIX 6.0 added support for the 64-bit MIPS R8000 processor, but was otherwise similar to IRIX 5.2. Later 6.x releases supported other members of the MIPS processor family in 64-bit mode. IRIX 6.3 was released for desktop systems only. IRIX 6.4 improved multiprocessor scalability for the Origin 2000 and Onyx2 systems and was marketed as "Cellular IRIX", although it only incorporated some features from the original Cellular IRIX distributed operating system project. IRIX 6.4 had severe reliability issues, limiting its adoption. IRIX development stabilized with IRIX 6.5, released in 1998. The current version of IRIX is 6.5.30, released in August 2006.



IRIX 6 is compliant with UNIX System V Release 4, UNIX 95 and POSIX (including 1e/2c draft 15 ACLs and Capabilities).

IRIX has strong support for real-time disk and graphics I/O. IRIX was one of the first Unix versions to feature a graphical user interface for the main desktop environment. IRIX was widely used in the computer animation industry and for scientific visualization due to its once-large application base.



IRIX uses the Indigo Magic Desktop, which by default uses the 4Dwm X window manager with a custom look designed using the Motif widget toolkit.

World's Largest Linux System Image

 

SGI

Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10

SGI® Altix® 4700 blade platform and a beta version of SUSE® Linux Enterprise Server 10 from Novell, SGI demonstrated a single system image (SSI) running on a world-record 1,024 processors. Until that moment, the largest Linux SSI operated on 512 processors - another SGI record.

The record-breaking Altix 4700 system is now installed in Munich, Germany, at the Leibniz Computing Centre Munich (LRZ). LRZ houses Germany's National Supercomputer System, and the Altix 4700 installation marked the completion of LRZ's Phase I deployment, which incorporates 4,096 Intel® Itanium® 2 processors, 17TB of global shared memory, and a 330TB SGI InfiniteStorage solution.

SGI Octane

SGI Octane - Wikipedia

SGI.com       SGI Octane 2

Inside SGI Octane

The SGI Octane (and the very similar SGI Octane2) are UNIX workstations marketed by SGI. Both are SMP-capable (up to 2 identical processors) workstations, originally based on the MIPS architecture R10000 processor. Newer Octanes are based on MIPS R12000 and R14000. Octane2 has four improvements compared to Octane. Octane2 has revised power supply, system-board and xbow. Octane2 also shipped with VPro graphics and supports all available VPro cards (V6, V8, V10 and V12). Later revision Octanes also included some of the improvements mentioned. The machines shared a codename "Racer" or "Speedracer" inside SGI.

The Octane was the direct successor to the SGI Indigo2, and itself was succeeded by the SGI Tezro, and its immediate sibling is the SGI O2. SGI withdrew the Octane2 from the price book on May 26 2004, and ceased Octane2 production on June 25th, 2004. Support for the Octane2 will be withdrawn in June 2009.