Personal IRIS

Silicon Graphics offers five computing and graphics options to enhance the performance of your Personal IRIS 3D graphics workstation. You can add these options at any time to new or existing Personal IRIS systems, so you can be confident that an upgrade path is always available. These products can be used individually or in any combination, extending the capability of your Personal IRIS.

CPU Performance Option

The CPU performance option provides increased power for applications requiring substantial computing performance. This option is a new single board CPU based on a MIPS RISC processor running at 20 MHz. The board also includes a floating point coprocessor and a 32KB/64KB data/instruction cache for maximum throughput. With this option the Personal IRIS is rated at 16 MIPS (VAX Dhrystone) and 1.6 Mflops (double precision) - up to 60% faster than a standard Personal IRIS.

Turbo Graphics Option

For exceptionally demanding graphics applications, the Turbo Graphics Option provides increased graphics performance. This product is a daughter board that plugs into the standard graphics board. It uses new VLSI technology to leverage the architecture of the Personal IRIS graphics pipeline, producing up to 240% performance improvement in geometry manipulation rates compared to the standard product.

The Turbo runs on 8-bit, 24-bit or 24-bit Z-buffered systems and is software compatible with the standard Personal IRIS. You can run your existing applications with substantially improved performance on the Turbo.

Entry Plus Graphics Option

Essential features for 3D solids modeling, such us hidden surface removal (Z-buffer), RGB drawing mode and hardware dithering, are provided in this low-cost graphics solution. Dithering enables 8-bit systems to increase their standard display of 256 colors to over 1 million. Applications written for 24-bit systems in RGB (double buffered) mode will run without modification on an 8-bit system with Entry Plus Graphics. This upgrade also supports applications developed using the overlay plane features.

Full Color Option

In environments such as color publishing, image processing and graphic arts, full color is essential. The Full Color Option is a user-installable daughter board that increases the number of color bitplanes in the entry-level Personal IRIS from 8 to 24. With this product the Personal IRIS can display up to 16.7 million colors. This option also increases the number of overlay/underlay and window ID planes to a total of eight.

Super Graphics Option

The flexibility of the Personal IRIS architecture permits users of 8-bit systems to upgrade to full 24-bit colour with Z-buffer capability, for true solids or simulation applications. The Super Graphics Option is a user installable kit consisting of the Full Color board and an additional Z-buffer board. Both plug into the standard graphics board and provides an 8-bit, entry-level Personal IRIS with the same full color, Z-buffered capability that comes with a Super level Personal IRIS.

The Super Graphics Option may be combined with the Turbo and CPU Performance Options for maximum performance from your Personal IRIS 3D workstation.

Bitplane Options

                     Entry       Entry        Full        Super
                  Graphics        Plus       Color     Graphics
                  Personal    Graphics    Graphics      Upgrade
                      IRIS     Upgrade     Upgrade    or System

ColorBitplanes           8           8          24           24

Z-buffer Planes          0          24           0           24

System Planes            4           8           8            8

Total Planes            12          40          32           56

Colors:

RGB Mode                 0          1M       16.7M        16.7M

Color Index Mode    256 of      256 of     4096 of      4096 of
                     16.7M       16.7M       16.7M        16.7M

CPU Performance Option

                  Standard              With CPU
                  Personal           Performance
                      IRIS                Option

Processor     RISC 12.5MHz            RISC 20MHz

MIPS                    10                    16

Mflops                 0.9                   1.6

Cache             8KB/16KB             32KB/64KB
          data/instruction      data/instruction

Memory Upgrade

                         Configurations

4MB Module                   12MB, 16MB

16MB Module                  24MB, 32MB

Turbo Graphics Option

                  Standard            With Turbo
                  Personal              Graphics
                      IRIS                Option

3D Vectors (*)      90,000               200,000

Polygons (**)        5,000                20,000

(*) 10-pixel connected 3D vectors/second
(**) Z-buffered Gouraud shaded four-sided 10x10 pixels polygons/second

Specifications

CPU Option       20MHz 32-bit RISC processor
                 20MHz floating point coprocessor
                 32KB data cache, 64KB insiruclion cache
                 Performance: 16 MIPS (VAX Dhrystone).
                 1.6 Mflops (double precision Linpack coded Blas)
                 Field upgradeable

Memory Upgrade   4MB Upgrade with 1MB SIMMs
                 (Single In-line Memory Module)
                 16MB Upgrade with 2MB SIMMs
                 100ns Parity-checking Dynamic RAM
                 Expansion to 12, 16, 24 or 32MB

Turbo            Performance: 200,000 3D Vectors/second
Graphics         (10-pixel connected vectors)
Option           Performance 20,000 polygons/second
                 (Z-buffered, Gouraud shaded, 10x10 pixel polygons)
                 Field upgradeable

Entry Plus       Increases window management planes to 8 with two
Graphics         additional window ID planes and two overlay/underlay
Option           planes plus 24bit Z-buffer (total of 40 planes).
                 RGB mode: over 1 million colors with dithering
                 Color index mode: 256 colors from a palette of 16.7M
                 User installable

Full Color       Increases total to 24 color bitplanes plus four
Upgrade          overlay/underlay bitplanes plus four window ID planes
                 (total of 32 planes)
                 RGB mode: 16.7M colors
                 Color index mode: 4096 colors from a palette of 16.7M
                 User installable

Super            Increases total to 24 color bitplanes plus four
Graphics         overlay/underlay bitplanes plus four system ID bitplanes
Upgrade          plus 24 Z-buffered bitplanes (total of 56 bitplanes)
                 RGB mode: 16.7M colors
                 Color index mode: 4096 colors from a palette of 16.7M
                 User installable

For more information please call:

U.S. 1(800) 800-7441              South Pacific (61) 2-879.95.00
Europe (41) 22-798.75.25          Latin America 1(415) 390.58.28
North Pacific (81) 3-$420.71.10   Canada 1(416) 625-4747

Corporate Office

2011 N. Shoreline Boulevard,
Mountain View, CA 94043
(415) 960-1980

Specifications are subject to change without notice. Silicon Graphics, the Silicon Graphics logo and IRIS are registered trademarks and Personal IRIS is a trademark of Silicon Graphics, Inc.; MIPS is a registered trademark of MIPS Computer Systems. Cpyright 1989, Silicon Graphics Inc. All rights reserved.