Silicon Graphics Inc. (SGI) on Monday will launch the successor line to its Onyx visualization systems. Called Prism, the systems will be based on Intel (Profile, Products, Articles) Corp.'s Itanium 2 processor and the Linux operating system.
Like the Onyx systems, the Prism line is designed for use for advanced visual computing problems like oil exploration, crash simulation, or medical research. They will also use the same ATI Technologies Inc. graphics accelerators and NUMAflex shared memory architecture as SGI's MIPS-based systems.
The Prism line, which has begun shipping over the last few months, will come in configurations of between two and 512 Itanium 2 processors and will support as many as 16 graphics accelerators, also called "pipelines."