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From: edel...@play.corp.sgi.com (John Edelson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sgi
Subject: SGI Developers Forum !!! (2/12-2/14)
Message-ID: <1990Dec11.184946.1136@odin.corp.sgi.com>
Date: 11 Dec 90 18:49:46 GMT
Sender: n...@odin.corp.sgi.com (Net News)
Reply-To: edel...@play.corp.sgi.com (John Edelson)
Organization: sgi
Lines: 335
Posted: Tue Dec 11 19:49:46 1990
SGI is holding its first-ever developers conference! It is a 3-day event
which is meant, frankly, to be the finest technical conference that we
can put together. Its intended audience are developers at end-user sites,
commercial software developers, universities, and in the government. We are
inviting all developers and applications designers working on the IRIS
Workstations and/or on the GL running on the R/6000s or PCs (undre Dos or Unix).
We're letting out all the technical heavyweights as well as most of the
engineers acutally implementing the projects. We intend to
address all the tough questions and have a number of topics on which
we'll be soliciting input. (The preliminay agenda is attached
below.) And I quote from the brochure:
"We are building the foundation that will help you create the applications
people want to use in the 90's. We are serious about sharing with you
what is really going on by: showing you the best way to use the tools we
have created, exploring what we can accomplish together, and by listening
to what you have to say. This forum will be the most significant event you
can attend in 1991. We look forward to seeing you there"
- SGI Software Engineering
***************************************************************
It's February 12-14 at the Grand Hyatt Hotel, San Francisco.
Make reservations by calling Gretel Wittke at CMI, 415 398-5352. x265
The price is $695. It's reduced to $595 if received prior to
December 26. And "university staff & students" can get in for $350.
******************************************************************
Preliminary Agenda Topics
Outlook
Technical sessions will run between 45 minutes and 2 hours in length. They will
typically include discussion and demonstration of existing and future
technology. Strong emphasis will be placed on how to best utilize features for
high quality application development.
Exhibits will run concurrently with the technical sessions from Tuesday
afternoon through Thursday morning, and include product demonstrations from SGI
and third-party vendors of application development technologies.
Short course tutorials will be held on a continuous revolving basis throughout
the three days. Topics will include various graphics programming subjects, as
well as parallel processing techniques.
Space is available for special interest group impromptu exchanges on topics of
common interest throughout the week for anyone wishing to hold a session.
Sessions
Subject to change /Sessions to be added
Keynote Applications of the 90's
Jim Clark, Chairman and Founder
General
SGI Development Environment Roadmap - (A1):
Jim Barton, VP and General Manager, System Software Division
A detailed disclosure on the evolution of the IRIS software environment over
the next 18 months. Specifically includes release plans, position statements
regarding standards covering planned functionality.
SGI Developer's Program - (A2): Alan Trimble, Chief Developer's Advocate
Announcement and demonstration of a new phase of developer support services.
Includes discussion of geographically distributed application development
centers, electronic communications tools and a new generation developer kit.
MIPS Architecture and ABI - (A3): Forest Baskett, Senior VP, Research and
Development
A detailed explanation of the MIPS Architecture and its evolution towards an
Applications Binary Interface. Specific attention will be given to the
capabilities of present and future processor subsystems.
Software Distribution and Licensing - (A4):
Ben Passarelli, Software Release and Distribution Manager
A discussion of how SGI will utilize Network License Management and CD-ROM
technology for software distribution, developer support and application
distribution programs.
System Software
IRIXtm Features, Enhancements and Release Plans - (B1):
Vance Nakamoto, Director of Software Product Engineering, SSD
Detailed discussion of the IRIX 4.0 ("Cypress") feature list and associated
developer programs including schedules for developer availability at each
milestone of the controlled release process. Details on IRIX 3.3 to 4.0
compatibility and transition techniques will be covered.
Secure IRIX - (B2): Phil Ronzone, SSD Engineering
Discussion of the current and future features of IRIX for secure environments.
REACTtm, Real-Time Programming and Event Handling - (B3):
Jim Barton, VP and General Manager, SSD
A discussion of the features in IRIX for real-time programming support down to
the sub-millisecond level. Includes presentation of how to use these features
with demonstrations of example applications.
Peripherals and Device Support - (B4): Dave Olson, ESD Engineering
A tutorium on peripheral support development for IRIS workstations including
examples.
SGI and DCE - (B5): Nai-Ting Hsu, Director, SSD Engineering
A discussion of distributed computing and SGI's plans to implement OSF's
Distributed Computing Environment.
Foundation Tools and Techniques
SGI's Visual CASE Environment - (C1): Pavan Nigam, Director, SSD Engineering
A complete tour of the development plans for SGI's visual suite of tools that
make software development a highly visual and functionally integrated process.
Includes an explanation of complementary third-party offerings.
SGI Compiler Technologies - (C2): Bean Anderson, SSD Engineering
A discussion on products that have been recently released and future products.
Will cover parallel languages, ANSI C and C++ with emphasis on future
directions in the compiler / language tool areas.
Object-Oriented Programming and C++ - (C3): Mark Linton, Principal Scientist,
R&D
An open discussion of object-oriented programming techniques and C++ as the
basis for SGI's evolving object-oriented development environments.
Parallel Processing Tools and Techniques - (C4): Dave Babcock, SSD Engineering
A demonstration and discussion covering the uses of Power FORTRAN and Power C
concentrating on how to build programs which take advantage of parallel
architectures.
Optimized Libraries for SGI Computers - (C5):
Jean-Pierre Panziera, Parallel Team Leader, Applications
A discussion on the use of optimized libraries to be provided by SGI including
Linear Algebra (BLAS, LAPACK), signal processing (FFT, convolutions) and more
general areas (parallel sorting). Optimized source code will be available at
this session.
IRIS Showcase - (C6): Tom Davis, ESD Engineering
A drawing and presentation tool designed and tuned to run efficiently on SGI
workstations. Discussion of how the software is architected with source
examples. Source will be available at this session.
Software Development for Distributed Visual Processing - (C7):
Nai-Ting Hsu, Director, SSD Engineering
A discussion of high speed networking, distributed software development tools
and network management facilities including demonstrations.
3270 Connectivity and Distributed Applications - (C8): Bob Horen, SSD
Engineering
A discussion of SGI connectivity to IBM systems for distributed applications
including 3270 emulation and HLLAPI environments. Demo source available at this
session.
Software Bug Reporting System - (C9): Mike Shields, CSD Engineering
Presentation of SGI's next generation KNOWLEDGE database system for customer
problem resolution. Includes discussion of SCR submission capability, related
technical support information, and demonstration of working tools.
Graphics, Windowing and GUI's
IRIS Graphics Library Product Plans - (D1):
Kurt Akeley, VP and Chief Scientist, ASD Engineering
A discussion of the GL including products shipped by IBM, IRISVision, and SGI's
GL evolution. Includes discussion on GL interaction with various window
systems, the compatibility of various GL implementations and the philosophy
behind the evolution of the GL itself. This session will include significant
yet-to-be-announced products.
Native X11 on IRIS Workstations - (D2): Tom Paquin, Manager, Window Systems,
ESD
The X11 implementation in IRIX 4.0 will be discussed in detail. Includes
demonstrations of capabilities and performance.
Mixed Model GL/X Programming - (D3): Michael Toy, ESD Engineering
A detailed discussion and demonstration of the techniques associated with
developing applications that mix the use of X11 and the GL. Includes suggested
guidelines for optimum application performance.
Display PostScript, Fonts and Font Managers - (D4): Lance Welsh, ESD
Engineering
A discussion focusing on SGI's DPS implementation and accompanying programming
interfaces. Discussion will include display extensions to PostScript, the
integration of the X window system and SGI enhancements. The impact of DPS on
the current font manager and font formats will also be examined, along with
future SGI font manager plans.
The IRIS Desktop User Environment - (D5): Eva Manolis, Betsy Zeller, ESD
Engineering
This session will include discussion of the success of WorkSpace and the
integration of applications with this user environment. Discussion will also
include new features and product plans designed for the application developer
and user.
Silicon Graphics Style Guidelines - (D6): Rob Myers, ESD Engineering
Discussion focuses on a coherent set of application style guidelines building
upon OSF/Motif style compliance for the SGI development community. Enhancements
will be focussed on including the use of real-time dynamics, continuous
feedback, full color, graphics-arts quality layout and typography, lighting and
other features appropriate for graphics workstations of the 90's.
Graphics Utility Tools and Libraries - (D7): Paul Haeberli, Principal Scientist
This talk describes libraries and tools that are available to support the
solution of common graphics problems. The tools handle problems including
triangulating concave regions for rapid display, drawing character strings
using geometry, creating beveled and extruded shapes, automatic generation of
triangle meshes, creating color separations... and many more. Example code will
be available at this session.
Developing GL Applications for IRISVision - (D8):
Bruce Thompson, Director, Software Engineering, PSD
A discussion and demonstration of the tools and techniques involved in
developing GL applications on IRISVision systems. Developer kits will be
available at this session.
Porting an IRIS application to IRISVision - (D9): Customer Case Study TBD
Multiprocessor Graphics Applications - (D10): Dan Baum, Manager, ASD
Engineering
Discussion on the use of multiprocessing in conjunction with graphics hardware
to boost graphics application performance. Specific discussion and
demonstration on the use of data partitioning and cache coherency to take
advantage of shared memory / multiprocessor hosts for performance tuning.
Alternative Graphics API's, Panel Session - (D11): Vendor Participants TBD
Graphics in the Future, an Interactive Session - D12):
Kurt Akeley, VP and Chief Scientist, ASD Engineering
In the past seven years SGI has shipped systems with performance increases over
three orders of magnitude and numerous new features. This rapid evolution will
continue for the foreseeable future. Kurt will share SGI's thoughts on the
future of graphics, and openly discuss your ideas and requirements as well.
Beginning GL Programming Tutorium - (D13): Mason Woo, Customer Education
A future 3D Graphics Toolkit - (D14): Rikk Carey, Manager, ASD Engineering
Discussion of a set of unannounced object-oriented software libraries for
application developers writing interactive 3D programs.
UI Builder Panel Session - (D15): Vendor Participants TBD
Developing IRISVision Applications - (D16): Vendor Case Study TBD
Image Library - (D17): Chris Walker, Manager, ASD Engineering
A discussion of an unannounced, object-oriented image processing toolkit for
developing applications which create, process and display images on SGI
workstations.
Advanced Tools and Techniques
Multimedia Applications Environment - (E1): Mark Callow, ESD Engineering
A description of SGI's plans and foundation technology for supporting
multi-media applications. Discussion will include details on audio, video,
MIDI, Animation, event synchronization and multi-media document formats.
Simulation Systems - (E2): Dave Orton, Director, ASD Engineering
A discussion on the techniques involved in building high performance visual
simulation systems. Includes demonstration and examples.
Optimization Techniques for SGI Computers - (E3):
Jean-Pierre Panziera, Parallel Team Leader, Applications
A detailed demonstration and discussion on the techniques involved in
optimizing computational algorithms for SGI systems. Specific methods include
memory utilization, loop unrolling and loop blocking with linear algebra and
signal processing examples.
Advanced GL Application Techniques Tutorium - (E4): Mason Woo, Customer
Education
Short course on advanced GL techniques. Includes course on the use of GLdebug,
a new interactive graphical debugger for GL programs. GLdebug will be
distributed at this session.
Some Novel Techniques Enabled by VGX Graphics - (E5):
Rolf van Widenfelt, ASD Enginering
An interactive demonstration of techniques including interactive texture
mapping and scene antialiasing made possible by VGX graphics systems.
Research Topics: Software Implementation of the GL - (E6): Gary Tarolli,
ESD Engineering.
Over the last year, most of the GL has been implemented in C to run on host
RISC processors. We have also designed an experimental minimal graphics
subsystem to provide minimal framebuffer assist. This discussion will cover the
advantages and disadvantages of such a system including performance comparisons
to existing graphics architectures. Additionally, implications on graphics
profiling techniques and multi-processor architectures will be discussed.
***********************************************************************
For more info, send the following info:
Name -
Title -
Company -
Address -
Phone -
Fax -
email -
to:
Developers Forum
Mailstop 420
Silicon Graphics, Inc
2011 N. Shoreline Blvd.
Mtn. View, CA 94039-9621
or
or call 415 335-7483
or
or email it to a...@corp.sgi.com (alan trimble)
Or, to register, contact Gretel Wittke at CMI at 415 398-5352.x265
************************************************************************
Enjoy:
John Edelson
Manager, Developers Relations
Silicon Graphics
2011 N. Shoreline Blvd
Mountain View, CA 94039
415 335-1532
fax 415 962-9601
edel...@sgi.com