Question about Pixar Image Computer

[lardon]

Hello everyone. I'm just curious. I know Pixar made a very rare computer known as the Pixar Image Computer. However, there wasn't much mention about what operating system it runs. So, does anyone have a clue as to what OS runs on Pixar's workstation? A variant of Unix? Your thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks!

[coltonspleen]

Never heard of such a system. Amazing find.

Offtopic Comment

And P.S. is it the same Pixar that made the Toy Story movies?

[lardon]

Never heard of such a system. Amazing find.

Offtopic Comment

And P.S. is it the same Pixar that made the Toy Story movies?

According to what I found on the web, the Pixar computer was used at Walt Disney for movie production all the way up to 1995 with Pocahontas. Toy Story was released in 1995, so I'm guessing yes.

[Hyoenmadan86]

This machine doesn't seem as a full workstation system. Looks like is just a render device which needs to be attached to an existent workstation like Sun, SGI or NeXT models. Since it was Pixar, proably they were using a NeXT Cube to drive it. But you also could use SGI Irix, or SunOS NeWS display server to drive it as good as with a real NeXT.

[lardon]

This machine doesn't seem as a full workstation system. Looks like is just a render device which needs to be attached to an existent workstation like Sun, SGI or NeXT models.

Really? I thought the computer was a full workstation. It has a monitor. So, it's nothing more than a hardware accelerator?

Offtopic Comment

I seriously wished there was more documentation about it. Too bad Pixar didn't sell enough of these.

[mrpijey]

"Each system ran 1, 2, or 4 CHAPs (CHAnnel Proceesors, RGBA). Each CHAP consisted of a board with 4 AMD 29116 16-bit bipolar bit slice microprocessors, running at 10MHz supported by 4 Logic Devices LMU17 16 x16 parallel multipliers. Essentially the PIXAR Image Computer was a 1980s GPU, it required a separate SGI or Sun workstation to run."

[Geri]

nice finding, never heard of this computer before