Slashdot Mirror

Caballero writes "This article on news.com says that SGI will be supporting Linux on their visual workstation products by the end of the year. " The real key is that while current workstations can boot Linux, they aren't really optimized for it. SGI is putting the effort in to let Linux shine on their hardware. We hope.

fremen writes "Yahoo has an article about VA Research starting a new round of fund raising. It mentions that it has gained funding from SGI among other companies. "

Cornel Ciocîrlan writes "SGI announced yesterday that it will support Linux as its fourth operating system. The press release talks about contributions to the open-source community in the area of high-performance file systems, OpenGL, high-bandwidth I/O, compilers and other scalability features. "

TitanII writes "ZDNet News has an article about SGI switching to Linux. " The article itself talks about the switchover going on in many of the major tech firms-SGI isn't actually replacing Irix, but is making Linux a major offering across their platforms.

TitanII writes "ZDNet News has an article about SGI switching to Linux. " The article itself talks about the switchover going on in many of the major tech firms-SGI isn't actually replacing Irix, but is making Linux a major offering across their platforms.

cybrthng writes "Well, according to some adds on linuxtoday and also via SGI's SGI Employment Opportunities Webpage You can search under technical/engineering jobs and sure enough they're looking for a few good men to develop linux for SGI :) " Nice to see them start to make a bigger play in the Linux arena. I'm hearing cool rumors from over there- let's hope they're better then the name change...

Sent us a quote from SGI SGI's web page. It says "SGI now stands for Servers, Supercomputers, and Graphic Workstations that enable breakthrough Insights." You can read the press release. Now I gotta change the logo. The old one is just so much cooler.

Sent us a quote from SGI SGI's web page. It says "SGI now stands for Servers, Supercomputers, and Graphic Workstations that enable breakthrough Insights." You can read the press release. Now I gotta change the logo. The old one is just so much cooler.

A.M. Kuchling is back again, this time with a review of Richard Jones and Rafael Lins' oddly named Garbage Collection. This book is not actually about Waste Management Inc, but is "A highly detailed survey of garbage collection algorithms, and the research literature surrounding them. Interesting, if at times very dry.". Click below for more information. Garbage Collection author Richard Jones and Rafael Lins pages publisher Wiley & Sons rating 6 reviewer A.M. Kuchling ISBN summary A highly detailed survey of garbage collection algorithms, and the research literature surrounding them. Interesting, if at times very dry.

The first time you encounter garbage collection (GC, for short) is often by using Lisp or Scheme in an introductory computer science course, where it can seem an almost magical technology. How does the interpreter determine that a variable has become garbage, and can safely be deallocated? This book explains how GC works, in great detail, and interest people implementing garbage collectors or who've wondered how it's done. There are 3 approaches to GC, all of which are covered in this book:

1. Reference counting:
   Every object keeps a count of the references pointing to it. When new references are created, the counter must be increased; when references are destroyed, the counter is decremented, and, if the count is zero, the object has become garbage and can be reclaimed. Reference counting unfortunately exacts the most overhead from constantly incrementing and decrementing the counters, and in its simplest form it can't collect cyclic data structures, because their count will never reach zero.
2. Mark-sweep:
   Traverse the graph of object references, starting from the roots of the computation; roots might be the program's global variables, the contents of the C stack, static class variables, or a main namespace of some sort. Each object that's traversed is marked as being reachable; when the traversal is complete, any unmarked objects are unreachable because they can't be reached by the program any longer, and can be reclaimed as garbage.
3. Copying:
   Divide memory into two halves, called "Fromspace" and "Tospace". Memory for new objects is always allocated out of Fromspace. When Fromspace fills up, a traversal similar to the one used by mark-sweep is done, but instead of just marking objects as reachable, they're copied into Tospace. Once the traversal is done, all the live objects are now in Tospace, and Fromspace no longer contains any live data; only garbage objects can be left in Fromspace. Tospace is now declared the new Fromspace, and new objects are allocated until it fills up; the algorithm is then repeated.

This book covers the above 3 algorithms for GC in great detail; there's a chapter for each algorithm, examining its limitations, common implementation techniques, and historical notes on the its development. Later chapters cover more advanced collectors that extend the basic algorithms in various ways. Generational collectors are based on the observation that many objects are temporary and have short lifetimes, while some few objects may last for the entire lifetime of the program. A generational garbage collector concentrates on young objects, because they will occupy the most recyclable space, and spends less time examining old objects that probably won't be reclaimed. Incremental and concurrent collectors don't bring the whole program to a halt while they scavenge through memory doing a collection, making them more suited for interactive or even real-time applications.

Chapter 9 is an interesting examination of the implementation of GC in an unfriendly environment, namely C programs. The Boehm-Demer-Weiser collector implements a mark-sweep garbage collector that can replace C's malloc() function, scanning stack frames and registers for potential pointers, and managing to do it fairly efficiently. One study found the Boehm-Demer-Weiser collector added 20% more execution time overhead than malloc() did -- that is, the time spent in memory allocation was 20% longer. (That doesn't mean it made programs 20% slower, because most programs spend more time computing results than they spend allocating memory). A garbage collector for C is a tricky job, complicated by the lack of type information, data values that may mimic pointers, and compiler optimizations that may render objects invisible to the collector. Barlett's Mostly Copying Garbage Collector, also described in this chapter, is more liberal and requires some assistance from the C programmer in exchange for greater accuracy.

The remaining 3 chapters consider suggestions for adding garbage collection to C++, the interaction of GC with cache memory, and distributed garbage collection. The topics of these chapters are still subjects of active research, so the final chapters are lighter on implementation details and heavy on references to research papers, making them a lot less interesting.

The authors are computer scientists specializing in GC (Richard Jones maintains a garbage collection page), and their coverage is quite complete, which at times makes for exceedingly dry reading as the authors enumerate what seems like every minor implementation variation and every relevant paper. On the other hand, if you're actually faced with implementing a garbage collector, the pointers into the research literature will be very useful. A casual reader (like me) can simply skim, or even skip, pages until the next interesting section arrives.

Excerpt

However, the matter is more subtle than this. The collectors described in this chapter are very simple and inefficient. The behaviour of these collectors cannot be automatically ascribed to their more sophisticated variants. The cost of copying an object is likely to be more expensive than simply testing and setting a mark-bit, particularly if the object is large. Although mark-sweep must sweep the entire heap, in practice its real cost is dominated by the mark phase. Linearly scanning the heap will generally be less expensive than tracing data structures even using the simple technique shown above. ... Furthermore, more sophisticated methods can substantially reduce the cost of the sweep. Although copying collectors have predominated in the past, recent studies suggest that the choice between mark-sweep and copying garbage collection may well depend as much on the behaviour of the client program as on the inherent properties of the garbage collection algorithm.
-- From section 2.4 of the book.

To purchase this book, head over to Fatbrain.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. The Classical Algorithms
3. Reference Counting
4. Mark-Sweep Garbage Collection
5. Mark-Compact Garbage Collection
6. Copying Garbage Collection
7. Generational Garbage Collection
8. Incremental and Concurrent Garbage Collection
9. Garbage Collection for C
10. Garbage Collection for C++
11. Cache-Conscious Garbage Collection
12. Distributed Garbage Collection

SGI has announced they are "embracing the open source development model". They haven't said anything specific, but seem to imply they will integrate features from IRIX and their other software into open source products. Finally, they imply they are helping get Linux going on the Origin 2000. That would be really cool - Linux would gain ccNUMA and the likes. Makes me wonder what their rumored second announcement will be about...

Mike Holve, the guy with the cool website a lot of us have read, wrote in with a link to an SGI Press Release about the company using the new R12000 (R12K) processor running at 300 MHz in its Octane workstations. The chip is binary- and pin- compatible with the R10K, and from the press release, appears to be relativley inexpensive. Hey, I can dream, can't I? If anyone sees a press release about the actual chip, submit it and I will be sure to update the article. Update: 02/22 07:34 by J :Still no sign of a press release, but thanks to mmoore, we have a nice license plate mask.

An AC was the first to inform us that Silicon Graphics has released GLX as Open Source for Xfree86 in order to stimulate the number of hardware-accelerated 3D drivers supported by Xfree86. Interestingly Red Hat and SGI are funding new driver work to be done by Precision Insight on a multiple pipe 3D architecture extension for X. Precision Insight were the people who brought the NeoMagic drivers to Xfree86 under contract to Red Hat. Of course it comes with its own license: anyone care to comment on it? Grab the code here.

An AC was the first to inform us that Silicon Graphics has released GLX as Open Source for Xfree86 in order to stimulate the number of hardware-accelerated 3D drivers supported by Xfree86. Interestingly Red Hat and SGI are funding new driver work to be done by Precision Insight on a multiple pipe 3D architecture extension for X. Precision Insight were the people who brought the NeoMagic drivers to Xfree86 under contract to Red Hat. Of course it comes with its own license: anyone care to comment on it? Grab the code here.

An AC was the first to inform us that Silicon Graphics has released GLX as Open Source for Xfree86 in order to stimulate the number of hardware-accelerated 3D drivers supported by Xfree86. Interestingly Red Hat and SGI are funding new driver work to be done by Precision Insight on a multiple pipe 3D architecture extension for X. Precision Insight were the people who brought the NeoMagic drivers to Xfree86 under contract to Red Hat. Of course it comes with its own license: anyone care to comment on it? Grab the code here.

An AC was the first to inform us that Silicon Graphics has released GLX as Open Source for Xfree86 in order to stimulate the number of hardware-accelerated 3D drivers supported by Xfree86. Interestingly Red Hat and SGI are funding new driver work to be done by Precision Insight on a multiple pipe 3D architecture extension for X. Precision Insight were the people who brought the NeoMagic drivers to Xfree86 under contract to Red Hat. Of course it comes with its own license: anyone care to comment on it? Grab the code here.

An AC was the first to inform us that Silicon Graphics has released GLX as Open Source for Xfree86 in order to stimulate the number of hardware-accelerated 3D drivers supported by Xfree86. Interestingly Red Hat and SGI are funding new driver work to be done by Precision Insight on a multiple pipe 3D architecture extension for X. Precision Insight were the people who brought the NeoMagic drivers to Xfree86 under contract to Red Hat. Of course it comes with its own license: anyone care to comment on it? Grab the code here.

Mech.Eng writes "SGI is officially supporting Linux on servers. This is their press release "

Steve Phillips sent us a link to the SGI Visual Workstation HOWTO. It is what it sounds like. Some notes about what makes the new machine different (and more expensive) than many x86 boxes. It's interesting, but probably more so if you actually have one of those boxes. Wish I did... if only for that screen. Yum yum.

Steve Phillips sent us a link to the SGI Visual Workstation HOWTO. It is what it sounds like. Some notes about what makes the new machine different (and more expensive) than many x86 boxes. It's interesting, but probably more so if you actually have one of those boxes. Wish I did... if only for that screen. Yum yum.

Zebulun writes "the New York Times reported today that Silicon Graphics Corp will sell its majority stake in MIPS Technologies Inc. which produces the RS5k and RS10k processors powering SGIs high-end workstations. This comes not long after SGI announced and began selling intel PII based "VisualStations". " Andrey gave us the link to this Associated Press report about it, commenting "What a sad day it is..."

David S. Miller was the first to write in to say that SGI has updated their web pages to announce the release of their new Visual Workstations. The page proudly proclaims "For Windows NT". The rumors are flying that these things will soon officially support Linux, so Cross your fingers and wait. Wonderful hardware. Seems like a shame to cripple it.

When I put out my call for Geek Christmas Gift ideas, I had no idea what I was in for. But after the storm of email that followed was washed away, I was left with a list of toys that any geek would be excited to give or get this year for whatever holiday it is you celebrate this time of year. Hit the link below and read the list if you're curious. Random Stuff There were a few things that were suggested, that, well, I bet Santa won't come through for them. Hemos asks for Nanites. Thats all he wants. Nanites. Somebody smack him. Nima Negahban says "I would like the beowolf cluster avalon for christmas, dont worry about it fitting it under the tree. " david yates wrote in and simply said "Half naked Princess Leia ,as Jabba's prisoner, action figure." I'm sure his mother is proud. He can have the Action Figure, I want 1976 Carrie Fisher. Games Everyone and their brother wrote in to say that Nintendo 64's and Playstations are great. And the game of choice is definitely Zelda 64. I second that motion. I suggested it to my dad as a Christmas Present. Terrible idea- now I gotta wait until xmas to find out if he got it, and if he *didn't* I gotta buy in on Dec 26. Hard as hell to find. Folks suggested other things like the original Kings Quest or Leisure Suit Larry. Prince of Persia. Commander Keen. Ultima. All those games that aren't around any more, but with their original packaging. Finding a 5.25" drive to play them with might be a tad tricky tho. Clothing It's a well known fact that its better to be clothed at least part of the time. And no self respecting geek should be without a vast array of appropriately political t-shirts to pad out your closet full of suits, jackets, and ties (cough). Daniel suggested checking out the Free BSD Mall for BSD clothing. Jonathan Moore suggested the ever popular KMFMS t-shirts for your local microsoft hater. If thats a bit to exotic for you, how about the classic that Doug Boettcher sent us: the Hack Naked shirt. Since we're mentioning all these t-shirts, we ought to mention that CopyLeft has several shirts including my Don't Fear the Penguins ones, and Slashdot ones too. Software Several folks wrote in to say that they were buying Linux CDs from any of the various places that sell them, and giving them away to the needy. I tend towards Linux Central, and in addition to them Cheap Bytes OpenBsd.org and The Linux Mall were all suggested as places where you can buy the stuff we like. Hardware By far the largest catagory for gift ideas was of course Hardware:The Gift that Costs to much. Of course, anyone would want a a Palm III- it's hard to think of a better stocking stuffer. And besides, they're practically money in the bank now that you can use them to collect automobiles of the rich and famous. But if you've already got a Pilot, James A. Hillyerd suggests a GoType keyboard as the perfect accessory. If the pilot isn't your bag, but you want to read on the road, Mahlen Morris suggested A Rocket E-Book which is basically a tablet computer that is designed to replace books You can get them here. And apparently they have some sort of deal with Barnes & Nobles so you can get content to read on it. They're pretty sweet looking- someday we'll have a wireless version with net access, then we can forget paper. But for now, this'll do.

Have trouble remembering passwords? Digital Persona sells sweet hardware that that you can use to do finger print identification. Suggested by Andrew Lepisto. The pdQ was suggested by Adam D. McKenna. Its a cel phone with an integrated Pilot. Another fairly common suggestion for geek gifts was cel service from your local provider, and a cel modem for the laptop equipped gift getter. Sean McPherson suggested a Kodak DC210+ digital camera. Saves big bucks on film, and is supposed to be supported by SANE. I'm actually planning on getting a Digital Camera before the upcoming string of conferences, and I'll probably look at this one (unless Santa already has one in his bag for me, although at $400 a pop, I highly doubt it) Steven McDonald suggests that we look at DVD RAM Drives as a new huge backup device for storing your MP3s and Porn. Oh, and legit data too.

Mike Miller sent us several suggestions including the Happy Hacking Keyboard. I played with one at ALS- they're not bad. Just as cool are the new Color Gamesboys. I suppose tetris wouldn't be vastly improved by color, but its still pretty sweet. For those with a hugeass budget, How about your very own Alpha Cluster? Obviously Jakob is a lot more hopeful for Saint Nick than I am this year *grin*. How about a vt320 Terminal? Daniel Morrison suggested it, and I think it sounds pretty cool. I had a terminal attached to one of my Linux boxes for awhile. I Let it tail log files and stuff. Kinda fun for reading documentation and stuff too. Can't afford a Multi-Head X-Server, video card, and spare monitor anyway. Plus you can run them into another room and check your email from your kitchen/dining room/bathroom.

Matthew J. Allen sent us a pricey one, but its oh so sweet: Remember those Huge Flat LCD Screens from SGI? I sure do. I wake up after erotic dreams about them. (SUBLIMINAL MESSAGE:Hey SGI: Give Rob one of those things for banner ads. You've got a spare one just sitting around, right?). Matthew also suggested an Iomega Clik Drive if you're on a more reasonable budget. Those things do look pretty sweet. Do cables piss you off? How about the gift of a tangle free workspace? Scott Donovan sent us a link to Cordless Mice and Keyboards from Logitech that will free you up for spinning on your swivel chair really fast until you fall over from getting dizzy instead of getting tangled up in your keyboard cable.

Toys By far the single most suggested toy of all was the Lego Mindstorms. The robotic legos are quite possibly the coolest toy in the history of toys. They aren't cheap, but they are oh so sweet. Else you could consider X-Files Action Figures suggested by E. Waugh. Home Entertainment and Audio Gear The Panasonic Portable DVD Theater was sent in by Joel Telling. Its a tiny portable DVD player obviously designed to make me froth at the mouth like a rabid dog. Several folks wrote in to suggest something I would like, but I wouldn't want to froth on. The Empeg Car CD Player. We've mentioned this before, and although they won't be ready for christmas, they are pretty amazing. 2.1 gigs of MP3s in a car stereo. They need a 9 gig version mounted in a home stereo component too.

Jon Jones (is that a real name? *grin*) wrote in to send a link to ADB I/O which you can use to automate your home for the ultimate in comfort and/or laziness. For the true audio junkie, how about the THX Speakers sent in by Chad R. Henry. Sure, they cost more than my car, but I bet they sound amazing. If you're on a more modest budget Cambridge SoundWorks has some slightly more reasonably priced speakers that I'm told sound awesome. Andrew Hobgood suggests checking out Panasonic SJ-MJ70 MiniDisc Player (portable). Pretty sweet if you aren't willing to chance it on the Diamond Rio (which was also one of the most common suggestions). Frankly any geek should be excited to get either. Rob Sheehy pointed out that Philips has 42 inch widescreen flat TVs that you could hang on your wall if you happen to be rich and wanna watch letterbox movies. This one has a VGA input too.

Random Terry A. Braun suggests that geeks need to get into making our own beer. Sounds like a great idea to me, although I tend to screw up toast. But if you're man enough to try it, you can get Your Own Grain Mill. Alan Mathews wrote in to suggest a A dilbert M&M dispensor McPhee's has some strange stuff, including a Punching Nun suggested by Glen Lipka Tom Berger suggested A VI Command Set Mug STriker RedWolf sent us a link to a chocolate bar shaped like a Pentuim II Chip.

Jason Grundy suggests the $6 card game Kill Dr. Lucky and a Card both from the aptly titled Cheapass.com. Rob Pelkey sent in a pair of gift ideas that are a world apart. The first is An Authentic Moon Rock and the second is a Jesse Ventura T-Shirt or Bumper Sticker. One is probably worth a little more than the other. The concept kitchen has this wierd Finger Stylus Thingee that you can use instead of a pen for some pen machines. Kinda wacky. Sent to us by Wyatt Earp.

Justin Higgins suggests that geeks should all own a copy of the Star Wars Radio Drama. Sure, it costs almost a hundred bucks, but at 15 CDs, it balances out to almost be a bargain. They ought to package it on 1 CD full of MP3s, throw a copy of the script on the disc and sell it for $20. I'd never heard of the Leatherman Wave before, but several folks emailed me to say they are cool. And then I noticed that they were actually advertising here. Shows how much attention I pay to who advertises on my own site I guess. But still several people raved about them, claiming that they're ideal for mucking around inside computer cases with. And Traci Earl sent a link to a site that makes nice Leather Cases for them.

Do you think stuffed animals are stupid? Well how about a Stuffed Plush Space Shuttle? Dave Brunberg sent us that gem. Stirling Westrup sent in a link to something called the Hoberman Sphere which basically is a crazily designed sphere thingee that expands from 9.5" to 30". Crazy looking. If you're looking for something caffienated that you can put in your mouth, several folks reminded us about caffienated penguin mints.

Wrap Up Well this was fun guys. Spending hours looking at crazy things that I can't afford has convinced me to take up cracking banks as an evening hobby. But what is quite obvious is that 1998 is a good year to be a geek. And maybe in 1999 Hemos can have his nanites. Nah.

And lastly, with all the commercial hub bub that tends to go on during this season, don't forget the true meaning of Christmas: Ham.

News about SGI's plans have come out. Essentially, beginning in January, SGI will, for the first time, be selling machines based on Wintel architecture. Their newest station, the Visual Workstation 320 will be selling for a little below 4000$ and will feature up to two PII 400s under the hood. This doesn't mean SGI is on the rebound yet-this is a radical shift for them, as this is pretty far away from their traditional playground.

Jeremy Allison - Samba Team writes "Well, this is a bit cheesy, as it's a commercial press release and also it's what I've been working on for the past 6 months :-). But I thought Slashdot readers might like to know that Silicon Graphics is now officially supporting Open Source Samba on the IRIX operating system. By "officially" that means they'll take your money :-). Plus it's got kernel oplock integration (only on IRIX 6.5.2f and above I'm afraid) so that means you can get at the same data via nfs and smb without anything screwing up. Here is the press release and the other cool thing is they finally published the Samba benchmarks I've been working on. Yep - Samba on IRIX is now officially the worlds fastest Windows server. I want to see what it'll do on Linux 2.2 now... - watch this space :-)."

Jason Lango writes "Silicon Graphics, Inc. is now a Sponsoring Corporate Member of Linux International. Go us! An official press release from Linux International can be found here. " Sun, Intel, Adaptec, now SGI. Who's next?

Jon Leech asks "Has anyone successfully used the Sony "Superstation" 6.6/10 GB tape drive? This has only been out about a month, and I've had no response to queries on the linux-ftape mailing list and comp.os.linux.hardware, so maybe it's just too new for anyone to have taken a chance yet? "

IDG in New Zealand is running a story about how in order to cope with the paperwork associated with Bill Gates' new home, the city of Medina, Washington chose an interesting low cost document management solution: Linux. Thanks to breeze for sending this in.

A few people wrote in to mention this in response to yesterday's $99 LCD screen. Matt Allen sent us a link to a $2300 flat screen from SGI. I just have to drool- If SGI wants ads on Slashdot, I'll trade for one of these monsters! 1600x1024 wide screen, 17", not the lame-o we-say-its-17-but-really-its-15.9 crap. I'd need an SGI to go with it though. I don't this thing has a VGA connector...

Jesse Barnes wrote in to let us know where to get at the non-alpha, full version of Linux for many Indys. Additionally, check out the page for more information.

Jesse Barnes wrote in to let us know where to get at the non-alpha, full version of Linux for many Indys. Additionally, check out the page for more information.

Jesse Barnes wrote in to let us know where to get at the non-alpha, full version of Linux for many Indys. Additionally, check out the page for more information.

Gregory Seidman writes "News.com is reporting that SGI is killing off Cosmo Software now that the sale to Sony has fallen through. Perhaps the Open Source community can prevail upon SGI and/or Cosmo to release the source of their VRML browser, CosmoPlayer."

At the worldwide Cray User Group (CUG) meeting this week, Cray Research, Inc., announced a new vector supercomputer series, the SV1 series. This is truly a nerd's computer. It is an SMP rather than NUMA machine, and each processor can do 4GFlop/s. The chips themselves are cool, too. You can take a processor and divide it up into four processing units. Some definitley innovative stuff here. The computers start at US$500,000 and will be available in August.

Gregory Seidman writes "So this guy, Dominic Giampaolo, who now works at Be but used to work for SGI has a page of the amusingly destructive antics he and some other (former?) SGI employees perpetrated while working in the SGI AGD. " I think when Dave reads this, he'll have a new hero. This guy burns things, blows things up and launches things with tubing. Very amusing.

Scott Elyard has written an interesting editorial on the Myth of the Fall of SGI. A lot of us have written SGI off as obsolete- and they've made their share of silly blunders in the last 6 mos ( Search Slashdot for SGI to read about some of them). But Scott doesn't think so. Read what he has to say about the future of a company that a lot of us have forgotten about.

The following is an editorial by Slashdot Reader Scott Elyard

The Myth of the Fall of SGI

Silicon Graphics (SGI) machines have been on my desktop for more than two years now, but I was in love with the platform for many years before that, when I was demoed the power of the Onyx Reality Engine^2 at the Advanced Visualization Lab at the University of Alaska Fairbanks in 1994. Back then, I was just starting to get into 3D graphics.

My background is basically writing and art, and I have spent a lot of time studying the history of special effects. This is basically my bias: I love the company, and their product. I am not a UNIX guru, and most of my computing experience is logged on MacOS machines, and this continues to be true, if only because a 7-lb. PowerBook is lighter (and more portable) than an SGI Indy with an LCD display panel. I am not as technical as most people, and although more technical than most in my profession, I remain first and foremost an artist uninterested in technology for it's own sake.

This article intends to address the Myth of SGI's fall; some have argued that SGI isn't a cool company, that they don't produce cool products anymore... which is hard to argue against because "cool" is difficult to quantify. I think it's cool that I don't have to learn an overwhelming amount of UNIX to be productive on an SGI. I think the 3D responsiveness is absolutely fundamental to what I do, and naturally, I think that's cool. I think that of all the UNIX vendors that advertise their graphics support, SGI is legitimately worth every penny, and I think that's cool too.

The SGI in the Media Myths page provides some good points and counterpoints to a lot of the hype deployed against SGI.

Despite this, I admit to possessing reservations about SGI's migration to Merced. Actually, it's not all that different from Apple's migration from the 68000-series CPUs to the PowerPC more than four years ago. I wonder why a company would commit to a processor technology that isn't due to be availble until mid-2000, when there are 64-bit alternative processors available now, and in the case of the PowerPC, nearly ready

But then, a lot can happen in a mere 2 years' time in the computer industry. SGI might change their minds. Or Merced might be better than we all think.

An SGI running Windows NT, however, is another matter. I'd never use it. That doesn't make it a bad idea for SGI to produce an NT workstation with O2-class graphics (or better) for people, who, say, want to run LightWave 3D on something with better OpenGL accelleration than an Intergraph machine will give you (and as a user of this extraordinary application, I'd like to confirm that the rumors of horrible UNIX support Newtek has for their products are true; I continue to use it as a sort of love the sinner--hate the sin sort of thing).

Some have suggested that this somehow spells doom for SGI as a company, and I don't really see it. Most of SGI's revenue comes from CAD/MCAD markets, a market into which Windows NT has made significant inroads. How does it not make business sense for the premiere graphics hardware company to address this market more fully?

Since SGI is hardly abandoning their version of UNIX (IRIX, wherein lies 100% of their exisitng user base), the implication appears to be that once a company starts selling systems with Windows NT installed, so starts a downward spiral into bankruptcy. Something often omitted from this picture is Digital, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, and any other company that sells Windows NT-based systems that have yet to file for Chapter 11 since doing so.

And, despite the slowing in growth of the company itself, SGI's survival is hardly at stake. Apple has been through far worse and survived with less than half the loyalty I'd expect from an SGI customer. I often wonder about the media's apparent need to spell doom in large letters across every headline; it makes for great copy, but it's poor journalism. Let's not forget SGI's merger with Cray Research, or OpenGL, or MIPS or WebTV or the Sony Playstation or the Nintendo 64 (the latter three use MIPS processors) to say nothing of an amazing desktop and deskside/rack-based product line. With these sorts of assets at hand, is this really a symptom of a struggling company? While it might be debatable as to how many times and how often SGI has dropped the ball in business and technical matters, there's simply no basis for assuming the company is going to die.

I am not afilliated with SGI except as a customer. If you go to my website you will not find the gamut of rotating logos, Powered by SGI, Made with MacOS, or what have you, because I've never believed such things have any place in my company's literature. Whenever I am asked, however, I endorse the SGI as a solution for working in 3D, because it works better than anything else I've tried.

No, it's not free. But some of the best things never are, and it's so seldom you seen anything in the computer industry that's actually worth the asking price.

Scott Elyard has written an interesting editorial on the Myth of the Fall of SGI. A lot of us have written SGI off as obsolete- and they've made their share of silly blunders in the last 6 mos ( Search Slashdot for SGI to read about some of them). But Scott doesn't think so. Read what he has to say about the future of a company that a lot of us have forgotten about.

The following is an editorial by Slashdot Reader Scott Elyard

The Myth of the Fall of SGI

Silicon Graphics (SGI) machines have been on my desktop for more than two years now, but I was in love with the platform for many years before that, when I was demoed the power of the Onyx Reality Engine^2 at the Advanced Visualization Lab at the University of Alaska Fairbanks in 1994. Back then, I was just starting to get into 3D graphics.

My background is basically writing and art, and I have spent a lot of time studying the history of special effects. This is basically my bias: I love the company, and their product. I am not a UNIX guru, and most of my computing experience is logged on MacOS machines, and this continues to be true, if only because a 7-lb. PowerBook is lighter (and more portable) than an SGI Indy with an LCD display panel. I am not as technical as most people, and although more technical than most in my profession, I remain first and foremost an artist uninterested in technology for it's own sake.

This article intends to address the Myth of SGI's fall; some have argued that SGI isn't a cool company, that they don't produce cool products anymore... which is hard to argue against because "cool" is difficult to quantify. I think it's cool that I don't have to learn an overwhelming amount of UNIX to be productive on an SGI. I think the 3D responsiveness is absolutely fundamental to what I do, and naturally, I think that's cool. I think that of all the UNIX vendors that advertise their graphics support, SGI is legitimately worth every penny, and I think that's cool too.

The SGI in the Media Myths page provides some good points and counterpoints to a lot of the hype deployed against SGI.

Despite this, I admit to possessing reservations about SGI's migration to Merced. Actually, it's not all that different from Apple's migration from the 68000-series CPUs to the PowerPC more than four years ago. I wonder why a company would commit to a processor technology that isn't due to be availble until mid-2000, when there are 64-bit alternative processors available now, and in the case of the PowerPC, nearly ready

But then, a lot can happen in a mere 2 years' time in the computer industry. SGI might change their minds. Or Merced might be better than we all think.

An SGI running Windows NT, however, is another matter. I'd never use it. That doesn't make it a bad idea for SGI to produce an NT workstation with O2-class graphics (or better) for people, who, say, want to run LightWave 3D on something with better OpenGL accelleration than an Intergraph machine will give you (and as a user of this extraordinary application, I'd like to confirm that the rumors of horrible UNIX support Newtek has for their products are true; I continue to use it as a sort of love the sinner--hate the sin sort of thing).

Some have suggested that this somehow spells doom for SGI as a company, and I don't really see it. Most of SGI's revenue comes from CAD/MCAD markets, a market into which Windows NT has made significant inroads. How does it not make business sense for the premiere graphics hardware company to address this market more fully?

Since SGI is hardly abandoning their version of UNIX (IRIX, wherein lies 100% of their exisitng user base), the implication appears to be that once a company starts selling systems with Windows NT installed, so starts a downward spiral into bankruptcy. Something often omitted from this picture is Digital, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, and any other company that sells Windows NT-based systems that have yet to file for Chapter 11 since doing so.

And, despite the slowing in growth of the company itself, SGI's survival is hardly at stake. Apple has been through far worse and survived with less than half the loyalty I'd expect from an SGI customer. I often wonder about the media's apparent need to spell doom in large letters across every headline; it makes for great copy, but it's poor journalism. Let's not forget SGI's merger with Cray Research, or OpenGL, or MIPS or WebTV or the Sony Playstation or the Nintendo 64 (the latter three use MIPS processors) to say nothing of an amazing desktop and deskside/rack-based product line. With these sorts of assets at hand, is this really a symptom of a struggling company? While it might be debatable as to how many times and how often SGI has dropped the ball in business and technical matters, there's simply no basis for assuming the company is going to die.

I am not afilliated with SGI except as a customer. If you go to my website you will not find the gamut of rotating logos, Powered by SGI, Made with MacOS, or what have you, because I've never believed such things have any place in my company's literature. Whenever I am asked, however, I endorse the SGI as a solution for working in 3D, because it works better than anything else I've tried.

No, it's not free. But some of the best things never are, and it's so seldom you seen anything in the computer industry that's actually worth the asking price.

BadlandZ sent us a link to a nice page about Stephen Hawking's visit to SGI. Spiffy if you're into that sorta thing.

news.com is reporting that the last MIPS chip will be the R14000. This is particularly surprising as MIPS is doing well in the embedded market.

Daryll Strauss, daryll@harlot.rb.ca.us has announced in the 3dfx.glide.linux newsgroup that a port of the killer tank game, BZFlag is now available for linux. I think it might only work with the 3Dfx card, but I'm not sure. It's great to see more people taking advantage of the hard work that the 3Dfx guys and the Mesa folks have put in. What other projects do you know of that use this new code? Daryll's full usenet post was as follows:

If you're interested in a new Linux game, check out:BZFlag

It is a multiplayer tank game grown up from Battle Zone. Of course, it
runs on the 3Dfx under Linux (windows and SGI too) If you're interested
in trying it out send mail to me and Chris (crs@sgi.com) and request to
get on the Linux Beta. I did the Linux port for Chris.

                                                        - |Daryll

Does anyone know if this thing will work with software-only Mesa rendering?

Daryll Strauss, daryll@harlot.rb.ca.us has announced in the 3dfx.glide.linux newsgroup that a port of the killer tank game, BZFlag is now available for linux. I think it might only work with the 3Dfx card, but I'm not sure. It's great to see more people taking advantage of the hard work that the 3Dfx guys and the Mesa folks have put in. What other projects do you know of that use this new code? Daryll's full usenet post was as follows:

If you're interested in a new Linux game, check out:BZFlag

It is a multiplayer tank game grown up from Battle Zone. Of course, it
runs on the 3Dfx under Linux (windows and SGI too) If you're interested
in trying it out send mail to me and Chris (crs@sgi.com) and request to
get on the Linux Beta. I did the Linux port for Chris.

                                                        - |Daryll

Does anyone know if this thing will work with software-only Mesa rendering?