The O 2 workstations contain enough computing power to make them ideal for a wide variety of data-intensive applications, including image editing, multimedia and Web site design. Mainstay graphics applications such as Adobe Photoshop run on the systems, plus there are plenty of professional-quality graphic arts software applications developed specifically for Silicon Graphics hardware. Coupled with the OpenGL graphics subsystem used in other Silicon Graphics systems such as the Indigo and InfiniteReality, the O 2 performs routine image edits in seconds. More complex edits involving several steps take only a little more time. The UMA system eliminates the bus transfer architecture used in other desktop computers.
All system components directly access a large, central pool of memory.
Memory is automatically and dynamically allocated, which makes system response times amazingly fast. We performed a variety of image editing tests on large graphic files of 2 to 10MB in size. We rotated files, colored files, deleted portions of the image and repeatedly changed the viewing size. The system completed each of these actions in only two to three seconds. As you might expect, the R5000 unit is less expensive than the more powerful R10000 system.