Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!samsung!usc!apple!bionet!ames!dftsrv!drax!buck From: buck@drax.gsfc.nasa.gov (Loren (Buck) Buchanan) Newsgroups: comp.graphics Subject: Re: Real-time graphics via computer - custom hardware? Message-ID: <4174@dftsrv.gsfc.nasa.gov> Date: 11 Dec 90 21:31:22 GMT References: <1990Dec08.075337.10213@ddsw1.MCS.COM> <61528@masscomp.ccur.com> Sender: news@dftsrv.gsfc.nasa.gov Reply-To: buck@drax.gsfc.nasa.gov (Loren (Buck) Buchanan) Organization: Computer Sciences Corporation @ NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Lines: 35 In article <61528@masscomp.ccur.com> mark@calvin.westford.ccur.com (Mark Thompson) writes: >Your best bet is an off the shelf i860 based rendering engine. These are >capable of somewhere around 20K to 50K polygons per second for a modest >price: $5K to $10K. This will limit your scene complexity to under 600 >to 1600 polygons, a fairly crude scene. Another possibility is the new board set from Silicon Graphics which will give similar performance for $5k (it double buffers 4096 colors, or will single buffer 16 million). This board has 24bit Z-buffer for quick and easy hidden surface removal. It is AT bus based, and is NOT a CGA/EGA/etc. emulator. You may be able to increase the frame rate if you can pull the sorts of tricks used by the video games (redraw only small parts of the screen at a time, minimize true 3D operations, etc.). The big advantage of custom hardware is that it can be tailored to your specific application. Generation of displays is quite often easy to parallelize. Silicon Graphics in its high end workstations has 20 pixel processors working in parallel to modify screen memory. The AT&T Pixel machine can be set up with a single 18 processor or dual 9 processor pipelines feeding into a set of pixel processors. I did not see the original posting, and without knowing more about the application, I really cannot say which approach mentioned in this or Mark's posting will best do the job. B Cing U Buck Loren Buchanan | buck@drax.gsfc.nasa.gov | #include CSC, 1100 West St. | ...!ames!dftsrv!drax!buck | typedef int by Laurel, MD 20707 | (301) 497-2531 | void where_prohibited(by law){} Phone tag, America's fastest growing business sport.