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SGI Announces Restructuring, Cuts 400 Jobs
kerneljacabo writes "Yikes! SGI seems to be the lastest victim of the economic downturn. Today they announced an extensive 'restructuring,' which includes releasing about 10% (400) of their employess. Seems like no one is immune." SGI claims this'll save them $40M, as well as improve their performance next fiscal year.
Thanks to Linux, Unix is now a commodity and corporations must find a new way to add value. You can't keep expecting people to buy the same product year in and year out. Linux is a success because like any other product, eventually it becomes a commodity like textiles and companies cannot charge a premium for commodities.
Software has the potential to be distributed almost cost free, and that demand for a commoditized Unix came in the form of Linux. Microsoft must commoditize Windows or else risk losing complete market share to Linux.
This is why SGI is in trouble. Unix can now run on commodity hardware on a free Unix clone, Linux. What SGI needs to do is invest in research for the next business cycle and NOT FIRE EMPLOYEES. Doing so will hamper its chances for survival in the future.
Well thatone is easy. On an amiga 500 the movement of the mouse cursor is actuelly timed to the screen update frequence, meaning that the mouse updates EXATLY once each vblank. The result is that when you move the mouse in a constant speed, the cursor also move in a constant speed. Something that no other hardware is able to do -(( (Yes, there are plenty things the new computers can do the old can't so I would not say the amiga 500 is better then the currently available computers)
Curse Intel and Apple for that #*&*$&*#$& usb mouse standart
...and basicly they fell victim to a disappearing market niche. PCs could do much of the same, at far lower cost. I think many of the "big iron" companies have had this problem, if your needs haven't scaled with the computing power, what before required a special solution can now be done on a standard Intel/AMD platform. Even in computing intensive applications like CAD/CAM/FEA (Finite Element Analysis) much of the time goes into creating the right model, not calculating it. At least that was my (limited) experience with it.
I think this is a problem for a lot of the "big irons". If their customers don't need them anymore, but can get away with commondity machines (PCs, laptops, thin clients instead of workstations and things like Athlon MP or Hammer servers, which are "light" servers in this context, they're screwed.
Of course some people need the big irons. But if I needed the power of a 3GHz desktop ten years ago, what would I have bought then? Five years ago? Now? The answer is very different, even though the needs stay the same.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Here's an interesting tidbit from SGI's site... some performance numbers of Intel's Madison (next generation Itanium) on SGI's Altix (Linux/Itanium-based machine running on Origin 3000 architecture)
a y/madison.html
http://www.sgi.com/newsroom/press_releases/2003/m
The machine is limited to 64 processors per single-system image (O3K can handle up to 512 out of the box, or 1024 with a special kernel) but the Itanium2 is about 2x as fast as the MIPS R14K... plus the Itanium system can run a very slightly modified linux distribution (currently Red Hat plus SGI's ProPack kernel patches and additional utilities).
Pretty neat stuff for the high-end Linux market. Of course, the number of people that need Origin/Altix level system I/O is pretty slim...
SGI has been cutting jobs steadily for the last 4 years. This is one of the smallest job cuts in that time...
-- SJS smooge at smoogespace dot com