2 ms·

O2 has a specialized graphics sub-system. Copper? Anyway, it is a shared memory system, and under IRIX, that was done dynamically. The same chips were used i

O2 has a specialized graphics sub-system. Copper? Anyway, it is a shared memory system, and under IRIX, that was done dynamically. The same chips were used in their NT visual workstations. Those did not manage the graphics memory dynamically, but were capable in every other way. At the time, one could push 500mb plus images around like nothing. Was a big deal. SGI did Linux drivers, and the SGI / Microsoft Farenheit project got in the way. Those never left SGI for legal reasons. Had that happened, perhaps Linux for an O2 would make sense. I am not sure that system has ever seen a low level document release.

sillywalk 7y ago
I believe the O2's chipset was actually called CRM. The 1st gen Visual Workstations had a different chipset called 'Cobalt', but also had a Unified Memory Architecture.
- ddingus 7y ago
  That is what I was remembering. The two shared the same graphics core. Cobalt. I knew Copper was not quite right. That is Amiga. Anyway, at the time, PC busses were slow, and one could get a fair amount of RAM on either side of it and sort of do what that system did easy. The plan was to get that graphics system into Linux proper, and legal got in the way. All we ended up with was a frame buffer and no real docs for the graphics chipset that I ever knew of. Too bad. We may have seen some very differentiated PC innovation a bit earlier. If one wanted to do things like real time sub pixel accurate compositing, or mapping video onto dynamically changing surfaces, etc... anything requiring either/or large image data, high throughput between gfx, CPU and RAM, the performance was exemplary. A lot of that was true on a few hundred Mhz O2 as well as the 1ghz Visual Workstations. I spent a fair amount of time using both. Pretty sweet for the time period.

2 ms·

O2 has a specialized graphics sub-system. Copper? Anyway, it is a shared memory system, and under IRIX, that was done dynamically. The same chips were used i

by ddingus 7y ago

sillywalk 7y ago
I believe the O2's chipset was actually called CRM. The 1st gen Visual Workstations had a different chipset called 'Cobalt', but also had a Unified Memory Architecture.
- ddingus 7y ago
  That is what I was remembering. The two shared the same graphics core. Cobalt. I knew Copper was not quite right. That is Amiga. Anyway, at the time, PC busses were slow, and one could get a fair amount of RAM on either side of it and sort of do what that system did easy. The plan was to get that graphics system into Linux proper, and legal got in the way. All we ended up with was a frame buffer and no real docs for the graphics chipset that I ever knew of. Too bad. We may have seen some very differentiated PC innovation a bit earlier. If one wanted to do things like real time sub pixel accurate compositing, or mapping video onto dynamically changing surfaces, etc... anything requiring either/or large image data, high throughput between gfx, CPU and RAM, the performance was exemplary. A lot of that was true on a few hundred Mhz O2 as well as the 1ghz Visual Workstations. I spent a fair amount of time using both. Pretty sweet for the time period.