[rescue] looking for SGI system, cheap

[Joshua Boyd]

On Fri, Jan 27, 2006 at 01:49:15PM -0600, Matthew Weigel wrote:
> Steven M Jones wrote:

> In 3D rendering, scientific processing, and so on, integers are used to 
> count loops, and to manage the user interface - and not much else. 
> Faster integer operation execution time could change the performance of 
> such an app by maybe 10%.
> 
> SGI didn't focus very much on it, because their customers didn't need it.

I thought they were reasonably fine with integer math, and some of their
customers certainly use integer math a lot.  While 3D rendering may be
floating point heavy, quite a lot of 2D image processing was mostly
integer work.  Even when HDR was first taking off, it tended to be
expressed in integers rather than floats.

And there was all sorts of scientific image processing to be done, it
wasn't just the entertainment industry.  Also, I believe genetics
research is commonly integer heavy.  

While SGI didn't have the greatest integer units in the world, they did
provide massive amounts of bandwidth, which was and is essential for
many business and scientific tasks.

-- 
Joshua D. Boyd
jdboyd at jdboyd.net
http://www.jdboyd.net/
http://www.joshuaboyd.org/