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SGI Files Chapter 11 Bankruptcy
audi100quattro writes "The WSJ has a story about SGI filing for bankruptcy, but the SGI Investor's Relation page doesn't say anything." Nothing else really known at this point, but this is not unexpected.
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Silicon Graphics Files
For Chapter 11 Protection
A WALL STREET JOURNAL ONLINE NEWS ROUNDUP
May 8, 2006 6:56 a.m.
Silicon Graphics Inc., a long-struggling maker of high-performance computers, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
A group of bondholders agreed to trade their debt for a stake in the company, which filed for Chapter 11 protection Monday morning in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan.
SGI is known for desktop workstations and larger server systems that are favored by engineers and others who demand sophisticated graphics, including Hollywood studios. But the company has suffered a long slide, partly due to competition from machines based on standard components used in personal computers.
The company's stock was recently delisted from the New York Stock Exchange for trading below a minimum threshold of $1 a share, and now trades on the small-cap OTC Bulletin Board.
Earlier this year, SGI replaced its top executive amid widening losses and lower revenue. Last month, the company said it expected revenue of about $108 million for the third fiscal quarter, well below guidance of $140 million to $160 million.
SGI's press release here: http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/060508/sfm098.html?.v= 45
"Who says nothing is impossible? Some people do it every day!" - Alfred E. Neuman
My question is; where they contributing anything new to the maket recently
It may not be all that "recent", but if you're a C++ programmer, you might want to download a copy of this documentation before the bankruptcy trustees pull the plug on the server:
Info about the Chapter 11 is up now, via a press release:
l eases/2006/may/sgi_reorg.html
http://www.sgi.com/company_info/newsroom/press_re
From the release:
"As part of this agreement with many of its major stakeholders, and as the next step in its previously announced plan to reorganize its businesses, the Company and its U.S. subsidiaries have filed voluntary petitions under chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code. SGI's non-U.S. subsidiaries, including European, Canadian, Mexican, South American and Asia Pacific subsidiaries were not included in the filing; will continue their business operations without supervision from the U.S. courts; and will not be subject to the requirements of chapter 11. The Company expects to file its Plan of Reorganization reflecting the agreement shortly, and to emerge from Chapter 11 within six months."
640YB ought to be enough for anybody.
Heck, I use a Powerbook G4 for most of my tasks these days and my SGI O2 and SGI 320 NT box in my office are used little these days, but the Macs do lack some advanced hardware features that are only available on Infinite Reality gfx boards and Tezro v12. See Discreet's website and you'll notice that Flame, Inferno and Fire still run on ONLY SGI hardware. SGI InfiniteReality boards are used as image generators for flight military flight simulators and also to drive the Inferno compositing and film mastering, using up to 32 film resolution layers and 10-bit anti-aliased graphics
Sure, Nvidia and ATI cards go have an polygon count advantage and they do have features like pixel and vertex shaders, but overall for high fidelity graphics one still goes back to SGIs. If one looks at what is capable in Final Cut Pro HD, it still falls in terms of output quality compared to what an SGI can handle. For video DMediaPro options with support for two streams of high-definition 10-bit 4:4:4:4 RGBA video. Or if one needed to generate your own video signal. Programmable FPGA video card or drive a C.A.V.E. or Powerwall SGI Mutichannel Option cards are capable of doing this. I have yet to see PC based Image Generator be as successful at doing this without a lot of hacking, blood, sweat and tears. SGI's handle the tough visualization tasks do out of the box. SGI's gfx API are second to none
OpenGL Inventor
OpenGL Multipipe (+ SDK)
OpenGL Optimizer
OpenGL Performer
OpenGL Shader
OpenGL Vizserver
OpenGL Volumizer
ImageVision and Image Format Library (IFL)
SGI was a great company, although it was badly mismanaged. I'd love to see it merged with Apple and all the SGI gfx API's integrated into OS X. Plus other tecnologies like ccNUMA, XFS, CXFS, NUMAlink4 (6.4GBs), NUMAflex combined with Hypertransport and Infiniband (when customers need cheaper solution than NUMAlink)
... to mirror the STL progammer's guide (for personal use, of course).
It's sad to see them go, and not just for their cool h/w. This is the company that brought us OpenGL and, for a long time, the only useful STL documentation on the web (not to mention Irix had a working c++ compiler). I can almost forgive them for IRIX 6.5.
So long, and thanks for all the Phish
No.
and now that SGI will more than likely be leaving the playing field, wont this mean that OGL will belong to microsoft?
No, the OpenGL ARB controls OpenGL, not SGI. Check the website.
who will more than likely take it, lock it up, and sue the living fuck out of anyone who implements it? (read, makes free software implementations without paying absurd royalty costs)
No. SGI is far from the most important company relying on OpenGL. Check the ARB member list: 3DLabs, Apple, ATI, Dell, IBM, Intel, NVIDIA, SGI, and Sun Microsystems.
OpenGL is fine.
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait