SGI VPro
| Industry | Computer graphics |
|---|---|
| Headquarters | United States |
| Products | Graphics architecture for workstations |
VPro, also referred to as Odyssey, represents a graphics architecture crafted by Silicon Graphics specifically for their workstation series. It made its debut on the Octane2 platform and was subsequently incorporated into the Fuel, Tezro workstations, as well as the Onyx visualization systems, where it carried the name InfinitePerformance.
This architecture brought forward sophisticated capabilities such as per-pixel illumination (phong shading) through the SGIX_fragment_lighting extension and supported 48-bit RGBA color. Despite these innovations, subsequent iterations encountered constraints in bandwidth and exhibited comparatively weaker texture mapping efficiency than rival GPUs, which affected SGI's competitive standing.
The Odyssey-based VPro line consisted of four hardware revisions: V6, V8, V10, and V12. The V6 and V8 models were equipped with 32MB and 128MB of RAM respectively; meanwhile, the V10 and V12 versions doubled the geometry processing speed while keeping similar hardware specifications. Texture memory capacity differed among models, with a maximum of 8MB for V6/V10 and up to 108MB for V8/V12. It is important to note that the V10 and V12 boards designed for Fuel, Tezro, and Onyx 3000 utilized a distinct XIO connector compared to those in Octane2 systems.
The VPro hardware subsystem is built around a proprietary SGI chipset that includes the buzz ASIC, the pixel blaster and jammer (PB&J) ASIC, along with dedicated SDRAM. The buzz ASIC functions as a single-chip graphics pipeline running at 251 MHz with integrated SRAM, interfacing through:
- Host connection (16-bit, 400-MHz peer-to-peer XIO link)
- SDRAM (32 MB on V6/V10 or 128 MB on V8/V12; memory bus operates at half the buzz ASIC clock speed)
- PB&J ASIC
After resolving a patent infringement dispute, SGI obtained rights to certain Nvidia Quadro GPUs and launched new VPro-branded cards (V3, VR3, V7, VR7) based on GeForce 256 and Quadro GPU architectures. These later models are fundamentally different from the original Odyssey series and do not support SGI MIPS workstation compatibility.
Every VPro graphics board provides support for OpenGL ARB imaging extensions, facilitating real-time hardware acceleration of multiple imaging processes.
VPro Series (Odyssey-based)
| Model | Colour depth | Memory | Texture memory (max) | Geometry engine speed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| V6 | 48-bit RGBA | 32 MB | 8 MB | Original |
| V8 | 48-bit RGBA | 128 MB | 104 MB | Original |
| V10 | 48-bit RGBA | 32 MB | 8 MB | 2× Original |
| V12 | 48-bit RGBA | 128 MB | 104 MB | 2× Original |