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Pixar Image Computer
The Pixar Image Computer is a graphics computer originally developed by the Graphics Group, the computer division of Lucasfilm, which later became Pixar. Aimed at commercial and scientific high-end visualization markets, such as medicine, geophysics and meteorology, the original machine was advanced for its time, but sold poorly.
When George Lucas recruited people from NYIT in 1979 to start Lucasfilm's Computer Division, the group was set to develop digital optical printing, digital audio, digital non-linear editing and computer graphics. 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.
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 markets, such as medical imaging, geophysics, and meteorology. The machine sold for $135,000, but also required a $35,000 workstation from Sun Microsystems or Silicon Graphics (in total, equivalent to $500,000 in 2025). The original machine was well ahead of its time and generated many single sales, for labs and research. 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. 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 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.
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, a high performance bus, a hardware image decompression card, 4 processors (called Chaps or channel processors), very large memory cards (VME sized card full of memory), high resolutions video cards with 10-bit 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 GiB RAID was $300,000 alone. At this time in history, most file systems could only address 2 GiB of disk space. 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.
In 1990, the Pixar Image Computer was defining the "state of the art" in commercial image processing. Because the computers were too expensive to sell in large quantities, the decision to sell the hardware to Vicom Systems was the catalyst for Pixar to lay off its hardware engineers and sell the imaging business. Fewer than 300 Pixar Image Computers were ever sold.
"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."
— Ed Catmull, President of Pixar
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Pixar Image Computer
The Pixar Image Computer is a graphics computer originally developed by the Graphics Group, the computer division of Lucasfilm, which later became Pixar. Aimed at commercial and scientific high-end visualization markets, such as medicine, geophysics and meteorology, the original machine was advanced for its time, but sold poorly.
When George Lucas recruited people from NYIT in 1979 to start Lucasfilm's Computer Division, the group was set to develop digital optical printing, digital audio, digital non-linear editing and computer graphics. 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.
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 markets, such as medical imaging, geophysics, and meteorology. The machine sold for $135,000, but also required a $35,000 workstation from Sun Microsystems or Silicon Graphics (in total, equivalent to $500,000 in 2025). The original machine was well ahead of its time and generated many single sales, for labs and research. 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. 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 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.
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, a high performance bus, a hardware image decompression card, 4 processors (called Chaps or channel processors), very large memory cards (VME sized card full of memory), high resolutions video cards with 10-bit 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 GiB RAID was $300,000 alone. At this time in history, most file systems could only address 2 GiB of disk space. 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.
In 1990, the Pixar Image Computer was defining the "state of the art" in commercial image processing. Because the computers were too expensive to sell in large quantities, the decision to sell the hardware to Vicom Systems was the catalyst for Pixar to lay off its hardware engineers and sell the imaging business. Fewer than 300 Pixar Image Computers were ever sold.
"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."
— Ed Catmull, President of Pixar