Pixar Image Computer
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The Pixar Image Computer was a graphics designing computer made by Pixar in May 1986, intended for the high-end visualization markets, such as medicine. The machine sold for $135,000.00, but also required a $35,000.00 workstation from Sun Microsystems or Silicon Graphics. The system did not sell well, and by 1987 Pixar only had a handful of buyers. In an attempt to gain a foothold in the medical market, Pixar donated ten machines to leading hospitals and sent marketing people to doctor's conventions. However, this had little effect on sales, despite the machine's ability to perform CAT scans and show perfect images of the human body. By 1988 Pixar had only sold 120 Pixar Image Computers, and eventually sold the machine to Viacom in 1990 for $2M.
Walt Disney Feature Animation used dozens of the Pixar Image Computers for CAPS and was using them in production up through Pocahontas in 1995.
[edit] Specifications
It could have two Channel Processors, or Chaps. Each Chap is a 4-way parallel (RGBA) image computer. The chassis, which could hold 9 cards (4 Chaps, 2 Video processors, 2 Off Screen Memory (OSM) cards, and an Overlay Board for the PostScript Windowing System (NeWS). The Overlay board ran a Network Extensible Windowing System (NeWS). The extensions added were to control the image pipeline for roaming, image comparison, and stereo image viewing. The PII-9 was the imaging engine for a Unix host. This was a proprietary machine that was very good with video. It featured from one to four image channels. Each image channel had four processors, one for red, one for green, one for blue, and one for the alpha channel. It processed video in 12 bits per color channel (or 48 bits per pixel) and did IO in 10 bits.
