HP VISUALIZE X-Class User manual

The world’s fastest Windows NT-based
visualization performance
VISUALIZE X-Class Personal Workstations
HP

The Power to VISUALIZE
Your Solution – Now
Award-winning performance. Hot
graphics systems. Leading edge
technology. Unique manageability.
Great Value. That’s the story of the
HP VISUALIZE X500 and X550
Personal Workstations.
These systems have it all. They give
you the high-end graphics capabilities
of Hewlett-Packard’s market-leading
UNIX 3D workstations – including the
new HP VISUALIZE-fx6+ graphics
subsystem. HP VISUALIZE Personal
Workstations bring you the superior
performance of single or dual Intel
Pentium III Xeon Processors running
at 500MHz or 550MHz. They support
up to 2 GB of system memory, and they
include many HP innovations for
enhanced reliability and manageability.
Put it all together and you have the
world’s fastest Windows NT-based
graphics performance and the power
to VISUALIZE your solution now.
Engineered for the
Professional Designer
The HP VISUALIZE X500 and X550
Personal Workstations are designed
for the professional user who performs
simulations, virtual prototyping,
complex modeling and high-end
visualization tasks on the
Windows NT operating system.
Whether you’re an engineer, designer,
scientist or creative artist, these
systems are ideal for bringing your
ideas to life quickly and vividly. They
provide the extreme graphics perform-
ance and leading edge processing
power you need to work faster and
achieve more in today’s competitive
business environment. HP VISUALIZE
Personal Workstations are the ultimate
design machines.
HP VISUALIZE Personal Workstations:
System Power
Available leading edge system features
include single or dual Intel Pentium III
Xeon 500 MHz or 550 MHz processors,
the Intel 440GX chip set, dual Ultra Wide
SCSI channels with single or dual 10K
RPM disk drives. AGP-2X (133 MHz)
support and DMA (Direct Memory
Access) support are standard.
HP Industry Leading Manageability
and Reliability
HP’s innovations build on the robust
system features by adding tools for
increased reliability and manageability.
These include HP FastRAID for
enhanced mass storage performance,
HP TopTools for industry leading net-
work based management, HP MaxiLife
for hardware self-diagnosis and invest-
ment protection, and HP UltraFlow for
advanced, thermally controlled cooling.
Image courtesy of Alias | Wavefront
Image courtesy of MARC
HP VISUALIZE-fx+Graphics: 3D Power
HP VISUALIZE Personal Workstations
put the breakthrough power of HP’s
VISUALIZE-fx+graphics subsystems
behind your work. The X-Class systems
are powered by HP’s highest-perform-
ance graphics subsystem – the new HP
VISUALIZE-fx6+ subsystem, as well as
the new HP VISUALIZE-fx2+ and fx4+ and
the available ELSA GLoria Synergy+.
Across the board, these highly scalable
subsystems enable you to express your
ideas and gain insight more quickly than
ever before. They have it all: new full-
scene anti-aliasing, 2D and 3D texture
mapping, 3D geometry acceleration,
hardware occlusion culling and new
hardware shadow casting.
With breakthrough fx+graphics on
your side, you’ll have the power to
VISUALIZE any design you can imagine.
HP Maximum Application
Performance and Quality
HP adds increased value to
VISUALIZE-fx+graphics with
industry leading driver technology.
For enhanced application performance
and quality, HP works closely with
leading independent software vendors
to tune applications for the highest
performance on HP systems. This
cooperative work helps ensure that
the applications you count on will
deliver their best performance on
HP VISUALIZE Personal Workstations.
Interoperability in the Windows
NT/UNIX Environment
You can count on HP to give you
systems that work in a heterogeneous
Windows NT-UNIX environment.
HP VISUALIZE Personal Workstations
are bundled with tools to enable
integration into UNIX environments,
including NFS and trial software for
X Window and UNIX command utilities.
Image courtesy of SDRC

feature what you get benefit how it helps you advantage how it’s unique
Provides excellent application performance for
the largest, most complex visualization tasks
Provides excellent application performance for
larger, complex visualization tasks
Provides excellent application performance for
small to mid-size visualization tasks
Particularly useful for industrial styling applications
where surface detail is crucial to the design process
Delivers up to 2X performance with visualization
applications
Provides soft shadows, motion blur and image
processing
Creates photo-realistic shadows and allows
object self-shadowing
Increased photo-realism, visual analysis,
simulation and animation performance
Delivers the industry’s fastest graphics
performance on Windows NT with 6 PA-RISC
geometry engines
Delivers exceptional graphics performance with
4 PA-RISC geometry engines
Delivers exceptional graphics performance with
2 PA-RISC geometry engines
Enhances image quality by eliminating jagged
edges in the full scene, allows for more accurate
display of very small features
Improves rendering performance by eliminating
the drawing of hidden objects
Advanced feature previously available only on
UNIX graphics super-workstations
As with hardware accumulation, plus a feature
that is offered exclusively by HP for Windows-
based workstations
Allows for the added functionality of hardware
shadow casting and hardware accumulation buffer
fx6+ graphics subsystem
fx4+ graphics subsystem
fx2+ graphics subsystem
Full-scene anti-aliasing
Occlusion culling
Hardware accumulation buffer
Hardware shadow casting
Optional texture mapping engine
HP VISUALIZE
Graphics
HP VISUALIZE
Personal
Workstation
Systems
Puts increased power and efficiency behind
demanding applications
Enhances application performance, supports work
with large models and 3D animation rendering
Provides hard disk space and performance need-
ed to work on large models and multiple designs
Supports integration and interoperability
between UNIX and Windows NT systems
Advanced administration and management
of system components and settings
Increases reliability and provides hardware
self-diagnosis
Keeps components cool, increases reliability,
decreases total cost of ownership
Provides superior computing performance with
Intel’s 70 new processor instructions
Facilitates seamless designing, modeling and/or
rendering of large, complex visualization tasks
Ultra Wide SCSI’s high data throughput and
36GB of storage mean greater productivity
Optimizes cross-platform workflow and use
of tools on both operating systems
Provides industry leading remote and local
net-based management and diagnostics
Integrated with TopTools for remote
administration and monitoring
Advanced cooling system with four thermally
controlled fans
Single or Dual Intel Pentium III Xeon
Processors: 500MHz or 550MHz
Scalability to 2 GB system memory
HP FastRAID and mass storage expand-
ability: up to 36 GB internal disk
NFS software: for UNIX connectivity, trial
X-Window emulation and UNIX commands
HP TopTools
HP MaxiLife
HP UltraFlow
The world’s fastest
Windows NT-based
visualization
performance
x
Class

Package
• Expandable mid-tower package
• HP Multifunction Ergonomic Keyboard with programmable
application shortcut buttons
• HP 3-Button Mouse
• Support for two 10K RPM Ultra Wide SCSI hard disk drives
• HP UltraFlow cooling system for optimal PC Workstation cooling
• HP MaxiLife system diagnostics with front-panel LCD message display
Processor
• Single or dual Intel Pentium III Xeon 500MHz and 550MHz processors:
- Intel 440GX AGP chipset
- 100MHz front side bus (FSB) system bus
• Support for Intel Multiprocessor Specification (MPS) 1.1
for dual-processor technology
Processor Cache
• 32K non-blocking level 1 cache and 512K or 1MB non-blocking
level 2 cache for fast access to priority data
- Operates at full system speed (100MHz)
Graphics Subsystems
• VISUALIZE-fx6++: The industry’s fastest graphics performance on
Windows NT using six dedicated floating-point processors based
on PA-RISC technology
• VISUALIZE-fx4++: World-class geometry engines using four dedicated
floating-point processors based on PA-RISC technology
• VISUALIZE-fx2++: World-class geometry engines using two dedicated
floating-point processors based on PA-RISC technology
• 18 MB SGRAM frame and Z buffer memory – on fx+graphics
subsystems only
• ELSA GLoria Synergy+graphics subsystem with 8 MB SGRAM
Texture Acceleration and Memory Option
• 1-2 Dedicated texture acceleration processor(s)*
• 16-32 MB SDRAM dedicated texture memory*
• Point-sampled, bilinear, and trilinear MIP mapping
• 3D texture mapping
• Shadow texture mapping
System Memory
• 128 MB DIMM, 256 MB DIMM and 512 MB DIMM 100MHz ECC
synchronous dynamic RAM (SDRAM) DIMM
• Expandable to 2 GB through four DIMM slots
• Error checking and correcting (ECC) for detection and correction
of 1-bit errors and detection of 2-bit errors
Hard Disk Storage
• 9.0 GB 10K Ultra Wide SCSI
• 18.0 GB 10K Ultra Wide SCSI
Hard disk controller
• Dual, integrated, independent PCI Ultra Wide SCSI controllers with
support for internal and external SCSI peripherals
• Optional HP FastRAID
- Disk caching and hardware striping solution based on
Adaptec’s RAIDport technology
- Boosts disk I/O performance up to 80%
Removable Media
• Integrated 1.44 MB floppy disk drive
• PCI Bus Master Ultra ATA/33 interfaces for up to
two internal IDE devices
• 32X CD-ROM Drive
• DVD Drive
• CD-R/RW Drive
• ZIP IDE Drive
Operating system
• HP-supported operating system: Windows NT® Workstation 4.0
Networking and I/O
• 10/100 Ethernet LAN interface with 32-bit auto-sensing
HP NightDirector and LAN remote power on/off
• Two USB ports
• One 25 pin parallel port
• Two 9 pin serial ports
* fx2+
/fx4+: 1 accelerator, 16 MB texture memory
fx6+: 2 accelerators, 32 MB texture SDRAM
technical specifications
x
Class
The latest information about HP VISUALIZE Workstation products is
available on the World Wide Web at
http://www.hp.com/visualize .
Information in this document is subject to change
without notice.
Copyright 1999 Hewlett-Packard Co.
Printed in the USA
5968-4832E
UNIX is a registered trademark in the United States and other countries, licensed exclusively
through X/Open Company Limited. Windows and Windows NT are U.S. registered trademarks
of Microsoft Corporation. Intel and Pentium are registered trademarks and Pentium III Xeon is
a trademark of Intel Corporation. XWindow, Adaptec, and NSF are all registered trademarks.
Cover screen image courtesy of PTC. Inside screen image courtesy of SoftImage.