Sun XVR-4000 Graphics Accelerator Overview

This chapter provides an overview of the Sun XVR-4000 graphics accelerator for the Sun Fire V880z server.

• Installation Kit
• Sun XVR-4000 Graphics Accelerator Overview
• Screen Resolutions
• Accessing Field Replaceable Unit Information
• Technical Support

Refer to the Sun Fire V880 server documentation for detailed information for the
Sun Fire V880z server. Go to http://www.sun.com/documentation.

• Sun Fire V880 Server Service Manual (806-6597)
• Sun Fire V880 Server Owner's Manual (806-6592)

---

Installation Kit

The Sun XVR-4000 graphics accelerator installation kit includes:

• Sun XVR-4000 graphics accelerator
• Sun XVR-4000 graphics accelerator software CD
• Sun Fire V880z Operating Environment Installation DVD
• 13W3 to HD15 monitor cable adapter
• Antistatic wrist strap
• Sun Fire V880z Server and Sun XVR-4000 Graphics Accelerator Installation and User's Guide, this document

See Sun XVR-4000 Graphics Accelerator Cables for additional cable information.

---

Sun XVR-4000 Graphics Accelerator Overview

The Sun XVR-4000 graphics accelerator is a high-performance, photorealistic 3D graphics accelerator that runs over the Sun^TM Fireplane interconnect bus on the
Sun Fire V880z server (FIGURE 2-1). Application Program interfaces include Sun OpenGL® 1.3 for Solaris and Java3D^TM. Imaging is supported through the Java^TM Advanced Imaging API. The Sun XVR-4000 graphics accelerator produces visual realism by providing extremely high-performance rendering, and providing full-scene antialiasing "on-the-fly" such that high-quality antialiased rendering becomes expected.

 FIGURE 2-1 Sun Fire V880z Server

FIGURE 2-2 and FIGURE 2-3 shows the Sun XVR-4000 graphics accelerator with and without the air guide cover, respectively. Appendix F describes the back panel I/O ports.

 FIGURE 2-2 Sun XVR-4000 Graphics Accelerator With Air Guide Cover

 FIGURE 2-3 Sun XVR-4000 Graphics Accelerator Without Air Guide Cover

Sun XVR-4000 Graphics Accelerator Features

Quality

• Industry-leading antialiasing quality through video-rate 5 × 5 pixel processing array
• Supports 30-bit color precision for a wider, more precise color gamut
• 12-bit effective linear light (pre-gamma) color precision
• 26-bit floating-point Z-buffer for more effective depth resolution than with a
  32-bit integer Z-buffer

Performance

• Geometry processing rate up to 65 Mbytes hardware-textured triangles per second
• 256 Mbytes of texture memory at full geometry rate, or 1 Gigabyte of texture memory (using targeted texture OpenGL extension) at reduced geometry rate
• High-performance DMA over the Sun Fireplane interconnect bus

Flexibility

• Supports two asynchronous video streams with two 10-bit video DACs and 13W3 output ports capable of running different resolutions simultaneously
• 144 Mbytes high resolution sample buffer (holds up to 10 M image sample values, not pixel values), optimized for supersampling; allows users to trade off screen resolution versus samples per pixel; implemented by 32 3DRAM64 frame buffer memory chips
• Continuously programmable resolution within frame buffer capacity and Convolve bandwidth limits
• Support for nonfiltered X-windows pixels on the same screen with filtered, antialiased pixels

Scalability

• Hardware geometry acceleration using four parallel graphics processing engines (four Cafe processors and four FBC3 ASICs)

Standards (X-Windows, OpenGL)

• Viewport clipping
• Window ID (WID) clipping. Auxiliary clipping hardware for over eight overlapping windows
• 64 primary X Windows window IDs, 15 overlay window IDs
• Four 3 × 256 10-bit color maps (pseudo or direct color) in each video stream
• One 3 × 4096 10-bit adjustable gamma correction table (for true color) for each video stream. Separate red, green, and blue gamma

Video Operations

The Sun XVR-4000 graphics accelerator supports the following video outputs and capabilities. The default video port can be either the 13W3A or 13W3B video port, as selected through fbconfig (see Chapter 6)

Video Output

The Sun XVR-4000 graphics accelerator supports two simultaneous video streams. These may be used for a variety of purposes, for example, two sides of a shared frame buffer region on two high-resolution monitors or projectors, two independent high-resolution X-window system screens displayed on two display devices, or display of a high-resolution image on a monitor and simultaneous NTSC resolution display of the contents of the high-resolution monitor.

---

Note - If the scene content is shared between the two video streams (that is, it comes from a shared frame and not from independent frame buffers) the vertical rates must be identical to get correct display on both video outputs.

---

S-Video Capabilities

For S-video output (NTSC or PAL), any subregion of the primary display, up to the full display, may be resized to NTSC or PAL for video taping.

• Provide a secondary video output stream for NTSC video format at 640 × 480 at 60 Hz or PAL video format at 640 × 480 at 50 Hz, from a portion of the primary video desktop to a TV/VCR video output port.
• TV/VCR video output is S-video, with the appropriate mechanical connections.
• If the S-video output is not in use, the second 13W3 output is available for a high-resolution display.

---

Screen Resolutions

Sun XVR-4000 graphics accelerator supports full 30-bit 3D (double/z-buffered) graphics at all supported resolutions. TABLE 2-1 lists the supported screen resolutions for the Sun XVR-4000 graphics accelerator.

To get a list of all graphics devices, type: