Industry | |
---|---|
Fate | Acquired by Hewlett-Packard 1989 |
Founded | 1980; 40 years ago |
Founder | William Poduska |
Headquarters |
Apollo Computer Inc., founded in 1980 in Chelmsford, Massachusetts, by William Poduska (a founder of Prime Computer) and others, developed and produced Apollo/Domainworkstations in the 1980s. Along with Symbolics and Sun Microsystems, Apollo was one of the first vendors of graphical workstations in the 1980s. Like computer companies at the time and unlike manufacturers of IBM PC compatibles, Apollo produced much of its own hardware and software.
Apollo was acquired by Hewlett-Packard in 1989 for US$476 million (equivalent to $982 million in 2019), and gradually closed down over the period 1990-1997. The brand (as 'HP Apollo') was resurrected in 2014 as part of HP's high-performance computing portfolio.[citation needed]
Jul 22, 2014 The new Dreamworks Apollo software allows their animators an unprecedented amount of freedom during their work. See how they used it to create How to Train Your Dragon 2. How to Train Your Dragon 2 Director Dean DeBlois and Head of Character Animation Simon Otto discuss and demonstrate DreamWorks Animation's groundbreaking new technology Apollo andRead More. Premo, the core component of Apollo, is the animation tool enabling artists to work with characters in real time on their tablets with a stylus. Artists can work at the speed of their imagination, sculpting rather than managing a complex web of curves and spreadsheets. 'We can use Cintiqs to animate,' says head of character animation, Jason Reisig. Upon the film’s wide release this summer, the company will unveil to the public the work of their home-engineered animation software, Apollo, that has involved a five-year research.
History[edit]
Apollo was started in 1980, two years before Sun Microsystems.In addition to Poduska, the founders included Dave Nelson (Engineering), Mike Greata (Engineering), Charlie Spector (COO), Bob Antonuccio (Manufacturing), Gerry Stanley (Sales and Marketing), and Dave Lubrano (Finance).[citation needed] The founding engineering team included Mike Sporer, Bernie Stumpf, Russ Barbour, Paul Leach, and Andy Marcuvitz.[citation needed]
In 1981, the company unveiled the DN100 workstation, which used the Motorola 68000microprocessor. Apollo workstations ran Aegis (later replaced by Domain/OS), a proprietary operating system with a POSIX-compliant Unix alternative shell. Apollo's networking was particularly elegant, among the first to allow demand paging over the network, and allowing a degree of network transparency and low sysadmin-to-machine ratio.
From 1980 to 1987, Apollo was the largest manufacturer of network workstations.[citation needed] Its quarterly sales exceeded $100 million for the first time in late 1986,[1] and by the end of that year, it had the largest worldwide share of the engineering workstations market, at twice the market share of the number two, Sun Microsystems.[2] At the end of 1987, it was third in market share after Digital Equipment Corporation and Sun, but ahead of Hewlett-Packard and IBM.[citation needed] Apollo's largest customers were Mentor Graphics (electronic design), General Motors, Ford, Chrysler, Chicago Research and Trading (Options and Futures) and Boeing.[citation needed]
Apollo was acquired by Hewlett-Packard in 1989 for US$476 million,[3] and gradually closed down over the period 1990-1997. But after acquiring Apollo Computer in 1989, HP integrated a lot of Apollo technology into their own HP 9000 series of workstations and servers. The Apollo engineering center took over PA-RISC workstation development and Apollo became an HP workstation brand name (HP Apollo 9000) for a while. Apollo also invented the revision control system DSEE (Domain Software Engineering Environment)[4] which inspired IBM Rational ClearCase.[5] DSEE was pronounced 'dizzy'.
Apollo machines used a proprietary operating system, Aegis, because of the excessive cost of single CPU Unix licenses at the time of system definition. Aegis, like Unix, was based on concepts from the Multics time sharing operating system. It used the concepts of shell programming (à la Stephen Bourne), single level store, and object-oriented design. Aegis was written in a proprietary version of Pascal.
The dual 68000 processor design was to provide automatic page fault switching, with one processor acting as a watchdog, while the other executed the OS and program instructions.[6] When a page fault was raised, the main CPU was halted in mid (memory) cycle while the watchdog CPU would bring the page into memory and then allow the main CPU to continue, unaware of the page fault. Later improvements in the Motorola 68010 processor obviated the need for the dual processor design.
Certain efficiencies were gained by careful design, for example, the memory page size, network packet, and disk sector were all 1K byte in size. With this arrangement a page fault could take place across the network as well as on the individual computer and Aegis file system was a single system of memory mapped files across the entire network. The name space of the network was self discovering as new nodes (workstations) were added.
Domain/OS (Distributed On-line Multi-access Interactive Network/Operating System) was initially a layer over Aegis and was not built on a Unix kernel. Release 10 incorporated large parts of Unix but the burden of backwards compatibility with previous releases led to a system that was larger and significantly slower than the previous ones. In the end, Hewlett Packard shut down the Domain/OS line. Release 10 came out as competitors were gaining ground in the area of graphics and windowing systems, particularly with the trend to open systems and the X Window System.
Another feature was its proprietary token-ring network, which was originally designed to support relatively small networks of, at most, dozens of computers in an office environment. It was a superb design, allowing direct memory access page faulting from any hard drive on the network, but it did not inter-operate with any other existing network hardware or software. The industry widely adopted Ethernet and TCP/IP, a more universal, albeit much slower network. Apollo later added support for these industry standards while continuing to support its own Domain networking using both Ethernet and Token Ring. The Domain networking was modeled after Xerox Network Systems.
The company moved from a proprietary data bus architecture in favor of IBM's AT-bus, as used in the second generation of IBM PCs, and was simultaneously embracing RISC technology moving towards high-end processors, eventually producing the PRISM line.
The workstation industry in general experienced hard times in the second half of the 1980s, as IBM Personal Computers and IBM PC compatibles began making inroads on their customer base.
Thomas Vanderslice was hired as President and CEO in 1984,[7]and founder William Poduska left the company in 1985 to found Stellar.[8]
The company incurred large losses in 1987 in currency speculation due to the trading activities of one individual,[9]and in 1988 from declining demand for its products.[10]In 1989 Apollo was acquired by Hewlett-Packard.[11] HP support for Apollo products was fragmented for the first few years, but was reorganized in late 1992, at which point there were still some 100,000 users of Apollo products and the user group IWorks (formerly InterWorks) had some 4,500 members.[12] Earlier that year, Sun had already offered discounts on its systems for customers trading in their Apollo machines;[13] HP responded the next winter by a trade-in program of its own, that also allowed trading in hardware from Sun and other vendors in return for a discount on HP workstations.[14]
Apollo Animation Software Download
Models[edit]
System Type | Model | CPU | Speed (MHz) | Display | Release date | Internal name |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
SAU1 | DN416 | 2× 68000 | 8 | Portrait Green & White | ||
SAU1 | DN100 | 2× 68000 | 8 | Portrait BW | ||
SAU1 | DN400 | 2× 68000 | 8 | Portrait BW | ||
SAU1 | DN600 | 2× 68000 | 8 | Color | ||
SAU1 | DN420 | 2× 68000 | 8 | Landscape BW | ||
SAU2 | DN300 | 68010 | 8 | Landscape BW | Swallow | |
SAU2 | DN320 | 68010 | 8 | Landscape BW | Swallow | |
SAU2 | DN330 | 68020 | 12 | Landscape BW | Swallow | |
SAU3 | DSP80, DSP80A | 68010 | 8 | none | Sparrow | |
SAU3 | DSP90 | 68020 | 12 | none | Sparrow | |
SAU4 | DN460 | Custom 2900 bit slice | ? | BW | Tern | |
SAU4 | DN660 | Custom 2900 bit slice | ? | Color | Tern | |
SAU4 | DSP160 | Custom 2900 bit slice | ? | none | Tern | |
SAU5 | DN550 | 68010 | 10 | VME 600 Graphics | Stingray | |
SAU5 | DN560 | 68020 | 12 | VME 600 Graphics | Stingray | |
SAU5 | DN570 | 68020 | 16 | Ocelot Graphics Single Card 8 plane | Banshee | |
SAU5 | DN580 | 68020 | 16 | Aurora Graphics | Banshee | |
SAU5 | DN590 | 68020 | 20 | Aurora Graphics | Banshee | |
SAU6 | DN560T | 68020 | 12 | Color | Banshee | |
SAU6 | DN570T | 68020 | 16 | Color | Banshee | |
SAU6 | DN580T | 68020 | 16 | Color | Banshee | |
SAU6 | DN590T | 68020 | 20 | Color | Banshee | |
SAU7 | DN3500 | 68030 | 25 | BW / Color | Cougar II | |
SAU7 | DN3550 | 68030 | 25 | BW / Color | ||
SAU7 | DN4000 | 68020 | 25 | BW / Color | Mink | |
SAU7 | DN4500 | 68030 | 33 | BW / Color | Roadrunner | |
SAU8 | DN3000 | 68020 | 12 | BW / Color | Otter | |
SAU8 | DN3010, DN3010A | 68020 | 12 | BW / Color | ||
SAU8 | DN3040 | 68020 | 12 | BW / Color | ||
SAU9 | DN2500 | 68030 | 20 | BW / Color | Frodo | |
SAU10 | DN10000 | Prism | 18 | BW / Color | AT | |
SAU11 | 9000/425S | 68040 | 25 | Trailways | ||
SAU11 | 9000/425T | 68040 | 25 | HP DIOII | Strider | |
SAU11 | 9000/425E | 68040 | 25 | Woody | ||
SAU11 | 9000/433S | 68040 | 33 | Trailways | ||
SAU11 | 9000/433T | 68040 | 33 | |||
SAU12 | 9000/400S | 68030 | 50 | Trailways | ||
SAU12 | 9000/400T | 68030 | 50 | Strider | ||
SAU12 | 9000/400DL | 68030 | 50 | |||
SAU14 | DN5500 | 68040 | 25 | BW / Color | Leopard |
See also[edit]
References[edit]
- ^Petrovsky, Mary (27 October 1986). '3Com and Apollo sign pact for net link gear'. Network World. p. 7.
- ^'Market overview'. InfoWorld. 1 December 1986. p. 29.
- ^'Hewlett-Packard to Buy Struggling Apollo Computer'. Los Angeles Times. 13 April 1989.
- ^John A McDermid, Integrated Project Support Environments, in: Barbara A. Kitchenham (ed.), Software Engineering for Large Software Systems, Elsevier Science Publishers, 1990, p. 55
- ^Paul Adams and Marvin Solomon, An overview of the CAPITL software development environment, in: Jacky Estublier (ed.), Software configuration management: selected papers / ICSE SCM-4 and SCM-5 Workshops, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, Heidelberg etc., p. 25
- ^Virtual memory using the MC68000 and the MC68451 MMU(PDF)
- ^'Vanderslice Named President of Apollo'. Boston Globe. August 3, 1984.
- ^'Poduska Will Leave Apollo To Start Firm'. Boston Globe. November 15, 1985.
- ^'Apollo Says It Underestimated Loss From Unauthorized Deal'. Boston Globe. October 8, 1987.
- ^Markoff, John. (July 8, 1988). 'Apollo's Troubles Stun Wall St'. New York Times.
- ^'HP Seeks To Reassure Apollo Workers'. Boston Globe. May 23, 1989.
- ^Johnson, Maryfran (14 September 1992). 'Domain users OK latest HP support plan'. Computerworld. p. 62.
- ^Johnson, Maryfran (20 July 1992). 'Sun upgrade offer targets Apollo users'. Computerworld. p. 8.
- ^Johnson, Maryfran (1 February 1993). 'HP trade-in push'. Computerworld. p. 41.
This article was partly based on material from the Free On-line Dictionary of Computing and is used with permission under the GFDL.
External links[edit]
Retrieved from 'https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Apollo_Computer&oldid=982809270'
Before it could make this summer’s blockbuster movie How to Train Your Dragon 2, DreamWorks had to build a whole new animation tool. Here’s the story of how the studio built software that lets animators work faster and more organically than ever before.
In the past, animation artists had to go through hell to create computer-animated movies. They would have to scan an image into a computer, then “draw” the animation by typing numbers into a keyboard. With a giant spreadsheet, they could change the way a smile looked or how a shadow fell across a face.
How to make How to Train Your Dragon 2
We went deep inside DreamWorks to find out how it used cutting-edge enterprise and animation tech to make this summer’s blockbuster animation.
The technology was dubbed Emo, developed in the 1980s by predecessor firm Pacific Data Images. It was used to make movies like Shrek and Finding Nemo. But it wasn’t exactly a “natural” way to draw animations.
Above: DreamWorks Animation character animator Rex Grignon.
But about five years ago, just in time for the beginning of production for How to Train Your Dragon 2, the tech team at DreamWorks Animation started creating a new tool called Premo.
The vision for this animation tool was to give artists a real-time tool that would allow them to draw with their hands on a computer screen and see the changes in the final image in real-time. Now, they can work as fast as they think. The technology is a great example of how computers continue to change the way we work.
Premo was built on the foundation of Apollo, the animation company’s software infrastructure for creating computer-generated movies. And it was created in-house by a team that included both the artists themselves and tech experts from Intel, said Rex Grignon, a character animator, in a press interview at DreamWorks Animation’s campus in Redwood City, Calif. The technologists started by giving the artists a blank slate to dream up a process for creating art that was truly intuitive.
“We knew we were going to start from scratch, so there were no more handcuffs on what was the legacy,” said Katie Swanborg, director of technology communications and strategic alliances at DreamWorks Animation. “We had confidence that Intel would deliver the computing power that they said they would. So we could say to the artists, ‘We’re not going to say no.'”
Without those constraints, the artists came up with their wish lists.
Above: An animator using the DreamWorks Animation Premo tool.
“We sat down and came up with words like ‘fluid,’ ‘immersive,’ ‘intuitive,’ and ‘creative,'” Grignon said.
Above: The Making of How to Train Your Dragon
Lincoln Wallen, chief technology officer at DreamWorks Animation, said that the company had built cloud infrastructure in its data centers to render films. But with new multicore processors, each client computer at every artist’s desk could also provider a big leap forward in computing power.
“We could get a large number of threads running on a machine that we could spread anywhere we’d like, across the data center or on the local client,” Wallen said. “We didn’t have to worry about what was possible anymore. What changes over time is how much of that compute power sits under the desk or in the data center. That unlocked their creativity and allowed us to leapfrog beyond incremental improvements.”
The discussions for Premo started about the same time that the story creators and concept artists were creating storyboards, or comic book like frame-by-frame drawings, for the film.
“Lincoln asked us how we would like to animate,” Grignon said. “We tore about the process. We looked at things we did a thousand times a day or a few times a week. We put the emphasis on the things we did a thousand times a day.”
Above: DreamWorks Animation’s Premo tool
Before, the artists had a tool that was like Adobe’s Photoshop, only it took a long time to render an image. There were lots of clicks and keyboard entries that the artist had to make in order to make just one idea appear on the screen.
With Premo, the team wanted to a tool that could render that image as soon as the artist had the idea.
“Before it showed up on the screen, there were a whole bunch of things the artist had to do,” Grignon said. “Why can’t we just have an idea and touch the screen and get it? That was our main guiding principle. It lets you stay focused on the creative task at hand. You don’t get distracted and lose that immersion.”
Each different team of artists had a chance to investigate their options and report what they wanted. The expertise included people from 2D animation, stop-motion, video games, and 3D animation. About 65 artists contributed ideas for Premo.
Grignon took that feedback and sat down with the tech leads to integrate them into a single software program. They came up with something they called “paper prototyping.” That helped them come up with the basic framework for the software design. The process was not unlike creating a movie, with pitches, storyboards, and execution.
“We thought we went into a partnership with a collection of artists and animators and storytellers,” said Peter Baker, a vice president of software and services at Intel, in an interview. “They’re actually quite a technology company as well. They’re so enthusiastic about the technology and how to use it to convey those stories, those emotional things that people can see, that jump off the screen. We have that shared enthusiasm for technology and bringing stories to life.”
Above: DreamWorks Animation’s Premo tool, showing off Hiccup.
DreamWorks Animation provided the animators with pressure-sensitive screens from Wacom. With their pens, they can interact directly with the computer-animated character. In the past, it would take half an hour before a screen could be rendered. Sometimes it would take even more time than that, depending on the complexity of the screen.
The result, with Premo, was a tool that cut down on eye movement, arm strain, eye strain, and time. It used to take weeks to train artists. Now the artists can learn how to use Premo in a couple of hours.
“I’ve never heard a single artist say they wanted to go back,” Grignon said.
The artists used Premo to do a lot of iteration. Jason Schleifer, character animator, said that the artists create moving characters in a rough format at first, so they can figure out the way that a dragon’s spine might bend as it twists in mid-flight. Then they slowly add more detail and apply all of the visual effects that make it more realistic.
DreamWorks was willing a lot of computing power and software design at the problem so that the artists could “fly” through the production process, Swanborg said.
“At that point, we want inspiration to show up on screen,” Swanborg said. “That’s when they are in the moment of storytelling.”
The team was so proud of Premo and its intuitiveness that they let the press sit down at workstations during a recent visit. Fredrik Nilsson, workflow director for animation/crowds, showed me how to use the tool in a matter of minutes.
I used Premo with a touchscreen-sensitive pen. The display could show me any given frame from the movie. I could make a change to the main character Hiccup’s face, clicking on him. Then I could use the pen to pull his face downward, turning his smile into a frown. I could then tell the computer how long he would hold that pose before he would start smiling again. Then I played the frames and watched it all happen in real-time. It was easy and intuitive.
Above: DreamWorks Animation’s Premo tool can turn a smile into a frown instantly.
Jason Schleifer, character animator, said that if you really want to get to the spreadsheet underneath Premo’s user interface, you can do so. Once in a while, that’s necessary. But it’s not something that the artists have to do all that much.
Because of the smoothness of Premo, the artists can do more. They can, for instance, throw a lot more creatures onto the screen at one time. In one scene, there are hundreds of dragons fighting against thousands of soldiers. That kind of scene wouldn’t have been possible without Premo. They can also delve deep into the thousands of control points in a character and scuplt them to bring out the emotion in the character.
DreamWorks can get by with fewer artists now to make a movie, or it can simply choose to be more ambitious with its movies. Overall, more than 495 artists worked on the movie. By comparison, about 150 people work at NASA’s Mission Control center across three shifts a day.
Wallen said that DreamWorks Animation can use the Premo technology for years to come, even as it changes the underlying hardware to make it run faster and smoother.
Above: DreamWorks Animation’s Premo hides the spreadsheets in art creation.
Apollo Animation Software 2017
Here’s a video of me using Premo at DreamWorks Animation in Redwood City.
Apollo Animation Software Downloads
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