The Octane was SGIs top-end workstation. It uses a similar architecture to the larger machines like Origin 2000 and Onyx 2 – multi-processor with a large bandwidth crossbar.

The Octane comes with a range of processor options, and is capable to taking 1 or 2 processors. The processors are held on daughter boards which attach to the Octanes motherboard. As such, you can’t buy a second CPU and plug it in – you need to ditch your existing CPU and replace it with a dual-CPU board. This accounts for the relative high price of dual CPU boards as opposed to single CPU boards on the second hand market.

There are two series of Octanes. Early machines used IMPACT graphics and are limited in the level of processor upgrades. Later models have VPRO graphics and their processor options are still being added to by SGI.

Even thought IMPACT graphics can be considered old in computing terms, you can’t make straight comparisons between (say) an R10k-195 Solid IMPACT Indigo 2 and an R10k-195 Octane SI. The enormous amount of I/O bandwidth available across Octanes crossbar, plus some neat tweaks in the implementation of IMPACT, mean that the Octane has significantly faster graphics. See Ian Mapleson’s performance stats for more in-depth comparison – in particular, his comparison of Indigo2 and Octane.

The IMPACT-based graphics options for Octane are as follows:

• SI –
  

• SE –
  

• SSI –
  

• SSE –
  

• MXI –
  

All the ‘S’ cards (with no hardware texture support) can have TRAM boards added for instant hardware texture support. SI and SE can take one TRAM, SSI and SSE can take two. SSI and SSE with 2 TRAMS are equivalent to MXI.

Physically, the Octane is pretty large – almost square. Looking from the back, we have the motherboard on the left (mounted sideways – CPUs and DIMMs facing in towards the middle of the chassis.
In the middle-bottom of the chassis is the power supply – above that, the PCI card cage. Above that, at the middle-top of the chassis, are the drive bays – 3 3.5″ bays. Sorry, no internal CD-ROMs in Octane :-( But room for a couple of high speed SCA drives and a DAT drive.
The right hand side of the chassis is taken up by the 4 XIO slots. Throwing in multiple graphics cards will give you a dual-head machine. As long as you can get the cooling right, it should be possible to make a triple or quad head machine.

Storage

Octanes have 3 internal 3.5" drive bays. These provide SCA connectors and are a 40mb/s SCSI-2 bus. Drives need to be mounted on custom SGI sleds – these are the same as used in Origin 200s and 2000s.

Due to the depth of the sled and the space for the drive, you are unlikely to fit a hard drive + SCSI converter. Because of this you’ll only really be able to fit SCA drives internally in on Octane. However, as SCSI is backwards compatible, you can fit the latest 15k RPM LVD drives.

Owner’s Guide, Datasheets and Whitepapers

The Octane Owner’s Guide can be found on Techpubs.

There are also local copies of:

• Octane Owner’s Guide
• Octane Datasheet
• Octane Digital Video Datasheet
• Octane Personal Video Datasheet
• Octane Networking Datasheet
• Octane CAD Duo Datasheet
• An Illustration of the MIPS® R12000TM Microprocessor and OCTANE System Architecture
• Introducing the Architectures for the Next Generation
• Entertainment Solutions White Paper

I love the Origin 200. For the form factor, it just can’t be beaten – lots of storage capacity with decent processing power and immense I/O. More than that, the underlying technology is deeply impressive. Silicon Graphics at it’s finest.

At today’s prices, and given the modular nature of the O200, it is unbeatable in terms of price/performance.

All Origin 200 units (Origin 200, Origin GIGAChannel, Origin Vault) are available as either a tower or a 19" rack mount chassis. The tower skins can be easily removed to make a chassis rack mountable – conversely you can add tower skins to a rackmount box to make it a free standing tower.

They’re very flexible machines – this modularity of design has been carried on in the Origin 300/350 and Altix 350.

CPUs

Each O200 can have 1 or 2 CPUs. Like the Octane, these are either single or dual modules. As the O200 and the Octane are based on the same Origin 2000 technology, the CPU choices are very similar.

RAM

Each O200 can have from 32MB to 2GB RAM fitted. There are 8 DIMM slots, arranged in 4 banks. DIMMs must be fitted in pairs in each bank.

Bank 0 must be fully populated for the machine to boot.

Storage

Each Origin 200 has 2 5.25" bays, with 50pin 20mb/s SCSI connections. They also have 6 3.5" hot plug bays, which use SCA connectors, and plug into a 40mb/s SCSI bus.

The 5.25" bays don’t require any special mounting kits – the assembly is removed and the drives can be screwed in on either side.

The 3.5" bays require drive sleds – these are the same as on the Octane. There are no limits on drive capacity. Due the depth limits on the sleds you will not be able to fit non-SCA drives with adapters – you must use 80pin SCA drives. However, due to the backwards compatible nature of SCSI, the latest LVD high speed SCA drives will still work in an O200.

Origin Vault

Getting more use out of the Origin 200 chassis, there is the Origin Vault. This provides 6 3.5" SCA drive bays on a differential SCSI bus, and 2 5.25" drive bays on a SE SCSI bus.

To use both busses, you will need to have 2 connections to your host chassis:

• one to a differential SCSI card (either XIO from a GIGAChannel, or a PCI card in either GIGAChannel or an O200)
• one to an SE SCSI card (XIO, PCI, or on-board SCSI)

Craylink

Craylink on the Origin 200 is the same as NUMAlink on the Origin 2000. The only difference is that it is limited to 2 nodes on the O200. It provides a 1.15GB/s connection between two O200s, giving you a 2 or 4 way NUMA machine. To expand to another chassis, all you need to do is open the case on the 2nd machine, change the DIP switches above the drive bays so that it is a slave node, then connected the two chassis together with a Craylink cable, and power them on.

During the POST the master chassis will probe the Craylink interface, and configure the machine up with the resources of both chassis. Although you had two physically seperate O200s, when Craylinked together, they become one single system image machine, with the resources of both chassis fully available to IRIX.

GIGAChannel

The GIGAChannel expansion box is basically an O200 chassis with the normal drive bays at the front. However, inside it has 5 XIO slots and 4 64bit PCI slots.

GIGAChannel plugs into an XIO adapter daughter board – these fit just above the Craylink connectors on the main motherboard.

Each O200 can have 1 GIGAChannel connected to it – this means the max configuration is 2 O200 towers, each with their own GIGAChannels.

Maximum Configuration

One of the best strengths is the scalability of the Origin 200. In the maximum configuration possible, you would have 4 chassis:

• 1 master CPU unit
• 1 slave CPU unit
• GIGAChannel connected to the master
• GIGAChannel connected to the slave
• And as many Origin Vaults as you feel you need …….

This would obviously give you an impressive amount of I/O, processing power etc.

Graphics

Graphics cards weren’t an option from SGI , and Origin 200s were never sold as visualisation systems.

However, GIGAChannel neatly adds a load of single-width XIO slots to an O200. This means that single-width XIO graphics boards can be fitted. This does limit you to SI or SE cards from an Octane – however, in theory, you can have a multi-head 4 way machine. Think Octane on serious steroids :-)

Greg Douglas of Reputable did some testing – his post can be found here.

PSITech makes an IRIX supported PCI graphics card – the RAD4C-KM. Speed will be, frankly, laughable compared to the XIO boardsets, but it’s still an option that could be explored.

Owner’s Guide, Datasheets and Whitepapers

The O200 Owner’s Guide can be found on Techpubs.

There are also local copies of:

• Origin 200 Owner’s Guide
• Origin 200 Maintenance Guide
• Origin 200 Datasheet
• High Definition I/O datasheet
• System Overview of the SGI Origin 200/2000 Product Line

This table lists an overview of all the machines from SGI up to the O2. Please get in touch if there are any ommisions, errors, etc.

PM1 – based on a design licensed from Andy Bechtolsheim, Stanford (before SUN).

IP = “Inhouse Processor”

This section of the site contains an overview of various machines produced by SGI. There are also links to other sites that have more detailed information about each machine.

For a complete overview of the entire Silicon Graphics product line, up to early O2s, you want to look at the Model Overview page.

At the moment there are summaries/tech info for:

• Indy

• Challenge S

• Indigo 2

• Origin 200

• Octane

You should also look at Ian Mapleson’s SGI Tech pages for lots more information – especially for performance comparisons between different models.

Ian not only has an excellent Indy buyer’s guide, but also one for the Indigo2 – required reading if you’re looking at one of those machines. Word is some of Ian’s CFT is taken up with an Octane buyer’s guide too ….

SGI’s legacy product page for earlier MIPs machines can be found at http://www.sgi.com/products/legacy/mips.html

If you have any extra information about the machines listed here, would like to see a summary for particular SGI machine, or have spotted any errors, please get in touch.

You might also want to look at the Periodic Tables for an idea of how various machines fit to SGI’s product lineup.

POWER CHALLENGE Periodic Table