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Silicon Graphics
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Building a visual world
Silicon Graphics Octane
An IRIX workstation with a modular tower enclosure.
MakerSilicon Graphics
Era1990s
TypeVisual computing workstation
About this object
The Octane followed the Indigo² in SGI’s workstation range. The case photographs show the front, side, and internal layout of the example in this collection.
Inspect the original photograph
From the collection
The machine, photographed here
Photographs of the Octane as it is held in the collection.
Technical record
Silicon Graphics Octane
| Introduced | 1997 |
|---|---|
| Processor | One or two MIPS R10000, R12000 or R14000, 175–600 MHz |
| Memory | Up to 8 GB, ECC |
| Graphics | IMPACT SI / SSI / MXI; VPro V6–V12 on Octane2 |
| Interconnect | XBOW crossbar ASIC, roughly 1.6 GB/s per port |
| Expansion | XIO, plus PCI via a shoebox |
| Operating system | IRIX 6.4 and later |
Architecture
Almost every desktop of the period hung its processor, memory and graphics off a shared bus, so any two of them competing meant both waited. The Octane replaced the bus with a crossbar: a switch that opens a private path between any two ports at once. Graphics could stream from memory while a second processor worked and disk traffic moved, none of it contending. It is the same idea as a telephone exchange rather than a party line, and it is why the machine held its value long after its clock speed stopped being impressive.
Record & provenance
The Octane followed the Indigo² in SGI’s workstation range. The case photographs show the front, side, and internal layout of the example in this collection.
Reference: ATX-OBJ-016-IMG-6119
Source: collection inventory, photographs, and notes accompanying Serious Machines (Amir Husain, 2024).