CompuServe Messages

Angelo, AG> you may be missing a "small" point. Just like SGI "adds" the AG> fast 3D to the system, so can this "graphics subsystem" be AG> added to a Pentium, Alpha, etc… I don't think I'm missing a small point at all: The Alpha is not instruction set compatible with the 80×86. No 80×86 program will run directly on it, even with NT, unless it is recompiled and relinked by the manufacturer. The demos that DEC has been showing is a software 80×86 EMULATOR running the 80×86 version of NT. Software emulators typically require 10 to 20 native instructions per instruction that they're emulating. That put's a 200 MIPS Alpha running at somewhere around 10 to 20 MIPS during emulation. Any task that's CPU bound rather than display bound will crawl. I don't have any direct experience with 3DS but, I do write 3D software, and, once you get past flat shaded triangles, they are rarely display bound. Once Autodesk comes out with a native Alpha NT version of 3DS then you'll see some speed. Don't count on that happening any time soon though Conversion of software from one CPU to another (even programs written in mostly in C) can be very time consuming unless the programmers took that into account in the first place. The same observations go to SGI. And most companies are not going to be happy about having to support NT products accross a multitude of processors. Let's see we have the Alpha-NT version, the R4000-NT version, the Pentium NT version, ….. In the short term there's also the problem of all those other little programs that you run which won't be available until sometime after the native 3DS is established on the Alpha. Some may run acceptably in the emulated environment but most probably will not. And, from message #49309, that you're already aware of some of the hardware issues on machine that decide to go with a different bus. I wasn't suggesting that one should buy an SGI instead of an Alpha or Pentium. I was simply pointing out that, since a comparison of graphics speed was made, that the SGI is a special purpose machine — real time, texture mapped, gouraud shaded, Z-buffered, 3D polygons. An Alpha or Pentium without a specialized processor won't be able to touch the SGI at that particular task. I don't know much about the Matrox board but it sounds like a 2D gouraud shader — nothing close to SGI. The only thing I know of (and I don't claim to be an expert) that's close is the HP9000 with it's NURBS engine. I agree that we're in for some interesting times though… and I'm always hungry for more speed…. Unfortunately I write software for mass markets so I'll have to stick with 80×86 architecture for the time being… John.