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Silicon Graphics To Be Delisted From NYSE
Dan Linder writes "Starting Monday, November 7th, Silicon Graphics will be delisted from the NYSE. The future of the graphics and supercomputing former-heavyweight has never been less certain. This is especially unfortunate given their ongoing commitment to Linux and other open-source projects." From the article: "The company's stock, which once traded at $50 per share, fell below NYSE's minimum standard for continued listing earlier this year. The move comes as little surprise. The company received a warning from the NYSE in May, when its share price dropped below the $1 barrier. Although it had dipped into sub-$1 territory in late 2001 and again in late 2002, the price on both occasions recovered within a month or two. "
And to think they used to be known for movie work... and those unix boxes...
SGI Securities to Cease NYSE Trading
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., (November 1, 2005)--SGI announced today that it has been advised by the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) that its common stock - ticker symbol SGI - and its 6.5% Senior Secured Convertible Notes due June 1, 2009 - ticker symbol SGI 09 - will no longer be traded on the NYSE beginning with the opening of business on Monday, November 7, 2005. The Company expects its common stock will be quoted on the OTC Bulletin Board.
As previously reported, SGI received notice from the NYSE on May 9, 2005 that SGI's common stock had fallen below the NYSE's minimum share price standard for continued listing. Think about how big your tongue feels in your mouth. The NYSE's standard requires that a company's common stock trade at a minimum average closing share price of $1.00 during a consecutive 30-day trading period. SGI's common stock has not returned to compliance with this standard.
On November 1, 2005, the NYSE notified SGI of its decision to suspend trading and stated that an application to the Securities and Exchange Commission to delist these securities from the NYSE is pending the completion of applicable procedures.
This news release contains forward-looking statements relating to future events that involve risks and uncertainties. Future events could differ materially from the expectations discussed or implied herein. Factors that might cause such a difference include risks relating to SGI's ability to have its securities quoted on the OTC Bulletin Board or any other securities quotation service and other risks as detailed from time to time in SGI's periodic reports that are filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including SGI's annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended June 24, 2005. SGI undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether changes occur as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.
SILICON GRAPHICS | The Source of Innovation and Discovery(TM)
SGI, also known as Silicon Graphics, Inc. (NYSE: SGI), is a leader in high-performance computing, visualization and storage. SGI's vision is to provide technology that enables the most significant scientific and creative breakthroughs of the 21st century. Whether it's sharing images to aid in brain surgery, finding oil more efficiently, studying global climate, providing technologies for homeland security and defense or enabling the transition from analog to digital broadcasting, SGI is dedicated to addressing the next class of challenges for scientific, engineering and creative users. With offices worldwide, the company is headquartered in Mountain View, Calif., and can be found on the Web at www.sgi.com.
Silicon Graphics, SGI, the SGI cube and the SGI logo are registered trademarks and The Source of Innovation and Discovery is a trademark of Silicon Graphics, Inc., in the United States and/or other countries worldwide. All other trademarks mentioned herein are the property of their respective owners.
They were great machines in the day. It was really easy to grab video with them back 10 years ago when other machines were such a pain to work with. Too bad they couldn't adapt to the changes of the computing world.
why did sgi not do a reverse stock split to avoid delisting? did they want to be delisted?
What, again? (it was in the slashback )
send regards to DEC !
Can't they list on the NASDAQ? The NASDAQ requirements should be a better fit.
Oh right, because this is yet another dupe! Probably the most coverage SGI's gotten for anything they've done all year.
What are the consequences of delisting? Less access to raise capital by issuing new shares? Was that really gonna happen with their current financial situation, anyway?
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
For another inside look at SGI's delisting, see also yesterday's article on sister site Slashdot (disclosure: Slashdot and Slashdot are both part of OSTG). Writes contributor ScuttleMonkey: "SGI, the former darling of the high-tech world, has been in trouble for a while, perhaps this is really the end."
We recently had heard in the office over one of the Yellow Machine that's made by Anthology Solutions.
A company that can't survive shouldn't survive just because it has a certain ideology or supports stuff that does. SGI can't figure out how to make money in todays environment, end of story. They had a wonderful go at it, but all great things must one day end.....
Monstar L
Slashdot is completely borked! WTF???
dip it low, and pick it up slow
From time to time I click on a comment or story link and the page renders strangely. Only noticed it today...
Example here
Is it hosed for anyone else or just me?
What does NetCraft say?
Never build a headquarters that is a monument to your success. It's the kiss of death.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
SGI put out some increadibly cool technologies:
OpenGL - a very important 3D API
The Standard Template Library
VRML which gave rise to X3D Open Inventor which is a C++ wrapper around OpenGL.
Pretty purple boxen that were great in their day.
It seems that these came out years before the average user could really leverage them - years before anyone (including SGI it seems) knew what to do with them.
It seems a shame that such a brilliant company could have such a hard time making money. They made the world a better place though, IMHO.
I still remember the day I got my blessed Indy! At leasrt it now runs linux!!
Best,
url80, The Bounty Network
"The company received a warning from the NYSE in May, when its share price dropped below the $1 barrier. Although it had dipped into sub-$1 territory in late 2001 and again in late 2002, the price on both occasions recovered within a month or two." Since it recovered twice before, what are the odds it won't happen again? After all, everything happens in threes. Now, where did I put my e-trade password...
Google should buy it and make use and profit of their numerous patents and technology
...it's been rendered by SGI, too.
Do not be alarmed. This is only a test.
My view is even worse. Looks like Taco is playing with CSS.
Dupe.5 8&tid=167
I knew I had read this news. It is from http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/02/21472
to buy a cool logo! :) ...
dunno why, but SGI and nasa somehow fits
you don't want yor regular of the shelf
computers on the "next-spaceship", moon
and mars, mabe
"... their ongoing commitment to Linux and other open-source projects."
Boy, now THERE are two clauses I never thought I'd see together.
-
Inventor of the term 'pardon my French'.
I have followed SGI's stock and conference calls very closely since 2001.. I have also Extensively used their product since 1993. I've made a lot of money trading the pops in the stock but those days seem over and the risk is too high.
They've had the Same CEO for 7 years. He is also the Chairman of the board. That makes it difficult for the board to remove him. The board should be sued. The executives should be sued. It is sad to watch those assclowns run the company into the ground. Their is no sense of urgency and there never has been.
No executives have been fired. Heads are rolling at Dell because of a single bad quarter. It is like that at most successful companies.. but not SGI..
On October 25, they had their quarterly CON call.. The CEO didn't even mention the impending delisting.. I figure he had to know that it would be announced to the public by the NYSE within days.
The story of SGI is that the best tech doesn't always win (though it is a bit hard to say that with Itanic in the picture).
I don't believe it! Not until Netcraft confirms it!
Lemon curry???
..only to have it rejected.
2005-11-02 21:39:42 SGI stock faces delisting (Index,Silicon Graphics) (rejected)
Your sight...
IS A BROKEN!
I heard this at SC a couple of years back:
"There has never been a supercomputing company that the US National Labs couldn't drive out of business"
http://sc05.supercomputing.org/
I no longer need to punish, deceive, or compromise myself. Unless, of course, I want to stay employed.
SGI made some great machines both in the form of the hardware and the looks of the hardware. They also provided us with the likes of OpenGL.
The problem is that the market they once had, being high-end graphics workstations, is being eaten up by cheap MS-Windows based systems. They could try redefining themselves, but I not sure what form it could take. While their version of Unix had some nice additions, it was never really a selling point. Their cheapest systems start off at $9000, which more expensive than Apple, and they also have less technology diversity than a company like IBM to help buffer any slow growth of their hardware. Maybe if they offered a very capable $4000 machine, it might help them attract people who might have never considered them before?
BTW CATIA, which is a very important piece of CAD-CAM software in the automotive and aeronautical industry is actually Windows centric, so they benefits of a SGI machine there is zero.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
ransom for 7heir
When I read the comment about the commitement of SGI to linux, I couldn't help but think of Sun which gets a lot of bashing because they insist on Solaris instead of commiting itself to linux. Now, SGI's future is uncertain although they "commited" to the supposedly right choice.
IMHO Irix was great and they should commit to their own child. Who knows, today we might had yet another choice if they did.
...anyone that uses the term "boxen" in a post is automatically suspect.
Carry on.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
They made great looking boxes with damn good hardware inside and even better software loaded. Problem was it held on too long to an antiquated model which was control everything from the box to the OS to the software on the OS. I hope they can bounce back... but it doesn't look or sound good.
.... That SGI could survive by being bought in whole or in part by someone else? I'm assuming that there are some technologies that would be of interest to some company out there.
It would be a shame to simply see them disappear.
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
AFAICT it is the fact that nVidia graphics cards contain some so-called "intellectual property" claimed to belong to SGI {as if ideas could ever belong to anyone} that is preventing nVidia to release a true open-source driver enabling them to be used to the fullest extent under the popular GNU/Linux operating system and others.
If SGI are bought out, the purchaser might be more keen to release the necessary information. Alternatively, if SGI are wound up, then the information might effectively revert to the public domain by default {since there will be no party in a position to assert a claim over it}.
{Of course, it's also possible that nVidia are using the egregiuous technique of "crippling" a "£200" graphics card by making a slight change to the firmware [so the driver for the £200 card won't work with it] and selling it for £30. If they can make a profit selling the card for £30, then why should they get away with charging £200 for it? An open-source driver would reveal this blatant deception and dog-in-the-mangerism for what it is.}
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
IMHO its a shame because SGI have always been visionaries in computing architecture, and if you look at a modern PC alot of what it is doing for the 'first' time was done years ago by SGI. I think I'm right in saying that many of the people working for ATi/Nvidia/Microsoft etc. are ex SGI guys and have carried the seeds of great ideas to places that are perhaps better at executing commercial designs.
I'll be sad to see SGI go because they've never seemed as tied to consumer demands and as such look to be a place where elegant/correct designs are valued over whatever can be thrown together in six months and stamped out on a production line to make some quick bucks.
Perhaps I'm just getting older but it seems like a modern version of an older problem, namely that we no longer value artisans. We value mass production and whats cheap, we live in carbon copy houses (watch MTV cribs for a few minutes) and buy the same mass produced items. Though there are some inklings that we are starting to get fed up of it with more people these days focusing on individual fashion and customising everything to their own tastes. What were really saying is we want something unique/crafted/personal just look at all the case modding going on.
Sadly by the time we value something it can be lost for good, many old techniques have been lost over the ages only for modern historians to bemoan and endeavour to recover. And even if we can flawlessly record the techniques used does that prevent them dying out, I'm thinking of bruce lee recording the techniques he used or a japanese sword maker recording his techniques. When not practiced these techniques become 'sterile' and are much better passed on to an apprentice. Maybe it doesn't matter if these techniques die out after all who needs japanese swords and martial arts? Though you can't help feeling the world is a poorer place without them.
I don't know I could be way off the mark and if so I'm sure someone will shortly correct me, but I for one would be sad to see SGI go (looks around and steps down off soapbox wondering how he got up here).
They will cancel their shares and come out with an IPO, just like KMART and so many others did. Just watch. The whole stock market is one big fraud.
...incompetence ever told. It's astonishing that a company that made the best computers in the world for 3D graphics can have fared so badly in a world where even your cell phone is a computer supporting 3D graphics. They had the world handed to them on a plate and they simply threw their hands in the air, the plate with it. Astonishing. And so depressing. I'd really ike to try to understand how the likes of nvidia took the laurel from them. I remember nvidia's very first '3D' card (you probably never saw it, I helped develop drivers for it many many years ago). It was the biggest pile of crap ever developed. Never in a million years would I guess that a few years later these guys would be blowing away SGI and hiring half of their staff.
As far as I know, Alexander Stepanov was the party responsible for STL, and (as noted here) he worked by turns at General Electric, AT&T Bell Labs, and HP. What is the relationship between STL and SGI?
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
I expected SGI to do a reverse split and bring their stock back above the $1 mark. To save me the googling, can someone explain why a company would rather be de-listed than reverse split?
Also, I have some friends that work there. How many companies recoup after a de-listing? I would guess not many.
--
$tar -xvf
Several factors contributed to this.
- Uncompetitive hardware per price/performance.
- Microsoft Windows has more high end applications available for Engineering and Grahpics productions, Pro E and so forth
- Unix has not evolved in terms of its desktop and ease of use
- Lack of end user application development like a decent office suite and integrated groupware.
- The linux factor keyed onm those aspects via openoffice, kde/gnome moving toward a better more userfriendly desktop
- IBM overtook Sun's unix market.
If you look at Sun hardware, they are pricing themselves right out as well even with their x32/64 hardware, more than 60% higher. Sun is stuck giving away solaris, no one will buy star office as long as openoffice is around and their hardware is insanely over priced.
Recipe for disaster.
Solaris can't compete with linux in the general market cornering them into a very small nich market.
ZFS and dtrace and linux interoperability will not save Solaris.
Sun micro will suffer the same fate within 5 - 10 years, probably sooner than later.
you guys were sooooo cool in the 90's, if you'd only get your head out of the sand and realize that people do want cool hardware, and then you actually engineered a laptop worth owning, then i could stop smoking the powerbook crackpipe and return to the hardware vendor i adored .. in the 90's ..
sheesh. you guys. MAKE A LAPTOP DAMNIT.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
I have two SGI machines. They were great at what they did, but were too expensive and too hard to purchase. Typical proprietary hubris.
Apple is in the process of buying them.
This article made me all misty-eyed. My very first Unix machine was an IRIS 3130.
Sit, Ubuntu, sit. Good dog.
SGI put out their quarterly results last week, which prompted the first article. Stock delisting this week. Just a lot of bad news for SGI.
Quake 4 uses DirectX (Direct3D), not SGI's OpenGL. A shame, because OpenGL was independent of Microsoft as well as looking better IMO. DirectX gives a cheesecloth effect on underpowered systems - Quake 4 looks as bad on my PC as Unreal did all those years ago. I wonder if the loss of big names like this has hit royalties, or was OpenGL free as in beer?
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
Can anyone explain the SGI's decision to open source XFS? What did they envision the results, from a marketing point of view? Were they sucessful in their goal?
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
IS A RETARDED!
...who's going to make all those cool displays for the Jupiter II in the future??? :P
"People" using "unnecessary" quotes should be "shot".
they wanted to sell big linux boxes (because of linux's momtentium... they needed a big-time clustering FS (the are 2 versions of linux xfs, the commercial one does clustering)
If a post is moderated 'funny' there's no boost to the poster's karma. Insightful, and there is. These are thoughtful mods.
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
Thanks. Funny, I was following up more questions, and then it hit me. Dunno why you posted AC...
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
IBM should assimilate them and add them to their collective.
I remember touring the campus to decide where I wanted to go and entering the Unix Lab which was full of SGI Indy workstations. I remember someone showing me a shark swimming through the water, rendered in real time! This was amazing back then before the era of our high powered GPU cards. When I finally was taking classes there, we replaced entire VAX Clusters with a "little" SGI 6-CPU Challenge L. I also had the chance to relax and goof off with friends junior year playing GL-Quake multiplayer on Indys and Indigos with 20" monitors which was just incredible.
Goodbye SGI.. in your heyday, you were an even cooler computer than a Mac. They were more exclusive and had cooler looking case/keyboard designs.
In the 1990's, soon after their great success at Hollywood blockbusters, they ventured into the videogames business with Nintendo in the form of the Nintendo64 console. Unfortunately, a more modest machine won the hearts and minds of videogames enthusiasts all over: Sony Playstation.
Then, regular PCs, with very powerful and cheap 3D video cards began eat their Workstation lunch. Linux clusters of common pc hardware substituted their costly hardware in the making of Hollywood flicks.
Now, the end is near for the once king of rendering...
I don't feel like it...
A while back, I had to change careers. The bottom fell out of the market for what I was doing before (audio engineering). I was able to take my UNIX skills and pick up a new career where I left off.
About 15 years ago, I was living in Germany working at a post production studio. The graphics department used SGI hardware along with some amazing software. One Friday evening, as I was finishing up and about to go home, someone stuck their head in the control room where I was cutting some ADR for a film (German voices to replace the English). They asked me if I spoke English. Having lived in the US for about 18 years prior to that, I was able to say I was extremely comfortable with the language. Luckily, I also could speak some "tech". SGI's office was closed for the weekend, and they didn't know how to get any other tech support. I sat down with the manual (in English) and fixed the problem with the machine. From then on, I was hooked.
I started learning about all sorts of UNIX-like systems, but SGI is what saved me. When the bottom dropped out of the market, I was able to take my skills in UNIX and experience with SGI systems (albeit in broadcast facilities), and get a job working as a contractor at the NIH on a project where they had about 10 SGI systems ranging from an Origin 3400 to a little O2. I even have an O2 at home on my network there just so I could break it there before I screwed it up at work. =-)
I've been watching this Titanic go down for several years. It has been a long slow death. Now, I hope someone like Apple picks them up and uses their technologies to help better their own products. I'd love to see the Apple Store with a new listing next to the Xserve; the Gserve. 512 POWER5 (yeah yeah...Intel, blah blah) processors, massive disk array, and three steps to get it working:
1. Deploy it in your server room.
2. ????
3. Arrrrrrrrrrgh...I can't do it!!!
Seriously, I'd love to see something like this. It could really help to boost Apple and keep the "legend" of SGI around for a long time to come.
I wonder if I should be scooping up some SGI stock about now so I can sell it to Apple for the buyout. Now, where did I put that crystal ball?
Plant a tree in a developing country.
The management story I was told was to offer up XFS on *every* platform, then sell this CXFS solution, a clustered [1] XFS. Where I got mixed stories was where CXFS would be available. Some said the hooks would be in all version of XFS, while others claimed CXFS would only be available on Irix.
This was further confused with refering to the either the whole sha-bang, or just XFS as an *appliance*. I recall asking at the time "Oh, you mean like Tivo?" The response was similiar to the adage about Radio Shack: "You got questions? We have blank stares."
In a similiar vein, I really haven't answered your question, other than to provide a little perspective. I do suspect the story itself puts insight into the last question...
[1] having come from an automotive background, and having friends in the military, this one did cause projectile coffee..... [2]
[2] and, I guess, gives some insight into what passes for marketing at SGI.
Our stock just dipped below $1.00. What to do?? What to do?
1. Call this guy I know named Darl.
2. Find a bunch of our 3D graphics code that has somehow gotten into Linux.
3. Find some deep pockets; maybe IBM... and sue them for giving our secrets to the great unwashed masses
4. PROFIT!!! It Can't fail!!!
I remember when our computer science dept. bought some real expensive SGI boxes. Only a couple people were allowed to use them. They were used for one purpose only; rendering fluid simulations. So, the rest-of-us never really got excited about the hardware.
SGI never got mind share. Even in the 3D world where they had an opportunity. MacOS briefly had a toe hold that was quickly surpased by PCs in the modelling and rendering world. Both were a fraction of the price of the SGI. Suffices to say desktop Wintel owned the market by 1995.
I don't think its fair to say SGI was the Doyenne of computer graphics systems. I don't think any of the players are bitches and SGI was the alpha female...
/\/\icro/\/\uncher
Lemme look 'em up...
SGI effectively died (to me) when they dropped their signature logo, the one that Slashdot still uses.
It's a shame to see them be delisted, but in the world of Nvidia and ATI graphics cards, cheap unix.. not sure where they would fit.
Shame. The first "real" computer I ever used was a SGI Indigo box.
..don't panic
SGI's problem is that they've made way too many mistakes and missed too many boats. They should have released a PC graphics card in the mid 90's. Instead, that group went to nVidia. They should have allowed Cray (who they owned) to continue with the (quite successful) T3E line. Instead they pushed Origin which, at the time, was barely working. They should never have built a PC that didn't have a standard BIOS and couldn't run a standard version of Windows. They should have never built PC's, period. They should have not tried to commit to shipping Windows on every platform they built (this was a late 90's thing which, fortunately, died). They should have actually used the people and technology that they bought when they bought Cray. Instead, it took 6 years of political infighting before the companies were really merged (a large part of what was Cray Research is still part of SGI). They should have put effort into stabalizing and securing Irix back in the mid 90's when it was swiss cheese. They *owned* the webserver market at one point. Sun anhialated them. They shouldn't have sold the Cray SuperServer to Sun for $56 million. It became the Sun Ultra Enterprise and Sun has made billions on it. Lastly, and possibly most importantly, they shouldn't have driven off their best employees because of poltical infighting and starting, but not finishing, far too many projects.
You can't make that many *major* errors and stay alive. Honestly, I'm surprised they've managed to last as long as they have. I thought they were dead 4 years ago when I quit.
Go Badgers! -- #include "std/disclaimer.h"
Their stock traded below $1 before a couple times and they recovered.
What the public doesn't know, though, is that they're taking serious steps to change course. The company has enough cash to survive for quite a while and they're moving in directions they never moved before. It is quite likely that by the next summer they'll be quite profitable again.
Sue SCO and artificially pump up their value for four years.
What goes around should come around.
I recall attending a briefing given by SGI reps several years back. They were explaining to us how they were getting in bed with Intel, and planned on producing top notch windows machines. Many of us left that meeting shaking our heads. Among our many concerns was, how do you expect to take a company full of *NIX geeks, and make them work on MS stuff? Also, how could we continue to use their products for our mission critical applications (we knew Windows wasn't up to it)? I don't know, and maybe someone can fill in the gaps here, how long they spent on this experiment before falling back to what they did, and did well (and hopefully, it's not too late).
Just another day in Paradise
SGI, back in the early and mid 90's was the best place I've ever worked, or could imagine working. SO many cool, fun, and super intelligent people. Of course that was before TJ thought he was a rock star and various other blunders caused it to implode.
Very sad passing of an amazing company.
What I don't know I just fake...
It's still the best place I ever worked.
They never should have given everybody Tag Heuer watches, TJ predicting 50% growth (then hitting 35%), then buying Cray, and then their worst mistake, selling Cray's competing SMP product to Sun which they turned into the E10K. Who made that decision? Ouch.
Their cheapest systems start off at $9000, which more expensive than Apple
You don't say?
Mac mini: $500
Quad-core Power Mac G5 with 4GB ECC memory, dual hard drives, and workstation graphics: $7000
Yeah, just a little more expensive.
As an investor/shareholder I am also a partial owner of these companies.
I want sustainable long term performance, I don't care about an off quarter or even an off year, they happen I accept it. I want management to take the long term view and build a profitable company that will still be making me money in 20-30 years.
It's official; NYSE now confirms SGI is dying.
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *SGI community when NYSE confirmed that *SGI market share price has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 dollar per share. Coming on the heels of a recent stock filing which plainly states that *SGI has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *SGI is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent investor confidence test.
Moderate drunk! It's more fun that way!
SGI put out some increadibly cool technologies:
...not to mention what many consider to be probably the absolutely coolest logo ever to come from a tech company... that is, the famous chrome cube, still seen here on /.
I'd love to get my hand on one of the real chrome-plated die-cast metal cubes that were to be available as paperweights, desk ornaments to a privileged few people back in the mid-late 1990's.
Anyone remember the SGI Magic Bus? When my brother worked at SLAC, we toured the bus when it was paying a visit. There were some cool demos inside, but now you can get the same quality graphics on a cheap PC. SGI had cool industrial design and great branding, but as others have said, it's been dying a slow death all these years.
That is not a single image/kernel machine. It's 20 nodes of 500 processors each! That is to say well within the reach of Irix. It's a huge cluster of slightly less huge super computers!
Not windows. Linux is devil.
Who knows if you're right or not, and who cares? You made me laugh out loud.
"the same way that a lice, flea and tick infestation is the perfect complement to the bed of a sleazy main-street motel" -- fantastic.
One big problem SGI has is that very little software is designed solely for IRIX. Most software available on IRIX is also available on an x86 machine (usually as a Windows program)...
Is Novell the next ?
...indicating how open source tends not to pay the bills.
I'm guessing of course, but they probably figured that their high end linux machines wouldn't be worth much without a very robust file system.
From time to time I click on a comment or story link and the page renders strangely. Only noticed it today...
I don't know what it's like on Firefox/Mozilla/Opera/whatever, but on IE, the pages often appear to have empty content. I discovered the other day that if I hit F11 and go to Full Screen mode, then the contents of the pages suddenly appear as if by magic.
My guess would be that they've got the CSS/DOM stuff all screwed up, and somewhere an ancillary table is overlaying the main content table.
But, again, that's just a guess, 'cause I'm WAAAAYYYYY too lazy to do Taco's homework for him. [Well, certainly not for free.]
CXFS sounds very interesting, but it has some unfriendly dependencies. Think GFS that Redhat recently bought but with usable performance. With a SAN you can attach up to 256 different machines mounting the same filesystem.
The downside is you need one machine running IRIX controlling the cluster. All the clients can be running linux if you wish. If you have existing XFS volumes they wont even need to be reformatted to run CXFS.
Maybe it will open source now and the IRIX dependency will go away?
Before he laid waste to SGI, Belluzo was responsible for HP scaling back on the 9000/700 series desktops (HP-UX). In the early 90's, HP had Lotus 123 and Ami-Pro ported to run on HP-UX and VUE was a much nicer looking windowing system than Windblows 3.1. Belluzo convinced HP's management to drop efforts on HP-UX for the desktop and move to Win NT (which really didn't fulfill the promise until Win2k).
You are right in that no one at AMD woke
up in 2001 with the idea. AMD made it
public in October of 1999 - then under
the name "Lightning Data Transport".
They later decided to try to make it
a widely deployed standard, and the
"Hypertransport Consortium" was
established for that purpose. A little
company called "API" (which I think AMD
later bought) had some early influence
on the standard, but I don't think SGI
ever did. API were the US remanants of
Samsung's involvement with DEC's Alpha
processor and platforms, in case you
were wondering who they were. They
actually made a Alpha motherboard based
on AMD's 750 chipset. Which could work
bacause Athlons used the same EV6 bus
as the Alpha processor did. At least,
they did until Opteron and Athlon64
came on the scene using Hypertransport.
And by the way, you do know that nVidia's
southbridge for the first nForce was
basically a AMD design, right? Several
blocks, like the IDE controller have the
same register layout, and even use the
same drivers under Linux. And that was,
incidently one of the first two products
on the market that used LDT. (In the
original Xbox, which was slated at one
time to have a 650MHz AMD Athlon inside.)
Funnily enough I just acquired one for the first time in my life. I found an Amiga 500 ('plus' I think) while going through the garbage thrown out by my old employer when they closed down(!!!). I opened the case, washed everything that was washable, and now it looks and functions as good as new. I have to admit to not enjoying Marble Madness as much as I had hoped. And I wish I had a BASIC interpreter for it. But some of the 2D graphics are damn fine stuff. I'm also pretty impressed with the 3D graphics in the game Frontier though as a game it's unplayable.