ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Rendering Science: Silicon Graphics and the Making of Visual Knowledge, 1981-2000

• In Event: Computer Sciences

English Abstract

This presentation examines how Silicon Graphics (SGI) workstations, emerging in the early 1980s, reshaped scientific visualization and modeling practices in late-twentieth-century research. Using a media-archaeological perspective, the paper highlights the role of computer graphics workstations in scientific practice. SGI’s early development was closely tied to NASA’s demand for real-time scientific visualization, and stable contracts with military and space agencies provided the revenue base that enabled the company to consolidate its real-time visual-computing platform. By the 1990s, SGI had become the de facto standard for high-performance visualization and extended its reach into major European research centers. At CERN, SGI systems were used to construct virtual prototypes for the design of the Large Hadron Collider, demonstrating how advanced graphics hardware entered the core of scientific engineering. In the late 1990s, SGI’s merger with Cray advanced graphics capabilities with large-scale supercomputing, a direction that materialized in visualization and simulation facilities built for Los Alamos and NASA. The paper concludes by examining how visual-computing infrastructures fostered new forms of scientific practice and contributed to the emergence of heterogeneous computational worlds in contemporary science.

Author

• Yongjoo Han, Seoul National University