Pictures of a Power Series 4D/510 VGX
VGX/VGXT Features and Capabilities
Pictures of a Power Series 4D/510 VGX
These pictures show a 5-span (one RM2/3) Power Series VGX with an IO3B and a Crimson R4000/100 IP17. I have both the VGX and VGXT boardsets but they are visually identical.
The populated card cage. The slots and cards are as follows:
VME Slot 1 | Empty (Dead RM4 - ignore). |
VME Slot 2,3,4,5,6 | Empty |
Slot 7 | IO3B |
Slot 8 | IP17 R4000/100MHz SC board with 208Mb RAM |
Slot 9-11 | Empty |
Slot 12 | MC2 memory board |
Slot 13 | MC2 memory board |
Slot 14 | GM3 graphics manager |
Slot 15 | GE6 geometry engine |
Slot 16 | Empty (could be an RV2 video option card) |
Slot 17 | Empty (could be another RM2/RM3) |
Slot 18 | RM2/RM3 Raster Manager |
Slot 19 | DG1 Display Generator |
The boardset I have shown here is a minimum/low end VGX config. I have a VGXT config as well in a power series twin tower machine.
Close up of the VGX card set and bridge boards. Notice that DG1 (in slot 19) has 5 video I/O ports and that the RGB I/O panel connector is plugged into the third. What are the other ports for? Numbered from the top the ports are as follows:
VGX Boardset
GE6 - Geometry Engine | 030-0153-004B (Texas Instruments 74ACT8867) |
GM3 - Graphics Manager | 030-0382-004A (doesnt work with RM3s!) |
RM2 - Raster Manager | 030-0156-004B (IMP3 image engines 20 per board) |
DG1 - Display Generator | 030-0158-004D |
/usr/gfx/gfxinfo -v
Graphics board 0 is "VGX" graphics.
Managed (":0.0") 1280x1024
5 spans, IMP3
EV mask = 0x0
1 screen(s) on this pipe
GM bi-endian ready
VGXT Boardset
GE6 - Geometry Engine | 030-0153-004B (Texas Instruments 74ACT8867) |
GM3B - Graphics Manager | 030-0232-001B |
RM3 - Raster Manager | 030-0222-001C (IMP5 image engines 20 per board) |
RM3 - Raster Manager | 030-0222-001C (IMP5 image engines 20 per board) |
DG1 - Display Generator | 030-0218-004C |
/usr/gfx/gfxinfo -v
Graphics board 0 is "VGX" graphics.
Managed (":0.0") 1280x1024
10 spans, IMP5
EV mask = 0x0
1 screen(s) on this pipe
GM bi-endian ready
Features and Capabilities of VGX/VGXT
From recent discussions on VGX/VGXT (also known as POWERVision) in comp.sys.sgi.hardware, the POWERSeries Technical Report and some searches through the info-performer archive, here are some snippets of information about VGX and VGXT:
VGX Texture Memory Tile Summary
texture tile size | non-mipmapped
size in bytes (k) of each tile |
5-span, 64k texel config | 10-span, 160k config | mipmapped size in bytes (k) of each tile | 5-span, 64k texel config | 10-span, 160k config |
16x16 | 352 | 186 | 465 | 512 | 128 | 320 |
32x32 | 1184 (1.16k) | 55 | 137 | 1664 (1.62k) | 39 | 97 |
64x64 | 4384 (4.28k) | 14 | 35 | 6016 (5.88k) | 10 | 25 |
128x128 | 16928 (16.53k) | 3 | 7 | 22912 (22.38k) | 2 | 5 |
256x256 | 66592 (65.03k) | 1* | 2* | 84972 (87.38k) | 0 | 0 |
512x512 | 264224 (258.03k) | 0 | 0 | 353664 (345.37k) | 0 | 0 |
* - VGX requires special microcode to support 256x256 texture tiles
(this is probably included in all releases after 1994 that support VGX
- not sure about 4.0.5 etc but definitely 5.2, 5.3 and 6.2)
VGXT Texture Memory Tile Summary
texture tile size | non-mipmapped
size in bytes (k) of each tile |
5-span, 64k texel config | 10-span, 160k config | mipmapped size in bytes (k) of each tile | 5-span, 64k texel config | 10-span, 160k config |
16x16 | 256 | 256 | 640 | 352 | 186 | 465 |
32x32 | 1024 (1k) | 64 | 160 | 1376 (1.34k) | 47 | 119 |
64x64 | 4096 (4k) | 16 | 40 | 5472 (5.34k) | 11 | 29 |
128x128 | 16384 (16k) | 4 | 10 | 21856 (21.34k) | 2 | 7 |
256x256 | 65536 (64k) | 1 | 2 | 87392 (85.34k) | 0 | 1 |
512x512 | 262144 (256k) | 0 | 0 | 349536 (341.34k) | 0 | 0 |
Just how good is the VGX/VGXT graphics boardset?
According to the graphics specs on Ian Mapleson's web site, VGXT is fairly close to RealityEngine when it comes to non-textured graphics - see http://www.futuretech.vuurwerk.nl/gfxtables.html. However, it's difficult to do a "hard numbers" comparison at the moment. Open Inventor (or any other OpenGL based test suite) isnt really much use as:
An interesting and rare config involving the VGX/VGXT is the Power Series dual VGX/VGXT SkyWriter machine. This machine had an optional display multiplexer (the DG/VX1 - see above) and two VGXT graphics boardsets. As I understand it, the VGXT boardsets generated alternate frames and the mulitplexer combined the alternate frames to produce a single display (cyclops mode?). The effect was probably quite good - unfortunately there are very few SkyWriter cabinets around so its almost impossible to do any tests (but see the links section below for pictures of this rare beast).
For pictures of a dual pipe (two VGXT boardsets) Power Series SkyWriter
case see SkyWriter's site at: http://www.reputable.com/~skywriter.
SkyWriter also has the SGI skywriter technical report available on his
site now. Definitely worth a read for skywriter enthusiasts!
Comments to: simon@dpiwe.tas.gov.au