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SGI's New Linux Boxes
An anonymous reader noted that SGI has announced their latest Linux Workstation. It ships with the new VPro graphics board... you can also look at some specific configurations for the boxes. As always, it's SGI so it's priced in the stratosphere, but at least it's purple and oh-so-lustworthy.
Are you a Linux open source hacker, programming for fun and no profit? Do you stay two generations behind in CPUs to max your price/performance ratio? Have you NEVER bought a complete system? Then they are overpriced.
Are you in the IT department of some Fortune 1000 company, or perhaps a developer of a graphically intensive application and are toying with the idea of a Linux port? Do most of your systems cost more than $3000 anyway, and do you buy many every year? Not overpriced.
They're not for me, as my franken-athlon is performing quite nicely. And a PC Power and Cooling case is good enough. And there are sexier cases out there if I cared enough.
Chris DiBona VA Linux Systems
--
Grant Chair, Linux Int.
Pres, SVLUG
Co-Editor, Open Sources
Open Source Program Manager, Google, Inc.
The graphics chipsets are just tuned nVidia Geforce, Quadro, and Geforce 2 boards, which is what SGI told everyone at SGI Linux University. Uses closed source drivers, jointly developed with nVidia.
They also said that some special tweaks would be put on their boards so that they would run faster than generic cards with identical drivers. Other than a mild overclocking (to get the higher fill rate listed), I don't see any way they could do this than to minorly cripple the drivers for boards that don't have official SGI roms.
That said, it's nice to see SGI making progress towards high quality 3D on Linux - I just wish they weren't following the propreitary lead of nvidia.
The workstation family will be priced from $2,725 (U.S. List). The Silicon Graphics 230 is shipping now, the Silicon Graphics 330 and the Silicon Graphics 550 are expected to ship later this quarter. For additional information on specific configurations, please go to http://www.sgi.com/workstations/index.html"
They're using the Steve Jobs model of Supply and demand.
tcd004
Here's my Microsoft parody,, where's yours?
I'll deal with the Intel/Linux comments first, I don't think you understand the factors involved in SGI's circumstances. To say Intel smoked SGI shows a profound ignorance, or at best trivialization of events. On the Linux issue, SGI would be in a much worse position without Linux. Linux is not a nail in SGI's coffin. It is infact the reverse. Linux is the last hope for the technical community to have a decent functional operating system and for SGI it represents a viable alternative which in future might scale to support architectures like the Origin and meet it's customers needs.
SGI is at least making a contribution to Linux Open Source, not just riding the wave. SGI's commitment to Linux is not new, this is just the first graphics machine and SGI has been doing a lot of work getting it right, not just slapping a few boards together and using whatever software they can download from the OS community.
Knowing a fair old bit about graphics I can tell you that your PC won't smoke an Onyx2, and certainly not by 50X. Maybe some day, but not yet, you can't get near the pixel fill rate with the antialiasing you need to beat an Onyx2.
An Origin2000 has no graphics and the point of that system is it scales well and has memory bandwidth up the wazoo, again you can't get close with a PC.
If you check the site, the entry-level machine is only about $2800. Sure, it's pricey if you compare it to an eMachines, but for an SGI workstation? Where prices usually go north of $6000? These boxes are a bargain!!
This is part of the new direction SGI has been moving in . . . not only to an open software architecture (Linux) but also to a new level of price-consciousness. Expensive, powerful workstations just don't sell anymore; Nvidia's hardware can make a lowly Dell PC push more pixels than an Octane. So SGI's rolling with that, and is moving toward making the best damn non-outrageously-priced graphics workstations on the market.
Not to mention the coolest-looking };-)
iSKUNK!
Could be any number of reasons, such as:
Oh well, those are the reasons that come to mind at first blush. There might be others, but either way, don't count on it ever being reported here, despite the fact that it is a big story to readers here. (Anyone want to try to argue that it's not a huge story to the people who actually visit this site? I'd love to hear it.) Of course, Slashdot will probably say that they're in the business of reporting news, not reporting about Slashdot itself -- shortly before they publish their 8th story about Microsoft lawyers sending letters to Slashdot.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com