HP in new 3D graphics, systems bid

Electronic News, June 12, 1995 by Jim DeTar

PALO ALTO, CALIF.--Hewlett-Packard will today unveil a novel graphics-technology architecture dubbed Visualize designed to deliver fast 3D graphics workstation performance, plus will introduce the 9000 J-class family of symmetrical multiprocessing (SMP) 3D graphics workstations--based on the PA-7200 MPU--and available in either 100MHz or 120MHz versions as the Models J200 and J210, respectively.

These moves can be viewed as a bid by HP to solidify its position as a performance leader in the emerging 3D graphics workstation market against such competitors as Sun Microsystems with its UltraSPARC workstations and Silicon Graphics Inc. with its Indigo high-end workstation line.

HP's Visualize technology is based on a new distributed graphics architecture that combines PA-RISC-based CPUs and on-board PA-RISC-based geometry accelerators to deliver 3D renderings through processing of complex, floating point calculations required for 3D geometry and lighting applications. The three Visualize 3D graphics accelerators models--8-bit Visualize-8, 24-bit Visualize-24, and the 48-bit Visualize-48--provide solids-modeling performance of up to 235PLBsurf93, which HP claims is the fastest graphics performance available.

Mark A. Canepa, GM of HP's Workstation Systems division, wants to increase performance by 1,000 times, or 3.4 times annually, during the next five years. "As part of this initiative, we have taken a quantum leap in 3D workstation graphics with Visualize technology, which combines breakthrough parallelism and the integrated-system design of our PA-RISC CPU technology."

Visualize and HP's new J-class workstations are designed to reinforce the company's Empowered Engineering environment solutions for technical-computing systems designers. Commenting on HP's new workstations and Visualize graphics technology, Ken Kwiat, manager of product development and marketing at Siemens Medical Systems Inc.'s Nuclear Medicine Group, said: "Performance is more than SPECint and SPECfp. Applications from Mentor Graphics and SDRC run much faster on the HP J200 than the numbers would indicate. The super fast bus is impressive in real-world performance."

The Visualize geometry accelerator contains two PA-RISC floating point processors working concurrently and supports 863,000 transistors. It is dedicated to geometry acceleration for vectors, three- or four-sided polygons, triangle strips or fans. The accelerators are designed to complement the new HP 9000 J-class workstations as well as current workstations. Visualize graphics will support more than 10,000 software applications in HP's software portfolio.

The Visualize-8 and Visualize-24 graphics subsystems cost less than half of HP's previous high-end graphics solution, the CRX-48Z. Both of the new subsystems include one Visualize geometry accelerator and offer performance of up to 15.4 Xmark93, PLBwire93 and PLBsurf93 scaling from 88 to 144. HP said the Visualize-8 and Visualize-24 are targeted at cost-conscious designers requiring 3D component design and solids modeling performance. Applications requiring full 24-bit color are targeted by the Visualize-24, which can triple the graphics performance of solids-modeling applications when compared to HP's current HCRX-24Z.

The Visualize-48 is a 24-plane, double-buffered graphics subsystem that includes three on-board Visualize geometry accelerators working concurrently. HP rates the performance of the accelerator at 16.6 Xmarks, 182PBLwire93 and up to 235PLBsurf93.

Visualize graphics accelerators and options are expected to be available in July. Pricing is as follows: Visualize-8 at $5,500; Visualize-24 at $7,000; and Visualize-48 at $16,000. A Texture-map card option sells for $5,000 and a Video-out option for $1,500. HCRX-8Z and HCRZ-24Z users can upgrade to Visualize-8 or Visualize-24 respectively for $1,500, HP said. J-class CRX-48Z users can upgrade to the Visualize-48 accelerator for $2,000.

The two new HP 9000 J-class workstations--100MHz J200 and 120MHz J210-feature the PA-7200 microprocessor (upgradable to the future PA-8000) along with new Visualize graphics and 64-bit MP system bus at 800MBytes/sec in the J200 and 960MBytes/sec in the J210. Either model can be configured as a single- or dual-processor system.

In terms of performance, the J200 reaches an estimated SPECint92 rating of 139.4 and SPECfp92 rating of 222.5, and achieves 146MIPS. The J210 is rated at 168.7 SPECint92 and 269.2 SPECfp92 and run up to 176MIPS. Both models can be configured with main memory ranging from 32MBytes to 1GBytes, and come with a 4GBytes hard drive, 256KBytes instruction cache and 256KBytes direct mapped data cache. Additional features include 16 memory expansion slots, configured in pairs, and support for two fast-wide differential SCSI devices and two 8-bit single-ended removable devices.

The bi-endian PA-RISC design supports HP-UX 9.05 and HP UX 10.0 operating systems, which can be ordered "instantly ignited" as part of the workstations or as separate media on CD-ROMs.