Silicon Graphics confirms its commitment to Unix customers

In a move that clearly confirms their ongoing commitment to their Unix customers, Silicon Graphics has released a high performance 300 MHz MIPS R12000 processor for its mid-range Octane visual workstations. Based on industry-standard benchmarks and at no added cost to their customers, this new CPU boosts the Octane system`s performance by 35%.

"We take our leadership in the visual computing market very seriously," says Vaughan Wooler, MD of Silicon Graphics sub-Saharan Africa. "To make sure we stay that way, a major part of Silicon Graphics` annual resources are dedicated to improving the performance and value of its Unix products running the IRIX operating system. The MIPS R12000 processor is only the first of many planned new improvements to our Unix visual workstations."

The release of the MIPS R12000 ensures that the company`s broad range of customers in the manufacturing, government, entertainment and sciences markets have access to leading-edge technology at competitive prices. Fully binary- and pin- compatible with its predecessor, the MIPS R10000 processor, the 300 MHz R12000 CPU can be easily and cost-effectively integrated into any existing Octane system running IRIX 6.5.

The MIPS R12000 processor can run any IRIX application without developers needing to recompile code. Users of advanced applications such as Dassault Systemes CATIA reap immediate benefits from these performance gains. CATIA is used in industries such as automotive and global aerospace to develop cost-effective digital prototypes as an alternative to expensive physical models.

Silicon Graphics has enhanced the Octane architecture to improve the application performance of R12000 microprocessor-based systems. The company has doubled the secondary cache size from 1MB to 2MB. In addition, Octane systems will be able to support twice the main memory capacity (4GB) as higher density memory becomes available.