IRIX is a discontinued operating system developed by Silicon Graphics (SGI) to run on the company's proprietary MIPS workstations and servers. It is a variety of UNIX System V with BSD extensions. In IRIX, SGI originated the XFS file system and the universally adopted industry-standard OpenGL graphics system.
Silicon Graphics, Inc. was an American high-performance computing manufacturer, producing computer hardware and software. Founded in Mountain View, California in November 1981 by Jim Clark, its initial market was 3D graphics computer workstations, but its products, strategies and market positions developed significantly over time.
A workstation is a special computer designed for technical or scientific applications. Intended primarily to be used by one person at a time, they are commonly connected to a local area network and run multi-user operating systems. The term workstation has also been used loosely to refer to everything from a mainframe computer terminal to a PC connected to a network, but the most common form refers to the class of hardware offered by several current and defunct companies such as Sun Microsystems, Silicon Graphics, Apollo Computer, DEC, HP, NeXT and IBM which opened the door for the 3D graphics animation revolution of the late 1990s.
Fahrenheit was an effort to create a unified high-level API for 3D computer graphics to unify Direct3D and OpenGL. It was designed primarily by Microsoft and SGI and also included work from an HP-MS joint effort.
Amiga Unix is a discontinued full port of AT&T Unix System V Release 4 operating system developed by Commodore-Amiga, Inc. in 1990 for the Amiga computer family as an alternative to AmigaOS, which shipped by default. Bundled with the Amiga 3000UX, Commodore's Unix was one of the first ports of SVR4 to the 68k architecture. The Amiga A3000UX model even got the attention of Sun Microsystems, though ultimately nothing came of it.
Open Inventor, originally IRIS Inventor, is a C++ object oriented retained mode 3D graphics toolkit designed by SGI to provide a higher layer of programming for OpenGL. Its main goals are better programmer convenience and efficiency. Open Inventor exists as both proprietary software and free and open-source software, subject to the requirements of the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL), version 2.1.
The SGI Indigo2 and the SGI Challenge M are Unix workstations which were designed and sold by SGI from 1992 to 1997.
IRIS GL is a proprietary graphics API created by Silicon Graphics (SGI) in the early 1980s for producing 2D and 3D computer graphics on their IRIX-based IRIS graphical workstations. Later SGI removed their proprietary code, reworked various system calls, and released IRIS GL as the industry standard OpenGL.
The Octane and the similar Octane2 are IRIX workstations marketed by SGI. Both are two-way multiprocessing-capable workstations, originally based on the MIPS Technologies R10000 microprocessor. Newer Octanes are based on the R12000 and R14000. The Octane2 has four improvements compared to Octane, a revised power supply, system board and Xbow ASIC. The Octane2 also shipped with VPro graphics and supports all the VPro cards. Later revisions of the Octane also included some of the improvements introduced in the Octane2. The codenames for the Octane and Octane2 are "Racer" and "Speedracer" respectively.
The SGI Fuel is a mid-range workstation developed and manufactured by Silicon Graphics, Inc. (SGI). It was introduced in January 2002, with a list price of US$11,495. Together with the entire MIPS platform, general availability for the Fuel ended on December 29, 2006. An equivalent product for the same market segment was not provided until 2008, when the Virtu product line was introduced, based on x86 microprocessors and Nvidia graphics.
The O2 is an entry-level Unix workstation introduced in 1996 by Silicon Graphics, Inc. (SGI) to replace their earlier Indy series. Like the Indy, the O2 used a single MIPS microprocessor and was intended to be used mainly for multimedia. Its larger counterpart is the SGI Octane. The O2 was SGI's last attempt at a low-end workstation.
SGI Visual Workstation is a series of workstation computers that are designed and manufactured by SGI. Unlike its other product lines, which used the 64-bit MIPS RISC architecture, the line used Intel Pentium II and III processors and shipped with Windows NT 4.0 or Windows 2000 as its operating system in lieu of IRIX. However, the Visual Workstation 320 and 540 models deviated from the architecture of IBM-compatible PCs by using SGI's ARCS firmware instead of a traditional BIOS, internal components adapted from its MIPS-based products, and other proprietary components that made them incompatible with internal hardware designed for standard PCs and hence unable to run other versions of Microsoft Windows, especially Windows 9x. By contrast, the remaining models in the line are standard PCs, using VIA Technologies chipsets, Nvidia video cards, and standard components.
QFX is an image editing computer program developed by Ron Scott, a Texan photographer and software engineer. The first version was released in 1990. At the time of its release, QFX was one of the most feature-rich image editing applications available on the PC platform. It was the software of choice for digital artists and image postproduction studios in the times when 1024x768 truecolor graphics were a luxury, far before Photoshop could have been considered a serious professional tool. Its clean interface and clever workflow helped build a devoted user base, some of whom continue using it, despite QFXs being long ago eclipsed in features and users by Photoshop.
Wavefront Technologies was a computer graphics company that developed and sold animation software used in Hollywood motion pictures and other industries. It was founded in 1984, in Santa Barbara, California, by Bill Kovacs, Larry Barels, Mark Sylvester. They started the company to produce computer graphics for movies and television commercials, and to market their own software, as there were no off-the-shelf computer animation tools available at the time. In 1995, Wavefront Technologies was purchased by Kroyer Films, Silicon Graphics, Rhythm & Hues and merged with Alias Research to form Alias|Wavefront.
VPro, also known as Odyssey, is a computer graphics architecture for Silicon Graphics workstations. First released on the Octane2, it was subsequently used on the Fuel, Tezro workstations and the Onyx visualization systems, where it was branded InfinitePerformance.
Barco Creator was an image manipulation program targeted at the repro and print shop markets. It was developed by the Creative Systems division of the Barco Group from 1988 to the late 1990s, and ran on several generations of Silicon Graphics computers. Barco ColorTone for Windows NT is considered its successor.
Linotype-Hell DaVinci was an image manipulation program targeted at the repro and print shop markets. It originally ran on proprietary hardware, but was later ported to Silicon Graphics workstations. The first version was released in 1993, and it continued to see regular releases until Heidelberg acquired Linotype-Hell in 1997. Heidelberg continued to update the software a few times before it was discontinued in April 2001, but the core engines for trapping and colour management were recoded to work on PDF files and were a key contributor to the commercial success of Prinergy, which benefitted from the Heidelberg-Creo joint venture.
Dalim Tango was a color retouching package aimed at the repro and prepress markets. It ran on Silicon Graphics workstations, and was first released in 1993. This retouching package is still available in the DALiM LiTHO program. As of 2013, LiTHO version 7 is available for both Linux and Mac OS X operating systems.
IrisVision was an expansion card developed by Silicon Graphics for IBM compatible PCs in 1991 and was one of the first 3D accelerator cards available for the high-end PC market. IrisVision was actually an adaptation of the graphics pipeline found in the Personal IRIS workstation to the Micro Channel architecture and consumer ISA buses found on most modern PCs of the day. It is also notable for being the first time that any variant of IRIS GL was ever ported to the PC.
Paul E. Haeberli is an American computer graphics programmer and researcher.
