By Steve Fisher, Editor In Chief -- SGI is always a staple at the Supercomputing XX conferences. I think of several companies right off the bat when someone inevitably informs me that it is time to start planning for the show. They are always one of those companies... This year SGI seemed particularly busy to me. From the flood of news releases from every company in or even close to supercomputing leading up to the show to the time this article is being written, it seems like I’ve seen ten press releases from SGI. The last day or two included news of collaborative visualization work with NCSA & Cambridge University, the completed installation of the first 1,024 processor Origin 3800 at NASA Ames and a separate 512 processor Origin 3800 at that same site.
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| SGI’s Origin 3800 |
The last few days also saw an announcement entitled, “SGI Demonstrates the World’s Most Powerful Computing Solutions at SC2001.” I don’t know. I get along famously with the people at SGI but I think that title may have come across as a bit arrogant. So, I added it to my list of questions for the interview I had with SGI personnel yesterday. What was interesting, was that they brought it up before me. Addison Snell, high end server marketing manager for SGI said, “We talked before around the launch of the Origin 300 launch and our big message there that we’re taking our expertise with the very high end Origin 3000 and bringing that architecture through the technical midrange. The slogan we put on that was, ‘the most powerful computer at any price point.’ We’re taking that whole theme through the whole supercomputing show but expanding it a bit to say the most powerful solutions at any price point, meaning not only HPC, but what we consider to be the other main pillars of supercomputing: visualization and complex data management.” “If you’re not looking at all of these three things,” Snell continued. “Then you’re missing part of the picture in supercomputing. If you compare what SGI is announcing and demonstrating at our booth to what everyone else is doing at the show, I think it becomes very clear that SGI sees these three different pillars as part of a complete picture that we try to bring together in the booth.” Alright. Maybe the “World’s Most Powerful Computing Solutions…” comment wasn’t arrogant at all, just a dose of healthy, corporate confidence. OK…you got me. I was still a little skeptical. So, I took an unguided tour of the SGI booth this morning, and stood in the back of the crowd that had gathered for the company’s 11am demonstration. A guided tour was graciously offered by SGI, which I was forced to decline. Sorry for the small deception guys. Nothing personal. Sometimes I have to do stuff like that. Now, my initial description of the demo may sound a bit biased, but it’s the truth in my opinion and the truth is always the best defense. I will fall back on my Southern California roots and say this about the demo, “It was kinda’ gnarly.” The demonstration was arguably the most impressive thing that I’ve seen at the show. It was best described as a collaborative demonstration. What you have at the booth (in addition to twenty people wearing stereographic glasses) is a connection to Cambridge, England, a connection to Hawaii and a connection to NCSA down the other end of the showroom. All of them are on the system at the same time, each with a little avatar floating around on a map, shown on a giant screen. On that giant screen is a visualization or model of how our universe was formed. At one point I believe they said they were modeling an area something like 12 million light years across. It was very, “Steve Hawking.” It, the demo/system/giant screen demonstrates the formation, and basically the evolution of the universe from pre- “Big Bang” to present day. The way they do it is with an SGI Reality Center being driven by people and systems at whichever organization and location has the cyber helm at any given time. If the folks in Cambridge are in control and are walking you through the formation of the universe, it seems like the system is just as effective and responsive as if someone were in the driver’s seat right here in good old Denver. I witnessed both scenarios. The commands to the system are all voice-activated and the 3-D “wand” for lack of a better term allows one to move through 3D space with those voice commands.
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| SGI Reality Center 3300W |
“This is the beauty of the system: you have a reality center graphics environment, it can be networked together, it’s voice activated, you can display high resolution graphics to ultra high resolution HDTV format all on the same displays in an interactive manner, in stereo, “ said Jan Silverman, senior VP of marketing at SGI. SGI’s business model is to really push the envelope of the high end with products like Reality Center and then bring the technology in another version to the technical midrange market. Take for example the company’s relatively new Origin 300 which is heavily based on the Origin 3000. I don’t know if the company ever plans to go a step further in their business model and bring their technology from the technical midrange down to the consumer market, but if they could provide a home entertainment product that delivered a user experience even semi-comparable to the SC2001 “universe formation” demo, put me on the waiting list one.
