We have seen the future of boxes. It's Silicon Graphics' newly unveiled INDY, a low-cost, one-size-fits-all multi-media, 3-D visualization, teleconferencing, multiple environment, supercomputer on a desk. "On a desk" is actually misleading, as INDY fits comfortably under a 15-inch monitor. A fully loaded Macintosh not only can't do all the INDY box can, but it would cost two times more, so why bother? The resident operating system is Irix, SGI's version of Unix.
Indy does Windows and Macintosh emulation, too. For $5,000 you get a box loaded with the following: video input/output, compression, MIDI interface, one parallel and two serial ports, LAN, 3-D graphics controller, ISDN connection, four stereo channels, a 15-inch color monitor, and a built-in video camera. The company is real proud of the camera. With its built-in compression-decompression, ISDN interface, and high internal bandwidths, the camera and box serves as a video teleconferencing machine at no extra cost.
The graphics include all the things SGI is famous for like alpha blending, texture mapping, fog, multiple points of light, stereo graphics, etc. The only thing that could trip this box up is the Windows and Macintosh emulations - are they robust enough, and do they cover enough popular applications? The box ships in September and a descendent of INDY will be used in Time Warner's test of interactive TV in Orlando, Florida.
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