SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING NEWS

Mountain View, CA — SGI today announced that Lockheed Martin under contract F41624-99-D-5000 with the U.S. Air Force Air Education and Training Command and the Air Force Research Laboratory, Mesa, AZ, has selected the Silicon Graphics Onyx2 visualization system with InfiniteReality3TM graphics subsystem to upgrade the F-16 flight simulators at the Network Training Center facility, Luke Air Force Base, Glendale, AZ.

Located about 20 miles northwest of Phoenix, Luke Air Force Base is home to the largest fighter pilot training base in the world. Its mission is to train F-16 fighter pilots for the U.S. Air Force and its allies. Approximately 1,000 students annually receive training at Luke, which has trained more U.S. fighter pilots than any other Air Force base.

With its new 24-processor, 10-pipe Silicon Graphics Onyx2 system, Luke Air Force Base now has the computing and graphics power to provide high-fidelity, imagery-based air-to-air and air-to-ground training for F-16 fighter pilots. SGI, Lockheed Martin Services, Inc., Phoenix, and MultiGen-Paradigm Inc., a Computer Associates company, have successfully integrated the new displays, projectors and image generator to provide a dramatic increase in the training fidelity of Luke’s F-16 Networked Training Center simulators.

Extending the industry-leading InfiniteReality graphics architecture, InfiniteReality3 provides the most advanced capabilities for image quality and realism. InfiniteReality3 is ideal for modeling and simulation applications because it allows users to experience the most realistic training environment available as well as reduce program costs.

“This new upgrade will dramatically increase our ability to add more training tasks to those that are already trained in the F-16 simulators, ultimately saving AETC and the U.S. Air Force lots of training dollars,” said Lt. Col. Doug Dal Soglio, chief, F-16 Training Systems at Luke Air Force Base. “There are currently two dodecahedron F-16 simulators in our training facility, and AETC plans to upgrade the second simulator.” The Silicon Graphics Onyx2 visualization supercomputer, with its high-bandwidth ccNUMA architecture, combines supercomputing and visualization technologies to process 3D graphics, 2D imaging and video data in real time. It is an ideal solution for gaining insight into the fields of manufacturing, government, engineering, science, research and entertainment. The SGITM Onyx family of products offers flexible configurations ranging from a deskside platform to multiple-rack systems. The primary feature of Silicon Graphics Onyx2 with InfiniteReality3 graphics subsystem is the enhanced ability to handle high-resolution image and volumetric information through 256MB texture memory and improved texture-mapping techniques. This represents a fourfold increase over the 64MB texture memory delivered by the previous-generation InfiniteReality2TM graphics subsystem, at the same price as InfiniteReality2. InfiniteReality3 continues SGI’s drive to increase performance and reduce customer costs.

SGI provides a broad range of high-performance computing and advanced graphics solutions that enable customers to understand and conquer their toughest computing problems. Headquartered in Mountain View, Calif., with offices worldwide, the company is located on the Web at http://www.sgi.com .

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