|
|
|
|
|
Sgi Visual WorkstationThe SGI Visual Workstation series was a line of computer workstations manufactured by SGI and designed to run Windows NT. The Visual Workstations are notable for their use of the Intel Pentium II, Intel Pentium III processors (rather than the MIPS RISC architecture usually used in SGI computer products), as well as for the unique departures from the standard IBM AT-derived architecture normally used in Intel 386-lineage computers—for example, unlike virtually all other Intel Pentium-class systems, the Visual Workstations eschewed the BIOS (often criticized as hackish and obsolete) in favor of a port of the same powerful ARCS firmware system used in all other SGI workstations. The Visual Workstations, although they used Intel processors, architecturally more closely resembled the SGI O2 than other Wintel systems. Among other similarities, both the O2 and the Visual Workstations employed NUMA memory systems. The Visual Workstations shipped with Microsoft Windows NT 4.0, and could run any software written for Windows NT on Intel processors. Because of the various SGI enhancements, Visual Workstations often out-performed Wintel boxes of similar configuration in graphically-intensive or memory-bound applications. However, the enhancements which differentiated the Visual Workstations over standard Wintel machines necessitated a custom Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) for Windows, and Windows 2000 was the last release which included the required SGI-specific HAL. Because of that, and because SGI ceased supporting the Visual Workstation series, installation of Windows XP or further future Windows versions is unsupported (although some have managed to install Windows XP on Visual Workstation machines using a hacked version of the Windows 2000 HAL). The Linux kernel may also be run on the Visual Workstation series. THe model numbers of the Visual Workstation models: - Visual Workstation 320 - Dual processor Pentium II/III
- Visual Workstation 540 - Quad processor Pentium II/III Xeon
Visual Workstations were initially equipped with either a single Pentium II or Pentium III processor or dual (SMP) Pentium III processors. The 540 model supported the Xeon implementation of the Pentium series, and could support up to four Xeons in an SMP configuration. The systems include PCI expansion slots. Although no SGI Visual Workstation was ever released with processors running faster than 700Mhz, some hobbyists have been able to run processors up to 1 Ghz with an appropriate upgrade to the ARCS PROM.
|
 |
|
| Copyright 2005-2009 OnPedia.com. All Rights Reserved |
|
|