🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <planting-150892135927@calvin.cs.pitt.edu>, planting@cs.pitt.edu (Harry Plantinga) writes:
|>> 
|>> I'd like to hear from anyone who attended Siggraph 1992 a few weeks
|>> ago, especially what DEC had to show in their booth? I heard they
|>> were supposed to show ALPHA systems. If so which graphics boards
|>> were present and what applications were running?  Any details on
|>> DEC's PEX demos and interoperability with other vendors would be 
|>> appreciated too.
|>
|>Supposedly there were three Alpha workstations there; I think they were 150
|>MHz but I'm not certain.
|>
|>I only saw one of them.  It was making mandelbrot pictures, "racing" with
|>three other architectures on the same screen.  The closest competitor was
|>an HP 730, which seemed to be generating pictures at about half the speed.
|>
|>Since HP 730's have been available for about a year and Alpha workstations
|>won't be available for a few months, DEC appears to have caught up with HP
|>but not really surpassed them (assuming HP isn't standing still).
|>

 I was responsible for the Alpha machines at Siggraph, and staffed the
Mandelbrot demo, so I feel I should point out a couple of nits in this 
string so far:

	First, the HP machine was a 750, not a 730.   The 750 is HP's top of
	the line system.  (today)  We certainly know that HP is not standing
	still, and have made our plans accordingly.

	Second, the Alpha machine that you saw was running at 150 Mhz.  This
	system was running a full 64-bit implementation of OSF/1

	Third, there were three other Alpha machines in the booth, all running
	VMS and third party applications.  Two desktop machines (running 
	at slightly slower than 150Mhz) and one additional deskside machine.
	These systems were running AVS (Visualization) Ansys (finite element
	analysis) and Anvil (MCAD) from third parties. *NONE* of the systems
	had any 3D Graphics acceleration in them as we're not quite there
	yet with our 3D Drivers. Even without 3D hardware, 3D performance
	was very impressive. (or so our customers have said)



--


William M. Jackson
Alpha Workstation Product Marketing Manager
Workstation Engineering
Digital Equipment Corporation
146 Main Street
Maynard, MA 01754

Mail:	Jackson@pravda.enet.dec.com