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Is the Game Finally up for SGI?
Rob writes to mention a Computer Business Review article looking at the bankruptcy of SGI, and whether the company is planning on a comeback. CEO Dennis McKenna is emphatic that the company isn't just looking for an exit strategy, but it's hard to see where they could go from here. From the article: "SGI has more challenges ahead, and I still find it hard to believe that after all of the chances it has had to run a profitable server and visualization business in the past it can miraculously do so now, selling lower-end boxes on even slimmer margins. But I'm hoping that the Chapter 11 has provided the necessary wake-up call for the company to get really lean really fast, because only from a more stable financial footing does it have any hope of fighting its way back onto new technology buyers' wish-lists."
SGI dying makes me sad. But I guess that's the way the cookie crumbles.
...the Nothing for you to see here. Please move along. error seems oddly appropriate.
We used to use SGI for everything related to virtual worlds... and carried on doing so when they moved to NT. About 6 months later someone noticed that we could swap expensive SGI boxes for cheap white boxes and save a fortune, then migrate all the legacy code without much pain to RedHat... and that was the end of SGI for us.
I do have a very nice SGI Indigo foot rest however.
Think of the Children; Sleep with your Sister
You would think that the SGI name has enough high end appeal that nVidia or ATI would want to market SGI branded video cards. SGI could certainly be had cheap.
an ill wind that blows no good
You know, when you bring something back from the dead, it's never quite the same again, and you usually wish you hadn't. Let the company die while people still have fond memories of the brand, I say.
Oh no... it's the future.
Who?
When SGI started selling intel based workstations, it was pretty much over.
The expensive add on video card did little to add value compared to the hp/dells of the world.
We have some SGI (Irix) based software here we ported fairly easily to solaris.
SGI is still in business???
I understand that a portion of SGI employees went to Network Appliance, where I am sure they have found a new home. Too bad for SGI, they had some great (way too expensive) ideas. Unfortunately, kinda like Sun, they have long since outlived their usefulness. Buy a bunch of cheap 1Us, and use GNU/Linux.
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
...SGI needed to wise up about 5+ years ago and seen that there is NO money in hardware. They should have bailed from the hardware market and concentrated on their software offerings. They should have openned the hardware architechture up, and provided details no making compatibile hardware. Then offered up the software and support to make their core software products run on any old pile of x86 hardware.
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
The company is going through a major re-org. They will probably do things very differently after emerging from Ch 11. You could say that the "old ways" at SGI are indeed dying. But the company as a business entity is not.
Chapter 11 does not equal a death sentence, it's often just a way of flipping the bird to the creditors - that's what most people don't realize.
I bid..$117 for OpenGL
-- www.globaltics.net
Political discussion for a new world
...is that SGI's least-expesive system costs a nice $9,800. That's for one computer, running windows or linux. Basically a nice PC. Granted, it comes with 2GB ram, and some nice features. But still... ...and people thought Apple was expensive...
They did just break a memory bandwidth record yesterday.
= 55
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/060717/sfm024.html?.v
--------========+++Dont Feed The Lab Techs+++========--------
Selling overpriced, over engineered technological marvels to chumps.
Like the poster said, here's a nickel kid, buy yourself a rack full of cheap storage.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
VAMPIRES are awesome man...
For more than a few years SGI has just been a big "game" to the execs and the board of directors who allowed the charade and obfuscation to go on.
SGI cancelled their annual shareholder meeting in December.
They barely gave us a conference call in January.. McKenna wouldn't say anything.. And they've cancelled every call after that.
I sold my last shares long ago (except for one) and I hope they get sued into oblivion.
Apple should buy SGI (patents, know-how, take whatever they can from IRIX, OpenGL, etc) and kill off the rest of the stuff they dont need or cant sell.
We (The Dutch Weather Service) bought an Altix in April.
Their hardware rocks. The software - though complex, on three racks using a common file system - works.
I never believed in Itaniums, but for our code (heavy vectorizable, large memory models) they fly.
In short, if SGI collapses, in our market the loss will be quite noticeable.
"The expensive add on video card did little to add value compared to the hp/dells of the world."
HP/Dells don't do HDTV.
The problem with SGI is that they don't really have any compelling products anymore. They have some Linux-based HPC stuff, but I think they've lost the early lead they might have had (as a result of their clustering experience for graphics stuff) in that market to IBM. Then they have some Itanium workstations, which are hideously overpriced, and aside from being Itanium seem to pretty much be a run-of-the-mill workstation in a neat case. (About the only feature they have that you can't get on something from Sun/HP/IBM is a binary compatibility layer for running IRIX applications side-by-side with Linux ones.) And then of course they have some IRIX workstations, for the few people who still have a business reason for staying with IRIX.
... meaning they're not going to be purchasing a lot of new gear.
But most of the people still running IRIX are doing so because they have legacy applications that they need to use, which assumedly already runs on their existing hardware
SGI is rapidly running of of stuff to sell. What they do make looks really neat (gotta love purple), and I'd love to have one under my desk, but it's tough to come up with a business case for the premium it seems like they have to charge in order to stay afloat.
As much as I hate to say it, being someone who's drooled over SGI gear for years, I think they need to exit the hardware business. Or perhaps license the SGI hardware brand out to someone else, to use as their high-end workstation brand. Then pare the company back and concentrate on software for the very high-end visualization markets, and perhaps offer consulting services for people converting from IRIX to Linux.
It seems like they tried to play IRIX for far too long after the writing was on the wall, and the gamble with Itanium didn't help either. Running a single-vendor OS on what's rapidly becoming a single-vendor hardware platform isn't something that many people are going to be interested in.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
As far as I can tell, SGI will not have a booth at Siggraph.org. That says something.
The real problem here is how to do something that is different enough and desirable enough that people will pay more to buy it than the cost of making a mainstream box do it. Apple does this with an extremely well polished, well mannered software environment where everything "just works." There is a niche for that product class that won't be overtaken by Windows PCs anytime soon (or Linux PCs, for that matter.)
SGI's systems were well designed, but the problem was computing power increased to the point where the price/performance benefit of their boxes got too small to warrant serious consideration. Power became plentiful and cheap, and SGI's clients were Unix nerds so they could make other solutions work if they presented more cost effective alternatives. Even if those solutions were less elegant, they resulted in a better profit yield. In a free market that's enough to make the decision.
It's like that Dilbert cartoon segmenting customers - Smart customers are never a good bet. Of course that's exaggeration, but Apple appeals to those who want their computer to Stay Out Of The Way. That market segment is much less sensitive to hardware technology change, which is why Apple has lasted so long. Apple's customers don't WANT to be "smart" about computers, so they select a system that doesn't demand that. SGI's customers were high end power users - they were and are smart about computers. So when the technology changed, their users followed the changes.
I would like to see some smaller companies again push the limites of what we think of as "standard" computer designs, but as SGI has learned there is no money in such work and fabrication costs are prohibitive. The Lisp machines died out years ago, even more thoroughly. Maybe MOSIS and co will let someone get creative again, but for now the market seems to have decided, and the decision is for cheap and disposable.
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
SGI had irix, cool workstations, and a cult following years ago. They just needed to good gui designers and to ride the open source wave and we might be talking about how SGI has become the computer to own for serious graphics and imaging work.
Not an mp3 player, but something that SGI should have gotten a while ago, for the common computer or electronics user that was popular with the masses.
I have always drooled over SGI workstations but its something that I could never afford.
A handheld media player,
A wintell Video card/proccessor chip that rocks at gaming
openGL based console
a 3d design suite
a giant hard drive/raid system affordable enough for home/small busness use (to store volumes of torrent dls)
whats funny is that some of those old "in the future" movies (i think total recall) both SGI, and XFL are not only alive but the defacto standard in Media and entertainment.
SGI needs to come back doings stuff like sun's thumper.
If they came back w/ network storage, network processing, thin and thick client tablets that auto synced via with the network/wireless it would be a start. We need to stop thinking about technology, and *nix can make that happen... to some extent it has. Look at the mac crowd focusing on apps, and not the os.
Make tablets w/ only a few gig's of permament storage, lots of memory, and I'd buy 4 right now at $1k/each. Business would easily pay more, we need innovation and good tools, this market stagnation has to end.
I would be more than happy if SGI made laptops and desktops to hit the computer professional market.
By this I mean the coders, the laptops come with a *nix, lots of ram, strong build quality, and a variety of options (max power, max mobility, etc) and a two button mouse. They would eat the market up on the computing professional USA made laptop.
What would all of this entail?
Well for one, customer service. With IBM if I say I need the monitor ribbon for a A31P and the wifi antenna for the same model laptop, I get those parts in a box before I am out the door for work the next morning.
Toss in a 30 day no question asked return policy, great linux support, and a few other simple things and SGI will be the single best vendor there is.
Oh yeah, don't make the laptops look dumb. IBM ThinkPad black evil has its own level of cool.
If OpenGL is going to be up for sale shouldn't the Free Software Foundation buy it? Otherwise couldn't Microsoft buy it and sit on it, preventing any real improvement on Direct3D's cross-platform competitor?
Why doesn't SGI just admit they're no longer needed to make computers, and just make graphics cards? Make the best OpenGL "accelerator" chips, give away lower-performance OpenGL libraries for free to keep the API popular and capture a new generation of developers. Sell some overpriced complete systems from mostly commodity HW to the high-end film and TV studios that need them. And release all the fancy extra tech accumulated over the years as plugins to apps actually successfully marketing them under other brands.
--
make install -not war
Are Altix's a niche product or what? Every review of them I have read seemed pretty glowing.
Can someone discuss the attractiveness of Altixs and if they could make SGI a takeover target, or what.
Thanks.
Tell that to Dell, Apple and a resurgent HP.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
That company had the most excellent name, and was perfectly in step to move into the 21st century, and they blew it. It may really have been as simple, and as petty, as changing the name, that started their boulder down the hill.
But as far as I was concerned they missed the boat in '95 or so. My company wanted to buy SGI systems for graphics work, but for any reasonable amount of money at the time, the systems were entirely underpowered compared even to cheap consumer PC's running Photoshop. We had a huge budget, and the machines SGI tried to sell us were absolutely horrible, by anybody's standards. So their high end was probably better, but we didn't get the hook in our mouth so we never would have known.
So who would the best buyer be if there was really a price on the table for OpenGL? I have always thought that they should just make GPU's and forget the rest, except maybe for that NASA supercomputer, the beast that it is.
i would think any one of the companies currently on the ARB should be the ones that get to bid. any one of those would be favorable. Nvidia would be a great steal. ATI is in bed with DirectX and MS so i dunno about them. can IBM handle it? Apple would also be a good steal. what do you think?
Sorry to do a SPAM post, but you guys have GOT to see this... How to fix a 1993 Geo Metro with Title Problems
"I'm just here to regulate funkiness."
It's pretty hard, as a company that relied heavily on R&D to distinguish itself, to be pinned to the mat and say "we're going to spend a bunch of money to develop something unique and valuable."
Sun is currently clawing onto the edge of the cliff by slapping together existing technologies in ways nobody else has been willing to do so far, but the only way I could envision SGI doing that would be to use Linux and create some huge MRAM or RAM disk based quad CPU quad GPU editing stations and then mark the price up heavily from the cost of building such a beast.
Make a Games Machine Like This!!!
.. then there might be hope. But until you up the cool, no chance ..
Make a Laptop Like This!!!!
Make the two work together (hint: they could use the same OS)
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
I would use this oppurtunity to buy Irix and use it to build the next windows ala Mac OS X. Just graft a new UI based on the aero code on top and presto...secure os with really memory management, XFS, clustering and more. Legacy apps could run in a virtualization layer and Microsoft would get a solid, tried and true OS that is also proprietary and closed-source. It would be a big job to replicate windows on a UNIX base (especially on the server) but I suspect it wouldn't take as long as Vista has.
Sig removed because it was obnoxious
The problem with most mainframe or high end work station companies is that they both over estimate and under estimate their customers, The over estimate their Technology Knowlege and under estimate their Buisness knowledge. That combination is not good.
Back in the old days of the late 80s and early 90s it was easy to make a system that was say twice as powerful and costs 3 times as much as someone else and they would sell it. Because the performance gains worked and TCO to save the company more then the costs of getting 2 of the other guy. Plus "in them olden' days" it was a status symbol to have the fastest computer, amungst your competitors. Plus customers back then tooks the specs as read, and they had very little what they ment they just knew that is was better then the other guy.
Now today Consumers are a bit more savvy on the specs but not as much as these companies think. We know that 2ghz is faster then 1ghz but not that ghz could be meeningless because of the speed of the System bus is 200mhz 2ghz and it is 600mhz on the 1Ghz, and all the other specs that make their system better then the other. But they know if I can get 2 system that will run 1/3 faster then 1 that costs 3 times as much then they will go for it. Nowadays every one has computers so having the best is no big deal it is about running at the most profitable.
There are people stilling Getting new Computers that are P4 3.2 ghz and thinking the Core Duos at 2.33 ghz are slower. They don't consider some systems are better at good perfomance at high load and others are good at fast performance for single user load.
Right now if you are not the cheapest on the block and have decent quality you are in trouble.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
From the clueless investor department:
If you fancy a gamble, is there any point in buying SGID.PK stock as a long term investment in case they get back on their feet? Or is the SGID.PK stock just a playground for the daytraders? What if they get absorbed into another corporation - would my stock be worthless?
If anyone could provide a short explanation (or URI) that answers my questions that would be great!
If SGI /would/ license their brand, what would happen?
Would we have a real competitor to Sun for Opteron boxes?
Licensing the SGI mark (the chrome dealy and name) to Asus, so they can double up on niche X86-ish gear; Apple's outsourcing on one hand, and their own sturdy 'sgi' rendering boxes on the other side?
Would that put them in a bad place with Steve? (would sgi renderfarm boxen have any impact on Pixar/DreamWorks, et al?)
Would Asus (for example - being a high-quality OEM) be able to make it happen? Is their stuff high-tech enough? Could they handle NUMAflex, blades, specialized memory/channeling/processes, etc? Is all of that becoming irrelevant?
This is a great notion, but I don't know who could pull it off. Sun seems to be ditching the highly-specialzed hardware of the past, and going lean and mean (UltraSPARC GPL'ed, Thumper, AMD boxes, etc.)
Schwartz seems to hint that custom chips are dead, and high-speed, high-efficiency, general-purpose machines are the next thing.
If that's true, and the SGI brand followed suit while we all wait for the next, next big thing (tinier, faster, more) they might be able to stage a comeback.
Sleek new SGI AMD-based Linux machines with clustering, virtualization, and tidiness.. I'd buy one.
Didn't they go under years ago? Huh. Sure I drooled over their machines when Alias did things other platforms weren't dreaming of yet. I also drooled over my first 40 MB Hard Disk Drive, and I now send email larger than that. If you're not running ahead, you're falling behind, and no IT director cares (or should care) who was good 10 years ago. OK, so SGI is down, shall we bet which dedicated, hard-core, cutting edge, cultist hardware company goes in the next years to come? Sun? Apple? Ohter nominees?
You can't buy just one, especially without a service contract.
It's not worth their time - which is crap, but unfortunately, they're still doing business in the 80's.
Serously, Sun, get out of semiconductors and maybe out of hardware all together Sun! Before it's too late.
Gee, I had my Slashdot article on the SGI bankruptcy rejected back on May 8th when it actually happened. Two months later, the bankruptcy gets a mention on Slashdot.
SGI's main remaining business is real estate. They own many buildings in Mountain View, most of which they lease to Google. Due to some bad decisions (like signing up for a 55-year land lease in 1995) SGI loses money on that deal. Then they tried a sale/leaseback deal with Goldman Sachs and dug themselves a bigger hole by locking in their rent at the top of the dot-com boom. A friend at Google says that SGI is a "great landlord", though.
SGI doesn't really have much left in the way of manufacturing facilities. The only thing left is Chippewa Falls, the old Cray facility. They had 1,858 employees left at the start of the bankruptcy. SGI had way too much legacy administrative overhead. They had 18 different corporate entities, from Cray to MIPS to Parallel to Alias/Wavefront, and 43 more marketing subsidiaries in various countries. Most of those organizations will disappear in the bankruptcy.
From the filing: In the last several years, SGI has faced a number of challenges, which, taken together, have had a negative impact on SGI's overall financial performance. In the late 1990's, SGI made a series of investments in strategies and technologies that yielded less than the expected results.
Er, right.
Realistically, what happened is that SGI was totally unable to cope with their high-margin business becoming a low-margin business. Few companies succeed at that transition, IBM being a notable exception. And even IBM finally bailed out of PCs.
I would imagine that SGI has a significant portfolio of graphic and rendering patents, with some parallel processing for good measure. Just the sort of thing Intel needs for their graphics cards and bus designs.
Maybe SGI should make an accelerated sgiPOD that plays music faster than any other MP3 player on the market. Then you could listen to your whole music collection in a few minutes!
The only thing they still have of value is their wonderful 3D logo, designed by Scott Kim. Now THAT's worth something.
-Don
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
The last really cool thing SGI made was their 1600SW LCD monitor. In 2000, this thing had 17" wide-screen format with 1600x1024 resolution. It was *gorgeous*. The only problem was, in true SGI fashion, it had a non-standard LDI interface that NO ONE else supported. If you wanted to use this monitor you either needed a Number 9 graphics card (chaining you to that performance point forever) or a Multilink adapter, which was made of 100% pure unobtainium. Seriously, SGI made some of Apple's I/O interface decisions look measured and rational by comparison. And I remember vividly trying to buy 8 SGI workstations (total cost in the tens of thousands) from one of their "resellers" in NYC, but it was basically impossible. Forget about getting spare parts. I was actively trying to buy SGI stuff, but the purchase process was so byzantine that I nearly gave up. No wonder they're where they are currently. Companies die and go away - I'm not crying.
I kinda think this quote from their website says it all "SGI InfiniteStorage NAS - A Well Kept Secret" Who in their right mind would brag about being a well kept secret?!? I really loved their logo, their workstations, after all, they were on that show with Roy Schieder, you know, the one where he was a sub captain.... Okay, Sci-Fi Geeks...made you think of it :o)
----- I have bad karma for a reason! -----
Basically on topic and to the point, except I think your characterization of Mac users is a little overbroad. Lots of us Mac users have strong technical background, and muck with all manner of computational foo-ery during the day. The last thing I'm looking forward to in the evening is monkeying around with more of the same. So yes, you're right about the appeal of Apple, just that it applies in more cases than just those who want ignorance. "Just play me my music, will ya? Do the right thing, damn you..."
(you apple fanboys have strange minds.)
SGI is dead.
perhaps they need to figure if they want to end up like SGI
OS X w/Quartz isn't as efficient as a 'basic' Linux or *BSD kernel.6 /36/#comment-805m and
p =8 for details
Check http://ridiculousfish.com/blog/archives/2006/05/1
http://www.anandtech.com/mac/showdoc.aspx?i=2436&
The Anandtech article isn't apples-to-apples [sorry, bad pun].)
SGI's better option is to partner with a firm like DRC Computer Corp, and link lots of
high-speed Opterons with FPGAs and GPUs, all on a high-speed interconnect.
SGI systems have to beat the Cell processor (with better software) to stay relevant.
SGI could focus software on providing gaming dev. platforms that allow you to
develop for multiple platforms. Would that require another processor change? Probably.
Whatever that turns into, it's not the "Unix engineering/visualization market", anymore.
Good luck, SGI.
They have one,
If you have an Origin 200 you can bind all the drives together as an XLV (Xfs Logical Volume). Not as fast as a raid but much cheaper. Not sure how much space you need but adding a JBOD in addition to an o2k's internal disks would give a lot of space for a "home" user.
Buying Cray was the beginning of the end for SGI. They used all their available cash and assumed considerable debt in order to make the purchase - leaving them with neither cash nor a credit line to pay for development. It took about ten years for resulting implosion to complete.
You: "How much does this cost?"
SGI: "How much money do you have?"
Compare this with IBM:
Go to the web site.
Select a mainframe you like.
Note the price.
Note the message about 308-volt 3-phase power and an electrician.
Add a nice mainframe to your shopping cart.
Go to check-out.
Supply millions of dollars.
Wait for the truck to arrive.
Thus, SGI is dead. The days are numbered for Oracle and Polycom as well. Don't expect to stay in business if you are an ass. At the first opportunity, customers will flee.
SGI have made plenty of blunders and treated customers like dirt, but I'm not going to knock them for the 1600SW.
He made all the bad decisions that led to SGI's demise: ditching Cray after just 3 years; abandoning their graphics patent suits against nvidia; and those godawful Visual Workstations. The bastard then promptly leaves to join Microsoft. Nice going, Rick.
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
SGI didn't see the writing on the wall - PC graphics adapters were coming - SGI did nothing. They arrived (but weren't great) - SGI proved they could make one by designing the Nintendo 64 graphics chip - but still did nothing. Then, suddenly a bunch of their engineers saw the impending doom and fled to nVidia - and on that day SGI's fate was sealed.
If they'd have come out with a PC graphics adaptor while they still had a billion dollar turnover - they could have squashed the teeny-tiny nVidia, 3Dfx, ATI and others like so many bugs. SGI's name and reputation would have made SGI-branded graphics cards the standard for the others to aspire to. They would have been today's nVidia.
They even had the technology right there in their hands in the form of the N64 chip around 1994 - two full years before 3Dfx (started by SGI employees) started to get into the market.
It's the classic story of the mainframe manufacturers not understanding that minicomputers were going to eat their lunch - then the minicomputer guys not understanding PC's. SGI didn't believe that a $200 PC card could outperform their $100,000+ Reality Engine boxes.
Their corporate culture ideas ultimately failed them. The idea that the engineer was king and that 'management' were merely there to smooth the path for engineering was a good one. They started out with a rule that every engineer got a proper office with a door and every manager would have a cube out in the corridor. But by 1994, engineer's offices were smaller than a typical cube-farm cube with their only windows facing out into tight corridors - management 'cubes' were huge affairs with tall cube-walls that came close to the ceiling, placed alongside windows with nice views.
It's sad - SGI deserved to win - but they just somehow couldn't decide to change.
www.sjbaker.org
Really, it's a more humane than this long dragged out suffering.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
I hadn't really thought too much about Asus, but I think you make a good point. They would probably be a good candidate to pick up the SGI name and run with it. Who knows -- they might even turn out some good stuff.
If I was a commodity PC maker, picking up the rights to a name like SGI at a fire-sale price would look like a pretty good investment. At least with that, if the margins on consumer equipment get too low, you have some room for expansion on the higher end, without worrying about alienating possible consumers by using your el-cheapo brand name.
When I was thinking of someone buying the SGI marque though, I was thinking more along the lines of HP/Compaq. They sell a lot of gear from consumer PCs right up into the very high end workstation/visualization market, but they really don't have a whole lot of brand differentiation. It's as though the consumer PCs sort of run right up into the small business line, which runs into x86 workstations, which price-wise gets pretty close to the bottom of the RISC workstations. Maybe this is the way they want it, but it makes things a little confusing to a consumer.
With a name like SGI (and maybe some technological gadgets; say an IRIX compatibility layer to grab all the remaining people on that OS) they could differentiate their very high-end visualization products from the rest of the pack; maybe even make some special products or configurations specifically for that marque. (Or put all the RISC stuff under it; whatever's left, plus the Itanium servers designed for clustering.)
The only thing that sticks out among SGIs products is that they have a nice sort of continuity between the desk-side workstations and the multi-megabuck supersystems; they all run the same software, just at different speeds. HP has enough products around that they could probably pick a few out and create a specialized lineup for people who want something like that, except do it all with x86 and Linux. Start off with one or two-way workstations, and then work up to scalable cluster systems, maintaining binary compatibility as you go.
It's not a huge market, but I think there's enough left to make the SGI name worth something to another company who is already manufacturing the hardware anyway; it's just not enough to keep a separate organization alive.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Seriously, SGI was known for their computers' graphical capabilities. Since most architectures died and x86 won, there is no space for specialized machines like what SGI used to sell.
But if they could transfer their engineering knowledge to graphic cards, they would stay in the market, especially if they support the open source platforms. People are dying to use Linux with good graphics cards as workstations. NVIDIA and ATI are more towards Windows and games.
What would be the advantage of SGI in the graphics card sector? well, increased performance, for once. They have the knowledge to make parallel-driven graphic cards like no other. I remember some SGI machines used 12 graphic cards to increase performance. Their electronics' quality is unmatched, and their knowledge of 3D algorithms and effects is unparalleled and quite ahead of NVIDIA and ATI.
Just another checkmark for someone to get off their ass and start manufacturing the OGP card and or more Open hardware solutions as it's allot less overhead in marketing and research.
BTW, I'm wondering if some of them now work for SUN. Seems to be getting harder to get stuff to compile there too! Listening SUN? Hello SUN??? Looks like SUN is setting.
I have nothing but sympathy for this company. Paradoxically, what happened to them now, happened to their competetor in the beginning of the 90s when they beat up vector graphics stations (at least, for scientists in structural biology SGI was the word). I still remember the demo presentation with clowns and really cool music on their Indy workstation when I first saw it in 1994. PCs were nowhere nere that graphical performance at that time.
Sigh.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
... Anytime a company changes its logo or buys naming rights to a stadium, you know they're fucked.
Long live the hypercube!
Ha you read my post even though you knew that subject was bullshit. SGI burnt my ass too many times. They made great machines. Pretty good support. Their upgrade path was: throw out the machines and buy our new line of machines because we've discontinued that line and you will never find any type of compatible hardware ever unless you troll ebay for one of those guys who makes his living stocking used components, compatible with only this one particular sgi model that has tragically unfortunally been discontinuted forever. SGI! Could have been the one! Fuck is a matter with you man?
One of my company's best selling products exploits graph computing simulating single core memory images at terabyte sizes. The few SGI competitors that do this dont do it as large or as well at the moment. Its always been conundrum whether to rewrite for partitioned memory in clusters.
Oh and 3x the price of building your own system! Plus we'll shove this red hot poker up your ass at no extra charge!
NOTE: This is my 2nd post on this subject. My number of votes cast reflects how strongly I support the candidate.
When I visited the Computer History Museum from out of town a few weeks ago it had occupied half of building on the main SGI campus. Google HQ was up the street and just occupied anther four SGI buildings. There was an article of ./ or digg about Sergey's goofy interior design in these building attempting to implement grad school-like common offices and private spaces engineers need to think.
Also, all that SGI purple must be repainted with Google blue-red-green-yellow.
(I strongly recommend visiting both the museum [free] and the Googleplex.)
Nice to see someone using my contributions to Wikipedia to research their journalism :-)