Power Tools 1993 October - Disc 2/Power Tools (Disc 2)(October 1993)(HP).iso/hotlines/cshhl/sgi3d/script.txt

Text File | 1993-05-10 | 12KB | 214 lines

SGI01: Recently, Silicon Graphics has been aggressively attacking HP's
       traditional  mid-range graphics markets.  In July, SGI launched
       the R4000.

       Be assured,  that HP is not  standing  and  watching.  With the
       launch  of  the  3D  Aggressor  promotion  and  other  upcoming
       announcements,  you will see that HP is serious about  shutting
       SGI out of our  traditional  markets  while making  progress in
       penetrating  markets  where SGI has been strong:  AEC and Earth
       Resources.

       The purpose of this presentation is to help you see that HP has
       a better story than SGI,  especially  when it comes to graphics
       workstations  under  $60K.  HP offers  lower  entry  prices and
       higher  performance  in almost  every price  space.  Please use
       this  presentation to help you assemble your sales strategy and
       feel free to use slides in your  customer  presentations  where
       appropriate.

SGI02:  SGI has filled out it's product  portfolio to be successful in
        their traditional  high-end as well as in the mid-range.  This
        slide is a "periodic table" depiction of SGI's current product
        portfolio  excluding   multiprocessor  systems  and  high  end
        servers.  The left hand column shows CPU  characteristics  and
        rows show graphics  options and  capabilities  supported  with
        each respective CPU.

SGI03:  There is far too much to say about  SGI  and/or HP on just one
        slide.  HP strengths can be positioned  as SGI weak points and
        vice versa.

        SGI is  currently a 840 M US$ company  which grew at about 40%
        in 1991/1992.  Their worldwide market share reached 6.7%.  SGI
        acquired  MIPS  Computer in 1991, whose  losses  exceeded  the
        earnings  of the  new  parent,  SGI.  This  places  the  joint
        company  in a  difficult  financial  situation.  Losses  as  a
        result  of the move  were  reported  at 118 M US$.  Under  the
        assumption  that SGI will  make the same  profit  for the next
        years  they  need 3 years  to just  recover  from  this  loss.
        Further, it is reported  that SGI will layoff about 500 former
        MIPS  employees.  This  will  also  affect  SGI's  ability  to
        develop  their "free public  domain"  tools like  EXPLORER and
        others in the future.

        There are two technology white papers available on the hotline
        that discuss SGI's  graphics  technology.  The first  compares
        SGI's distributed 3D library, GL to the X-Consortium offering,
        PEX.  The second paper  discusses  the pros and cons of 64-bit
        technology.

SGI04:  In this slide we compare  entry level systems from SGI and HP;
        the 710C and  720CRX to the Indigo  and the higher  performing
        Indigo XS.

        The 710C  competes  very  nicely  with  the  Indigo  8bit  and
        customers reportedly  mentioned that graphics  performance (3D
        shading) is about equal.

        If you are in  competition  with an  Indigo  XS, you  would be
        better not to  discuss  performance.  In this case it would be
        more   effective  to  discuss  HP  as  a  company,   HP's  CPU
        development strategy, futures, support etc.

SGI05:  In the mid-range SGI has been very aggressive.  HP will not be
        beaten.  Through the 3D  aggressor  program, we competes  very
        nicely with SGI.  The 720CRX-24Z is very  competitive with the
        CRIMSON ELAN graphics,  especially since we have a comfortable
        price  advantage.  The 720-CRX24  compares nicely with the SGI
        XS subsystem,  having the advantage of true color.  The higher
        performance  ELAN graphics  subsystem is the best  comparison.
        In real tests of  application  performance,  it doesn't likely
        show more than 68K quads/sec.  Also note that a CRX24 performs
        amazingly  well in areas like NURBS  thanks to our  Powershade
        rendering library.

SGI06: The  high-end  comparison  shows that there is a good chance of
       beating SGI even if their  offering  includes a VGX, their high
       end  system.  The  slide  actually  shows  some  published  GPC
       performance numbers.  GPC benchmarks are standard programs that
       emulate  application  behavior for different  markets.  This is
       one of the rare numbers SGI published and it is quiet useful in
       convincing  customers  to  keep a TVRX in  mind.  If the VGX or
       VGXT feature set is important to the customer it is very likely
       that  you  will  have  problems.  On the  other  hand  the TVRX
       supports  some  features SGI doesn't,  like  contouring  in HW,
       sectioning/capping  and  deformation  animation.  This  can  be
       especially of help for MCAD customers.

SGI07: Please  refer  to my  white  paper  GL  vs.  PEX  to  get  more
       ammunition  should your customer be asking for GL  availability
       on HP or is  indicating  that  GL  is a  standard  API  on  the
       graphics  markets.  HP will be offering GL 4.0 emulation from a
       third-party  software  partner.  This  will  help you move  SGI
       customer  over to the HP  platform  with a  reduced  impact  on
       software  investment.  This is ideal for  those  customers  who
       currently have application written on GL 4.0 and who would like
       to move to PEX.

SGI08:  Xlib/PEXlib   is  the  solution  of  choice  for   distributed
        graphics.  Here we try to show the  architecture of PEX/PEXlib
        compared  to X/Xlib.  It also shows how very  nicely X and PEX
        fit  together.  Again, the GL vs PEX white paper  explains the
        details and benefits of PEX/PEXlib.

SGI09:  This  is  a  list  of  3rd  party   API's   available   on  HP
        workstations.  Of   particular   interest  is  HOOPS,  a  very
        portable, easy to program and  sophisticated  object  oriented
        API.  As  mentioned  above, SGI GL 4.0 is  available  from Nth
        graphics.  HP is  currently  in  negotiation  to  get a GL 4.0
        implementation  on top of PEXlib.  The current  implementation
        is on top of Starbase.

SGI10:  High level  API's are very often  based on low level  API's as
        this slide shows.  Different markets have different needs.  In
        the Scientific  Visualization  market  segment GL is very well
        known.  SciVis  usually  needs  no  display  lists  to  manage
        complex   hierarchical   geometric   structures.  In   the  ME
        application markets, however,  hierarchical  structures are an
        extremely  important  requirement.  Therefore, GL doesn't have
        much  influence  in  this  market   segment.  However,  it  is
        possible to base  hierarchical  and immediate mode APIs on top
        of PEX.  GL (even OpenGL) will limit the customer to immediate
        mode.

SGI11:  Read this slide carefully!!!  If a customer is currently based
        on GL 4.0 and wants to move to GL 5.0 he has to rewrite  major
        parts  of his  application  and  doesn't  even  get  the  full
        functionality.  This is a very strong point for HP and PEX!  A
        customer  could port to Starbase or PEXlib instead which would
        give him more flexibility and the use of a REAL standard.

SGI12: Finally this slide gives an overview of the architecture limits
       of X, GL and PEX.  As you can  see,  PEX  provides  distributed
       access to a much higher level of graphics functionality.

SGI13:  The next four slides provide a glimpse of target markets where
        HP competes  against  SGI.  It is intended  that these  slides
        give you some  background  for slide  SGI17  which  provides a
        competitive positioning matrix.

        SGI is targeting  the ME-CAD  market very  aggressively.  This
        slide  provides   background  on  HP's  and  SGI's  respective
        positions in this market segment.

SGI14: SGI also tries heavily to penetrate the AEC/FM  market  segment
       where HP was also  traditionally  very strong.  Read this slide
       together with slide SGI17.

SGI15: In the Earth Resources market segment, SGI has  traditionally a
       larger installed base.  HP is currently  attempting to increase
       our presence in this market segment through  aggressive  market
       development activity..  With products like the CRX24 and CRX24Z
       we are very competitive,  especially if we consider our compute
       performance.

SGI16: Scientific  Visualization is the traditional market segment for
       SGI.  Therefore, its number one position is not due to the fact
       we can't compete but due to historical  reasons.  In fact HP is
       gaining   market   share   in  this   segment   very   rapidly.
       Applications like AVS and others run best on HP.

SGI17:  This competitive  positioning  matrix is provided as a tool to
        help you bid the most  optimal  system for each target  market
        segment.  It also will give you an idea of what is the  likely
        system  to be bid by  SGI.  Please  note  that  this is only a
        indication  that  might not be always  true.  Customers  could
        have special  requirements  like dual head or additional  EISA
        slots that make these  recommendations  not  suitable  for the
        given market.

SGI18:  The next few slides  examine HP and SGI's CPU  technology  and
        and  position HP as the most likely to succeed in the  future.
        HP has been a leader in  RISC-based  CPU  architecture  having
        introduced the first commercially  viable RISC-based system in
        1985.  Over the  years,  HP's  experience  in RISC CPU  design
        coupled  with  other  advances  have   positioned  HP  as  the
        undisputed leader in CPU performance and architecture.

        This slides  shows the current and future  development  of our
        PA-RISC technology versus our main competitors.  Press reports
        indicate that SGI will introduce a 67 MHz R4000 processor this
        year which will bring them into the 100 SPECmark range.  Other
        reports  claim that SGI may postpone  the  development  of the
        R5000 processor or might even consider  alternatives that will
        be available on the market to replace its MIPS processors.

SGI19: The R4000  would need to run twice the  current  speed (200 MHz
       internal and 100 MHz external) to keep up with the speed of the
       PA7100  chip.  With the current  technology  available  this is
       very unlikely to happen.  A 67 MHz version is probably all they
       can achieve.

SGI20: SGI is frequently  highlights the 64-bit technology of the MIPS
       R4000 processor.  This is ironic since SGI's current  operating
       system has does not  support 64 bit  addressing.  In any event,
       64-bit addressing  provides some advantages and  disadvantages.
       64-bit physical  addressing isn't needed today because a 32b-it
       physical  addressing  can already  support up to 4 GB RAM which
       isn't a useful  configuration  given the current RAM technology
       available  on the  market.  A white  paper  is  available  that
       speaks in detail about the tradeoffs of 64-bit addressing.

SGI21: Virtual  addressing  can be  handled  as a flat  address  space
       (addresses  are starting with the lowest  address and are going
       up to the  highest  in one  address  space)  or as a  segmented
       address space(segments of 4GB [32bit addressing]) like with the
       PA-RISC and IBM RS/6000.  The advantages and  disadvantages  of
       each technology are listed on this slide.

SGI22: HP's PA-RISC implementation is 64-bit.  In terms of addressing,
       64-bit is not  needed  as you can see on the  previous  slides.
       Please refer to the white paper for more detailed information.