Editing Pixar Image Computer (section)

== History ==
=== Creation ===
When [[George Lucas]] recruited people from [[New York Institute of Technology|NYIT]] in 1979 to start their Computer Division, the group was set to develop digital [[optical printing]], digital audio, digital [[non-linear editing]] and computer graphics.<ref name="AutoFZ-1" /> Computer graphics quality was just not good enough due to technological limitations at the time. The team then decided to solve the problem by starting a hardware project, building what they would call the Pixar Image Computer, a machine with more computational power that was able to produce images with higher resolution.<ref name="AutoFZ-2" />

=== Availability ===
About three months after their acquisition by [[Steve Jobs]] on February 3, 1986, the computer became commercially available for the first time, and was aimed at commercial and scientific high-end [[Visualization (graphic)|visualization]] markets, such as [[medical imaging]], [[Geophysical imaging|geophysics]], and [[meteorology]].<ref name="AutoFZ-3" /><ref>{{cite web| url=https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/steve-jobs-a-timeline/ |title=Steve Jobs: A timeline |website=[[CNet]] |date=5 October 2011 |author=CNet News Staff}}</ref> The machine sold for $135,000, but also required a $35,000 [[workstation]] from [[Sun Microsystems]] or [[Silicon Graphics]] (in total, {{Inflation|US|170000|1986|r=-4|fmt=eq}}). The original machine was well ahead of its time and generated many single sales, for labs and research.<ref name="Deutschman" /> However, the system did not sell in quantity.

In 1987, Pixar redesigned the machine to create the P-II second generation machine, which sold for $30,000.<ref>{{cite book|last=Isaacson|first=Walter | author-link =Walter Isaacson|title=Steve Jobs|year=2011|publisher=[[Simon & Schuster]]|title-link=Steve Jobs (book) }}</ref> In an attempt to gain a foothold in the medical market, Pixar donated ten machines to leading hospitals and sent marketing people to doctors' conventions. However, this had little effect on sales, despite the machine's ability to render [[Computed axial tomography|CAT]] scan data in 3D. Pixar did get a contract with the manufacturer of CAT Scanners, which sold 30 machines. By 1988 Pixar had only sold 120 Pixar Image Computers.<ref name="Deutschman" />

In 1988, Pixar began the development of the PII-9, a nine-slot version of the low cost P-II. This machine was coupled with a very early [[RAID]] model,<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.specktech.com/PixarImageComputer.html |title=Pixar Image Computer}}</ref> a high performance bus, a hardware image [[data compression|decompression]] card, 4 processors (called Chaps or channel processors), very large memory cards ([[VMEbus|VME]] sized card full of memory), high resolutions video cards with 10-bit [[Digital-to-analog converter|DACs]] which were programmable for a variety of frame rates and resolutions, and finally an overlay board which ran [[NeWS]], as well as the 9-slot chassis. A full-up system was quite expensive, as the 3 [[Gibibyte|GiB]] RAID was $300,000 alone. At this time in history most file systems could only address 2 GiB of disk. This system was aimed at high-end government imaging applications, which were done by dedicated systems produced by the [[aerospace industry]] and which cost a million dollars a seat. The PII-9 and the associated software became the prototype of the next generation of commercial "low cost" workstations.

=== Demise and legacy ===
In 1990, the Pixar Image Computer was defining the state-of-the-art in commercial image processing. Despite this, the government decided that the per-seat cost was still too high for mass deployment and to wait for the next generation systems to achieve cost reductions. This decision was the catalyst for Pixar to lay off its hardware engineers and sell the imaging business. There were no high volume buyers in any industry. Fewer than 300 Pixar Image Computers were ever sold.<ref name=":0">{{cite web |title=Pixar Image Computer |url=https://www.ricomputermuseum.org/collections-gallery/equipment/pixar-image-computer |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200309075156/https://www.ricomputermuseum.org/Home/equipment/pixar-image-computer |archive-date=9 March 2020 |website=Rhode Island Computer Museum}}</ref>

{{quote| text="It was built to be part of a pipeline, but as we developed it we realized we were competing with [[Moore's law]] with CPU and we probably couldn't get far enough ahead of it to justify it so we actually stopped the hardware effort."| sign=[[Edwin_Catmull|Ed Catmull]], President of Pixar<ref>{{Cite web |url= https://www.fxguide.com/featured/pixars-renderman-turns-25/ |title= Pixar's RenderMan turns 25 |date= 25 July 2013 |access-date= 2019-04-21}}</ref> | source=|title=}}

The Pixar computer business was sold to Vicom Systems in 1990 for $2,000,000. Vicom Systems filed for [[Chapter 11]] within a year afterwards.

Many of the lessons learned from the Pixar Image Computer made it into the Low Cost Workstation (LCWS) and Commercial Analyst Workstation (CAWS) program guidelines in the early and mid 1990s. The government mass deployment that drove the PII-9 development occurred in the late 1990s, in a program called Integrated Exploitation Capability (IEC).