"Silicon Graphics and its Silicon Studio entertainment subsidiary are focused on extending the company's already established role in media authoring markets by enabling applications development for areas such as live television broadcasting," said David Bagshaw, vice president of marketing for Silicon Graphics. "Our technology and tools such as IRIS OnAir enable broadcasters to shift from canned graphics and dedicated hardware effects to flexible, real-time, 3D video and graphics presentations ideal for live news broadcasting."The unprecedented combination of graphics, animation and video provides a visually rich presentation previously impossible during a live newscast. The Onyx RealityEngine2 system used by CBS News has been equipped with four MIPS(r) R4400(tm) processors and a Sirius Video board. This system replaces a room full of specialized video hardware used in the 1992 election coverage. The Sirius Video option enables live video feed on a lighted and moving 3D model containing five virtual video screens simultaneously displayed over a background of the producer's choice.
Tuesday in Los Angeles, Silicon Studio, Inc. -- a wholly-owned subsidiary of Silicon Graphics, Inc. -- will unveil its strategy, programs and technology offerings for the entertainment industry, from motion pictures to new interactive media.
The flagship Onyx system provides the world's fastest interactive and high-end 3D design and real-time capabilities to customers in a variety of industries such as visual simulation, computational chemistry, film/video, structural dynamics, image processing and animation. The Onyx supports from two to 24 MIPS R4400 CPUs and provides a wide range of graphics options including Extreme(tm), VTX(tm) and its high-end RealityEngine2 graphics subsystems. The RealityEngine2 graphics subsystem is based on a scalable and expandable graphics architecture and, in addition to its advanced texturing and anti-aliasing capabilities, RealityEngine2 graphics sets new standards for image quality and offers unprecedented performance and realism for complex 3D environments.
Sirius Video is the industry's first combination of real-time digital video processing, computer-generated graphics, 3D geometry, image processing and supercomputing performance. Providing dazzling broadcast-quality video, the Sirius Video board is also ideal for scientific and research applications that require full-performance video capture and manipulation.
IRIS OnAir will be available in the first calendar quarter of 1995 free-of-charge to Silicon Graphics developers and customers as an educational service. The product will be available through Silicon Graphics sales representatives.
Contact: Jennifer Rothert Piercey Silicon Graphics, Inc. Phone:(415) 390-2019
Silicon Graphics, Inc. is the leading manufacturer of high-performance visual computing systems. The company delivers interactive three-dimensional graphics, digital media and multiprocessing supercomputing technologies to technical, scientific, creative and information management professionals. Its subsidiary, MIPS Technologies, Inc., designs and licenses the industry's leading RISC processor technology for the computer systems and embedded control markets. Silicon Studio, Inc. delivers authoring and production solutions based on Silicon Graphics systems to the entertainment and interactive media industries. Silicon Graphics, Inc. has offices worldwide and headquarters in Mountain View, California.
