[rescue] SGI tidbits

[Joshua D Boyd]

On Mon, Oct 14, 2002 at 02:31:42PM -0400, Ross Alexander wrote:
> * Joshua D Boyd:
> > The O2 was a pretty unique machine.  For medical imaging, it is perhaps
> > the best machine available other than certain proprietary devices and
> > the Onyx3000 line.
> 
> What makes it so good for medical imaging?

Volumetric rendering.  There is a method (I believe invented by SGI)
where you can use texturing to rendering volumetric data using a normal
OpenGL accelerator[0].  This method doesn't require a whole lot of
geometry processing power.  But it does require vast volumes of fast
texture memory.  Which just happens to be the one thing the O2 is really
good at.  To beat the O2 for texture memory, you need an IR4 (though IR2
and machines can usually do the job adequately somehow, perhaps by
streaming the textures from normal ram).

-- 
Joshua D. Boyd

(compared to trying to use geometry for each voxel,
or a software renderer, or a hardware voxel renderer that is going to
need gigs of ram dedicated to it, and won't work with regular geometry
at all, thus making it a very expensive niche item.