VPro

General information

The VPro series (code name "Odyssey") is a a computer graphics architecture for SGI workstations. First released on the SGI Octane2, it was subsequently used on the SGI Fuel and SGI Tezro workstations. VPro provides some very advanced capabilities such as per-pixel lighting, also known as "phong shading", and 48-bit RGBA color.

There are currently four different VPro graphics board revisions, called: V6, V8, V10 and V12. The first series were the V6 and V8, with 32MB and 128MB of RAM respectively. The V10 and V12 had double the geometry performance of the older V6/V8, but were otherwise similar. The V6 and V10 can have up to 8MB RAM allocated to textures, while V8 and V12 can have up to 104MB RAM used for textures.

Features

• "OpenGL on a chip"™ technology
• Hardware implementation of specular shading with per-pixel normal interpolation (through the SGIX_fragment_lighting extension)
• 48-bit (12-bit per component) RGBA
• 96-bit hardware-accelerated accumulation buffer for depth of field, full-scene anti-aliasing, motion blurs and other effects
• texture memory capacity 8MB (V6, V10) or 104MB (V8, V12), total memory 32MB (V6, V10) or 128MB (V8, V12)
• Perspective-correct textures and colors
• High-performance hardware clipping

Option:	Color:	RAM:	Max. Texture Memory	Geometry Speed
V6	48bit RGBA	32MB	8MB	Original GE speed
V8	48bit RGBA	128MB	104MB	Original GE speed
V10	48bit RGBA	32MB	8MB	2X Faster GE speed
V12	48bit RGBA	128MB	104MB	2X Faster GE speed

EEPROM information from forum topic

See also this and this topic.

EEPROM information

VPro	Computer	Part#	EEPROM ID
V10	Fuel, old rev.	030_1725_00x	ASTODYB
V10	Fuel, new rev.	030_1826_00x	ASTODYV10
V12	Fuel	030_1726_00x	ASTODY
V12	Fuel	030_1996_00x	ASTODY
V12	Tezro	030_1884_00x	ODY128B1_2
V12	Onyx350 InfinitePerformance	030_1909_00x	ODY128B1_2

'AST' is for 'Asterix', the codename for Fuel. 'ODY' is short for Odyssey, the codename for VPro graphics.

Graphics subsystem

The VPro graphics subsystem consists of an SGI proprietary chip set and associated software. The chip set consists of the buzz ASIC, the pixel blaster and jammer (PB&J) ASIC, and associated SDRAM.

The buzz ASIC is a single-chip graphics pipeline. It operates at 251 MHz and contains on-chip SRAM. The buzz ASIC has three interfaces:

• Host (16-bit, 400-MHz peer-to-peer XIO link)
• SDRAM (The SDRAM is 32 MB (V6 or V10) or 128 MB (V8 or V12); the memory bus operates at half the speed of the buzz ASIC.)
• PB&J ASIC

All VPro boards support the OpenGL ARB imaging extensions, allowing for hardware acceleration of numerous imaging operations at real-time rates.

V6/V8 Pixel Clock Issues

The first generation of VPro boards (V6 & V8) have a design flaw that prohibits graphics modes in much of what might otherwise be considered the normal range for SGI desktop systems:

• Modes in the 109-193MHz range cannot be selected at all on V6/V8.
• Modes that are close to the lower end of that range (like 1280x1024_59/60) are only allowed at 8 bytes/pixel framebuffer size and even at that setting some people reported display problems (noise, flickering).

This limits the ability of the V6 and V8 to use a number of common display resolutions, a situation that can be at least partially over come with the use of reduced blanking. As an example, a CVT-generated 1600x900@60Hz modeline without reduced blanking would have a Pixel Clock of 118.25MHz, which falls in the unusable 109-193MHz Pixel Clock range, while a modeline with reduced blanking would have a Pixel Clock of only 97.75MHz, which could be used by V6 or V8 graphics boards.

See Also

• https://gainos.org/~elf/sgi/nekonomicon/forum/3/16725755/1.html

VPro Display Resolutions

This table was taken from http://www.sgi.com/products/remarketed/octane2/display_resolutions.html

Note: Additional resolutions are possible with custom Video Format Object (VFO) Files

Display Resolutions (V6, V8, V10, V12)	Additional V8/V10/V12 Display Resolutions	Additional V10/V12 Resolutions (3, 4)
1920x1080 at 30Hz interlaced	1920x1200 at 60Hz	1920x1200 at 72Hz (for DCD Option)
1600x1024 at 83Hz (1)	1280x1024 at 100Hz (quad stereo, 21" monitor only)	1920x1200 at 60Hz (for DCD Option)
1280x1024 at 100Hz (quad stereo, 21" monitor only)	1920x1080 at 30Hz interlaced	1920x1080 at 72Hz (for DCD Option)
1280x1024 at 96Hz) (2)	1600x1200 at 75Hz	1920x1080 at 60Hz (for DCD Option)
1280x960 at 30Hz interlaced	1600x1200 at 72Hz	1920x1035 at 30Hz interlaced
1280x720 at 72Hz		1600x1200 at 75Hz (for DCD Option)
1280x720 at 60Hz		1600x1200at 72Hz (for DCD Option)
1024x768 at 75Hz		1600x1200 at 60Hz
1024x768 at 60Hz		1600x1200 at 60Hz (for DCD Option)
800x600 at 60Hz		1600x1024 at 83Hz (for DCD Option)
768x576 at 25Hz interlaced		1600x1024 at 60Hz (for DCD Option)
640x480 at 60Hz		1280x1024 at 85Hz
640x486 at 30Hz interlaced		1280x1024 at 75Hz
		1280x1024 at 72Hz
		1280x1024 at 66Hz (for DCD Option)
		1280x1024 at 60Hz
		1600x1024 at 60Hz (for DCD Option)
		1280x1024 at 30Hz
		1280x960 at 30Hz interlaced (for DCD Option)
		1280x492 at 120Hz stereo (3, 5)
		1024x768 at 96Hz stereo
		800x600 at 60Hz
		768x576 at 25Hz interlaced
		640x486 at 30Hz interlaced
		640x480 at 60Hz

1: 24" monitor recommended for correct aspect ratio
2: 1280x1024 at 60Hz (available with 8-byte frame buffer depths, supports 4-bit per component RGBA, double-buffered with Z)
3: Support for some resolutions requires installation of IRIX 6.5.10 or higher
4: Resolutions designated for the Dual Channel Display (DCD) Option on V12 only are in skew mode for timing compatibility; while the two displays can have different resolutions, they must run at the same refresh rate
5: 1280x492 at 114Hz available with V6 and V8

See Also

• Octane Graphics Boards
• Removing the Dual Head XIO Module