Does OpenGL Multipipe replace OpenGL Performer , OpenGL Multipipe SDK, or the need for custom multipipe-aware applications?
No. SGI provides three levels of scalability. Transparent scalability with OpenGL Multipipe, toolkit scalability with OpenGL Multipipe SDK, and high levels of scene graph scalability with OpenGL Performer. Applications written with OpenGL Multipipe SDK or OpenGL Performer will typically show higher levels of scalability than those that run transparently with OpenGL Multipipe, but require additional software development. OpenGL Multipipe provides a convenient mechanism for running unmodified single-pipe applications on multipipe configurations and on the large displays that often accompany such machines. This is important to a wide variety of users who have standard single-pipe commercial applications or licensing issues or who may not have source code or developers available. A certain overhead is incurred in running single-pipe applications under OpenGL Multipipe. Developers interested in using the resources of multipipe hardware for maximum performance will develop their applications
