ENGINEERING

LOS ANGELES, CA -- SGI (NYSE: SGI), a leading high-performance computing, complex data management and visualization solutions provider, today announced a range of enhancements for SGI(TM) Reality Center(TM) visualization facility, dramatically increasing the level of realism and productivity available to organizations and individuals for group collaboration. A full range of SGI Reality Center environments, from high-end to personal solutions, will be demonstrated in the SGI booth during the 28th International SIGGRAPH 2001 Conference, Aug. 14 to 16, at the Los Angeles Convention Center. The advanced SGI Reality Center environments being demonstrated illustrate how all levels of management and engineering can use SGI Reality Center to efficiently solve data-intensive problems in a collaborative manner. "By integrating collaborative and visual SGI Reality Center solutions into the core of their businesses, our customers have revolutionized their research, design and production processes," said Jan Silverman, senior vice president of marketing, SGI. "The newest immersive experience on display in Los Angeles further demonstrates new ways SGI has created integrated environments, bringing together 3D sound, voice input and gesture-based applications to increase group productivity and increase collaboration efforts for remote users." The high-end environment being demonstrated at SIGGRAPH includes the first 35 by 10 foot, curved screen, ultrabright, stereo DLP-based SGI Reality Center facility ever. This 3.6 million-pixel environment is driven by a three-pipe SGI(TM) Onyx(R) 3400 system with a total of 15,000 lumens of brightness generated by three Mirage 5000 3D DLP projectors from Christie Digital Systems, Inc. Completing this can't-miss immersive experience is image-warping technology from 3D Perception a.s., 3D spatialized sound from Lake Technology Corporation, the latest stereo eyewear and emitter technology from StereoGraphics Corporation and a curved-screen infrastructure plus display system designed and integrated by Mechdyne Corporation. Demonstrations being highlighted in the SGI Reality Center facility include: -- A multisite networked collaboration with NCSA that utilizes voice control and gesture input to explore the universe -- A group interactive entertainment experience developed by de pinxi for the Futuroscope Amusement Park outside of Paris -- An ultrahigh-resolution journey through the sixth-century Buddhist kingdom of Silla -- a demonstration from the largest SGI Reality Center facility (651 seats) in the world, which opened at the Kyongju World Culture EXPO 2000 in Seoul, Korea -- Urban simulation tours of Virtual Los Angeles and archaeological sites created by UCLA -- Photo-realistic reviews of futuristic automobile designs Software Enhancements for SGI Reality Center SGI is releasing OpenGL Multipipe(TM) 1.3 and OpenGL Multipipe(TM) SDK 1.2 for use in collaborative environments driven by SGI(TM) Onyx(R) 3000 series scalable visualization systems. OpenGL Multipipe 1.3 enables users of SGI Reality Center environments, driven by SGI(TM) Onyx(R) family systems, to fully utilize all applications in collaborative sessions. Without requiring changes, users will have the flexibility to mix standard applications with higher performance, multipipe applications resulting in a powerful yet flexible decision-making environment. "Many important and valuable applications in SGI Reality Center environments have been written for single and multipipe systems," said Paul McNamara, vice president of products and platforms, SGI. "Owners of OpenGL Multipipe can now utilize all the benefits of both single and multipipe applications in a single transparent environment." "SGI continues to bring innovative open source solutions to the application development community," said Kara Yokley, analyst, IDC. "OpenGL Multipipe SDK is less invasive than previous implementations because it enables developers to port existing applications to a multipipe environment without a ground-up rewrite. This will accelerate the rate at which key applications are enhanced to fully utilize scalable SGI graphics systems." For additional information visit www.sgi.com