Also see the Computer Graphics History page
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July 1998 Demo- Thanks to Garret Dunn (former Ikonas engineer) and Bill Cowan (University of Waterloo - "Graveyard of the Ikonas boxes"), Mary and I exhibited a working Ikonas system at the 25th anniversary SIGGRAPH conference in Orlando in July 1998. We ran the "accept" microcode demo, hosted by our original Heathkit LSI-11 with an 8" floppy disk drive. It worked perfectly the whole show. We essentially recreated our SIGGRAPH '81 booth with some signs, posters, and demo video tape. We also showed the NYIT Ikonas demo reel thanks to Paul Heckbert. Lots of old Ikonas customers came by to say hello, including one who was still using his 15 year old system regularly. |
| Customer List - We put together an Ikonas customer list for the SIGGRAPH retrospective. Please e-mail me with any additions or corrections. |
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History - See article in IEEE
Computing Edge (page 25)
Ikonas Graphics Systems Inc. was founded in 1978 by Mary Whitton and me, based on work I did as a grad student at North Carolina State University in the Computer Graphics Lab headed by Prof. John Staudhammer. As part of a project funded by NASA Langley Research Center, I had developed a programmable graphics processor and raster display system for cockpit instrumentation display. (See my paper in SIGGRAPH 78). Several people expressed interest in acquiring something similar so Mary and I started Ikonas in the back room of our house to make a commercial version. Robert Whitton was a partner in the business from the beginning and later Pete Evans and Henry Rich became partners also. At one point Ikonas had around 50 employees in Raleigh NC. We joined USENET in 1982. We showed the first production Ikonas Raster Display System (RDS-2000) at SIGGRAPH '79 and introduced an improved compatible system as the Ikonas RDS-3000 in 1980. (Retroactively, we named the prototype system the RDS-1000.) Ikonas was acquired by Adage Inc in 1982 and the Ikonas system continued to be marketed as the Adage 3000 Raster Display System. I'd guess almost 400 systems were sold before Adage finally pulled the plug around 1987. As of 7/05 at least five were still in daily use, a minor miracle in the computer business. There were lots of great people who were part of Ikonas and Adage and we had lots of great (and patient) customers. Thanks for the wonderful experience.
Further Info - For some more info on the system, see an article I wrote in the January 1986
IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications magazine. Also see Tim Van Hook's
SIGGRAPH 86 paper covering some amazing real-time solid modeling microcode
he wrote for the Ikonas graphics processor. |
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| June 1985 - Tim Van Hook's ray tracing code rendering bi-cubic B-spline and polygonal surfaces entirely within the Ikonas Programmable Graphics Processor (world's first GPU ray-tracing) | |||
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MARKETING LITERATURE
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1978 - SIGGRAPH '78 handout (no exhibit) - first purchase order (thanks to OSU) |
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1978 mailings - RDS-1000 system |
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1979 - SIGGRAPH '79 exhibitor - RDS-2000 introduction |
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1980-82 - RDS-3000 Introduction - See "Summary of RDS-2000/RDS-3000 Differences". |
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1980 magazine ad |
1981-82 magazine ad |
1982 magazine ad |
1985 Poster - Ray-tracing in Ikonas GPU
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1984 - pdf download of brochure shown below - Ikonas 3000 renamed Adage 3000 |
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Architecture - Download Ikonas User's ManualIkonas developed flexible, programmable, high end graphics and imaging hardware for research and advanced application groups. The system was based around a 32 bit data, 24 bit address synchronous bus into which various boards could be plugged. Everything within the system was memory mapped into this 24 bit address space. A host interface was provided with address registers to access anything on the bus. Thus, unlike other systems at that time, the host computer could transfer data directly to/from image memory, or could communicate with the optional programmable graphics processor via shared memory.
Major elements of the Ikonas system were a flexible frame buffer for display and a user-programmable graphics processor for performing graphics and imaging functions. The frame buffer resolution and timing could be set via control registers. The graphics processor included 32 bit integer ALU and 16x16 bit integer multiplier along with address counters, loop counters and the like, all controlled by a 64 bit instruction word. Initially we just had a microcode assembly language compiler (IKASM), but later Preston Gurd at University of Waterloo developed a C compiler as did Gary Bishop at UNC-CH. Our customers wrote many different kinds of applications that ran on the Programmable Graphics Processor - from image processing to 2D paint (flood fill) to advanced 3D image synthesis. Our group also developed code for functions like solid modeling, ray tracing, volumetric rendering, as well as conventional 3D graphics and image processing. |
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Other plug-in boards developed during the lifetime of the system include:
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RDS-2000 Front Panel |
Hardware - more photos to be added some day - see below |
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RDS-1000 prototype frame buffer (512 x 512 x 8) in rack, Heathkit LSI-11,
8" floppy disks, ADM-3 terminal, Summagraphics BitPad tablet |
RDS-1000 system 512 x 512 8 4 memory boards, frame buffer controller, video lookup memory, video DACs. interface to host computer 
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RDS-2000 with Heathkit H-11 |
RDS-2000 power supplies +5V (for TTL), +12V (for
DRAM), -5.2V (for ECL and DRAM bias), +/-15V (for video A/D and D/A)
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RDS-3000
DR64B frame buffer board - about 15" x 15" with 128 16K DRAM chips Each board displayed 512x512x8 or 1024x1024x2. Twelve boards were needed for a 1024x1024x24 full color system. |
DR64B wire-wrap side. This one is machine-wrapped.
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CB12 - card cage for 12 wire-wrap boards
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CB12 rear views showing power supplies
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BPS32 processor (center), MCM4 microcode RAM (right), SR8
scratch pad RAM (left)
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RDS-3000 in CB24 card cage
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Dave Sieg's collection of RDS-3000 systems left over from Omnibus
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 PCP Peripheral Control Panel analog & digital interface with Switch Box and Dial Box |
SoftwareDownload Ikonas Programming Reference Manual We developed a great deal of microcode, covering 3-D graphics, image processing, seismic data display, flight simulation, ray tracing, and interactive solid modeling. Download PDF of data sheets shown below for FSS, Seismic-3000, Solid-3000 packages |
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Solid-3000 Microcode Package
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This package of microcode routines provided anti-aliased lines,
z-buffered polygons, Phong shading,
texture mapping, bump mapping, transparency, adaptive subdivision of
bi-cubic B-spline surfaces, etc.
NEW 10/05/14 - Video - 1984 demo reel of Solid 3000 microcode package in action NEW 10/11/14 - Video - 1984 demo of real time image decoding & animation |
Teapot display at the Computer Museum in Boston 1985-89? On the right was a display driven by an Ikonas RDS-3000 running our Solid-3000 microcode, with adaptive subdivision B-spline patch rendering. Press the "RENDER" button and the Ikonas would re-render with shading to match the physical lights. - Photo courtesy of Steve Baker & his Utah Teapot site |
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Seismic-3000 Microcode Package
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This package of microcode routines provided a variety of display
techniques useful for 2D and 3D seismic data set interpretation.
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NEW 10/11/14 - Video - 1984 demo of Seismic 3000 display package
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IDL2 Ikonas Display Language Microcode PackageA real-time display language including anti-aliased vectors, 3-D transformation, and visible surface sorting. The entire display program would be compiled in the host computer, get downloaded and then run completely in the Ikonas processor, with the host processor updating transformation parameters, etc. in shared memory. |
 Real time display for cockpit instrumentation - written by RTI for NASA-LRC |
NEW 10/11/14 - Video - 1984 demo of
IDL and real time graphics
NEW 10/12/14 - Video - 1984 demo of RTI/NASA cockpit display using IDL |
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FSS - Fortran-callable graphics routines for general 3-D graphicsNEW 10/11/14 - Video - 1984 demo of FSS graphics subroutine package |
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Early customers got a set of interface drivers, Fortran read/write/display control routines, and for the optional programmable graphics processor, a microcode compiler (IKASM) and 3D graphics routines (IDL). Later, several C compilers and application libraries were available for the programmable graphics processor. Customers were strongly encouraged (!) to develop their own code. They came up with all sorts of interesting and imaginative ways to use the system. Ikonas display systems were used for the "Genesis Planet Sequence" in Star Trek:The Wrath of Khan, for the video games in Superman III and for a bunch of TV commercials, as well as for a lot of serious scientific and engineering work.
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Customer List - We put together an Ikonas customer list for the SIGGRAPH retrospective. Please e-mail me with any additions or corrections. |
 Z-buffered polygon rendering microcode written by our first customer - UT Health Science Center-Dallas |
 Paul Hauge at Phillips Petroleum |
USC/ISI packet video with their add-on
Video Engine |
Tufts-New England Medical Center
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AT&T Bell Labs Murray Hill |
Ship Analytics |
Digicon Inc. |
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From "Life Before the Chips: Simulating Digital Video Interactive Technology"
by Douglas F. Dixon. Communications of the ACM, July 1989, pp 824-831.
"From our first Ikonas system delivered in November 1981, this remarkably
powerful and flexible machine was a major part of our success in communicating
the vision of DVI, and nurturing it until the chips arrived in December 1987.
Some of that flexibility and power also lives on in its influence on the
design of the DVI chip set. The more expressive the simulation environment
for a product concept, the more ideas can be explored and prototyped for
the final design, and the more likely that features of the simulation system
become incorporated in the product."
From "Hardware Support for Multitasking Graphics" by William Cowan, Christopher
Wein, Marcelli Wein, Kellogg S. Booth. Graphics Interface '91 proceedings,
June 1991, pp 199-206.
"Finally, it is interesting to note that the interface construction discussed
in this paper and the further enhancements discussed in this last section
are easy to carry out in the [Ikonas] RDS-3000, a decade old design. Its
flexibility, modularity, and openness make it possible to design and substitute
components in a way that cannot be done with newer designs offering higher
graphics performance at the cost of closed hardware. Systems like the RDS-3000
may be unsuitable for the production graphics that makes up the vast bulk
of the market, but they are the life blood of laboratories that conduct research
into new techniques for combining computation and graphics."
