SGI Onyx 3000 with InfiniteReality 4 (2002)
Onyx 3000 was the last visualization supercomputer with the custom SGI’s graphics sub-system: InfiniteReality 4. The whole supercomputer was built using small modules (called bricks), that were connected using very fast NUMAflex interconnects. This connection allowed all devices to work as a single ccNUMA machine, running a single instance of IRIX 6.5 (each module could touch any memory in the system).
The largest multi-rack installations could work with up to 512 MIPS R12000/R14000 CPUs and up to 1 TB of RAM. Up to 16 graphics pipelines could be connected to the system (up to two per G-Brick module). Each pipeline had 1GB of texture memory and was able to render 1300 million pixels per second (full-scene 8-subsample anti-aliased).
InfiniteReality 4 didn’t have any successor. For the newer systems, SGI used ATI FireGL cards instead.
