Marc Hannah

Last updated
Marc Regis Hannah
Personal details
Born (1956-10-13) October 13, 1956 (age 67)
Chicago, Illinois U.S.
Education Illinois Institute of Technology (Electrical Engineering)
Stanford University (PhD)

Marc Hannah (born October 13, 1956) is an American electrical engineer and computer graphics designer. He is one of the co-founders of Silicon Graphics Inc. [1] [2]

Contents

Early life and education

Hannah was born on October 13, 1956, in Chicago, Illinois. Hannah attended the Illinois Institute of Technology where he studied Electrical Engineering. [3] Hannah received his B.S. degree in electrical engineering in 1977. Later he attended Stanford University where he obtained his M.S. degree in 1978 and his Ph.D. degree. [2]

Career

At SGI he was a member of technical staff and a cofounder of the company. [4] He is mostly known for making 3-D chips and for the creation of computer programs like Personal IRIS, Indigo, Indigo2, and Indy graphics. [3] The Geometry Engine established the niche for graphics coprocessors, which run alongside CPUs to handle the heavy math needed to manipulate images. In the 1980s the Geometry Engine would enable the imagery in movies as well as in CAD, scientific visualization, engineering, and countless games. Descendants are now found in nearly every smartphone and computer, where they speed up repetitive calculations from graphics to AI. As Hannah notes, modern chips have a million times more transistors than the Geometry Engine. [1] 3D technology is commonly used in movies, videos, and computers. Some movies that 3D technology is used in are Terminator 2, Jurassic Park, The Hunt for Red October, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and Lawnmower Man. [2] Hannah was one of the 7 founders of Silicon Graphics Incorporated (SGI). SGI is known for its computer graphics. The company went public in 1986 after Hannah and 6 others raised $33 million in venture capital. [5] [6] Marc and his team were tasked with making a 3-D graphic chip which would be used in a video game console. This would become one of the first ever 3-D graphics chips to be used in a video game console. This console went on to become the Nintendo 64. [7] SGI was also used in the process of creating Terminator 2 when George Lucas’ Industrial Light & Magic used Silicon Graphics’ technology to create Terminator 2. [3] [6] Hannah also developed the 3-D special effects systems for scientific research and aerospace biotech engineering labs. [6] Hannah’s designs also helped build the Boeing 777 and modeling systems for biotechnology applications. [7]

Awards

Some of Hannah’s awards and achievements are the Professional Achievement Award from Illinois Institute of Technology, the Professional Achievement Award from the National Technical Association, both of which he received in 1987, and in 1988 he received the Black Engineer of the Year Award. [6] [2]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">MIPS Technologies</span> American fabless semiconductor design company

MIPS, formerly MIPS Computer Systems, Inc. and MIPS Technologies, Inc., is an American fabless semiconductor design company that is most widely known for developing the MIPS architecture and a series of RISC CPU chips based on it. MIPS provides processor architectures and cores for digital home, networking, embedded, Internet of things and mobile applications.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Silicon Graphics</span> Former American computing company

Silicon Graphics, Inc. was an American high-performance computing manufacturer, producing computer hardware and software. Founded in Mountain View, California in November 1981 by James Clark, its initial market was 3D graphics computer workstations, but its products, strategies and market positions developed significantly over time.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Workstation</span> High-end single-user computer

A workstation is a special computer designed for technical or scientific applications. Intended primarily to be used by a single user, they are commonly connected to a local area network and run multi-user operating systems. The term workstation has 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 powered the 3D computer graphics revolution of the late 1990s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">James H. Clark</span> American computer scientist and entrepreneur

James Henry Clark is an American entrepreneur and computer scientist. He founded several notable Silicon Valley technology companies, including Silicon Graphics, Netscape, myCFO, and Healtheon. His research work in computer graphics led to the development of systems for the fast rendering of three-dimensional computer images.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alias Systems Corporation</span>

Alias Systems Corporation, headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, was a software company that produced high-end 3D graphics software. Alias was eventually bought by Autodesk.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John L. Hennessy</span> American computer scientist

John Leroy Hennessy is an American computer scientist who serves as chairman of Alphabet Inc. (Google). Hennessy is one of the founders of MIPS Technologies and Atheros while also serving as the tenth President of Stanford University. Hennessy announced that he would step down in the summer of 2016. He was succeeded as president by Marc Tessier-Lavigne. Marc Andreessen called him "the godfather of Silicon Valley."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">SGI Indy</span> 1993 graphics workstation computer

The Indy, code-named "Guinness", is a low-end multimedia workstation introduced on July 12, 1993 by Silicon Graphics Incorporated (SGI). SGI developed, manufactured, and marketed Indy as the lowest end of its product line, for computer-aided design (CAD), desktop publishing, and multimedia markets. It competed with Intel x86 computers, and with Windows and Macintosh, including using their files and running their applications via software emulation. It is the first computer to come standard with a video camera, called IndyCam.

Geometric manipulation of modelling primitives, such as that performed by a geometry pipeline, is the first stage in computer graphics systems which perform image generation based on geometric models. While geometry pipelines were originally implemented in software, they have become highly amenable to hardware implementation, particularly since the advent of very-large-scale integration (VLSI) in the early 1980s. A device called the Geometry Engine developed by Jim Clark and Marc Hannah at Stanford University in about 1981 was the watershed for what has since become an increasingly commoditized function in contemporary image-synthetic raster display systems.

Wei Yen is a Taiwanese-American technologist and serial entrepreneur. He has been involved with several companies, including most recently as Chairman and Founder of AiLive.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">SGI Indigo</span> Workstations family by Silicon Graphics

The Indigo, introduced as the IRIS Indigo, is a line of workstation computers developed and manufactured by Silicon Graphics, Inc. (SGI). SGI first announced the system in July 1991.

Kurt Akeley is an American computer graphics engineer.

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 acquired by Silicon Graphics, 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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">SGI Onyx</span> Supercomputers

SGI Onyx is a series of visualization systems designed and manufactured by SGI, introduced in 1993 and offered in two models, deskside and rackmount, codenamed Eveready and Terminator respectively. The Onyx's basic system architecture is based on the SGI Challenge servers, but with graphics hardware.

The SGI IRIS series of terminals and workstations from Silicon Graphics was produced in the 1980s and 1990s. IRIS is an acronym for Integrated Raster Imaging System.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Computer graphics</span> Graphics created using computers

Computer graphics deals with generating images and art with the aid of computers. Today, computer graphics is a core technology in digital photography, film, video games, digital art, cell phone and computer displays, and many specialized applications. A great deal of specialized hardware and software has been developed, with the displays of most devices being driven by computer graphics hardware. It is a vast and recently developed area of computer science. The phrase was coined in 1960 by computer graphics researchers Verne Hudson and William Fetter of Boeing. It is often abbreviated as CG, or typically in the context of film as computer generated imagery (CGI). The non-artistic aspects of computer graphics are the subject of computer science research.

Paul E. Haeberli is an American computer graphics programmer and researcher.

ArtX was a company formed in 1997 by a group of twenty former Silicon Graphics engineers, who had worked on the Nintendo 64's graphics chip. The company was focused on delivering a graphics chip for IBM PC compatibles that was both high performance and cost effective, and hoped to be able to compete with then-dominant 3dfx and fledgling competitors such as nVidia.

Edward McCracken is an American businessman who was CEO of Silicon Graphics (SGI) from 1984 to 1997. Under his leadership, SGI grew from annual revenues of $5.4 million to $3.7 billion. Prior to leading Silicon Graphics, he spent 16 years as an executive with Hewlett-Packard.

IMPACT is a computer graphics architecture for Silicon Graphics computer workstations. IMPACT Graphics was developed in 1995 and was available as a high-end graphics option on workstations released during the mid-1990s. IMPACT graphics gives the workstation real-time 2D and 3D graphics rendering capability similar to that of even high-end PCs made well after IMPACT's introduction. IMPACT graphics systems consist of either one or two Geometry Engines and one or two Raster Engines in various configurations.

References

  1. 1 2 "Hannah Marc oral history Catalog Number 102792683". www.computerhistory.org. Retrieved 2023-05-26.
  2. 1 2 3 4 "Marc Hannah's Biography". The HistoryMakers. Retrieved 2023-05-25.
  3. 1 2 3 Rob, Abdul (2008-02-14). "Marc Hannah: Special Effects Founder". Black History Month 2023. Retrieved 2023-05-25.
  4. ↑ "Geometry Engine The Legendary Chip That Launched SGI". www.electronicdesign.com. Retrieved 2023-05-26.
  5. ↑ "Hannah, Marc 1956— | Encyclopedia.com". www.encyclopedia.com. Retrieved 2023-05-26.
  6. 1 2 3 4 Mahoney, Eleanor (2018-01-27). "Marc Regis Hannah (1956- ) •". Black Past. Retrieved 2023-06-13.
  7. 1 2 "Sutori". www.sutori.com. Retrieved 2023-05-26.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.