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SGI Lives On, In Name At Least
Hugh Pickens writes "In a surprise corporate move, after Rackable Systems received bankruptcy court approval on April 30 to close its purchase of SGI, the company announced on Monday that the deal had closed and that the combined company would be called SGI — short for Silicon Graphics International instead of the original Silicon Graphics Inc. The revival of the SGI brand will certainly please people in Silicon Valley with a historical bent, as SGI has been one of the area's true icons. However, some consider this a curious turn of events, considering that Rackable has come to represent the new guard in the server market, while SGI has struggled for years. Executives hope the name change will help it expand its business overseas, where SGI is a better-known brand. The new SGI will also continue to develop and support the high-performance computing systems that Silicon Graphics was known for, says Rackable's president and CEO. 'There should be no disruption to Silicon Graphics customers.'"
Let's see - Caldera bought the remains of SCO, rebranded themselves SCO and tried to carry on with SCOs business model - which had already been shown to be at deaths' door as it was.
Sounds very similar. What next? SGI sues everyone who uses Linux?
Does this mean IRIX will be developed again? I'm not seeing any info one way or the other.
As a Linux and BSD guy, I'm pretty ignorant about IRIX other than the MIPS support. Does IRIX do anything innovative that makes developing it worthwhile?
I hear echos of Infogrammes purchase of Atari here, which might bode well if they keep the solid business while reducing overlap and optimizing product lineup. I wish them luck.
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
I've learned about Rackable is when they bought SGI!
SGI is not what is used to be. From MIPS and graphics chips (N64 used graphics by SGI), to another Itanium/Windows Server vendor.
GENERATION 25: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
Although the SGI "brand" is still widely recognized, I am not convinced it has a lot of value. After all, if SGI had a whole lot of happy customers (left) then it would not be in the situation of being sold to WhatsItsName.
I am not sure I would want to chance the name of my company to something that makes people say, "Oh, wow, you're still around?" (especially given that I work for one of those)
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
I hope they keep the logo. I always liked it.
They just have stylized SGI text at the top of their though. Not that I've ever had much of their equipment though. I had a few machines, but the longest used piece was a SGI monitor (Sony trinitron 17" CRT)
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
I mean SGI is or was an icon in high-end graphics and workstations, not a web-hosting company.
I do not see the connection here. I looks more like the sgi.com and logo grab, but what for? Does it really emphasizes web-hosting in any shape or form?
So it's sort of SGI Inc., or SGII? SGI Ltd? So it's _nearly_ the same then...
"Is the Chief Priest an Offlian? Do dragons explode in the wood?"
The Rackable name is recognized in certain spaces that have nothing to do with "Silicon Graphics". If they wanted to take advantage of the SGI name recognition overseas and within the US supercomputer arena, they should have used it in combination. SGI a division of Rackable Inc. I think you get the idea.
Yes. Both of you.
Compaq had changed its name to Digital when it still had time ...
[just being nostalgic and wondering who had the "bright" idea to dump development of the Alpha line in favour of ia64 ! ]
SGI doesn't need to be known as successful in order for the use of the name to be effective, it just has to be known to have a history. People are comfortable with continuity, assuming it means success and therefore reputability. Maintaining the old lines isn't even necessary. Just the name can serve the purpose.
AT&T has existed primarily as a brand name since the Ma Bell breakup of 1984. It gets slapped on top of the various mergers and partnerships involving SBC with more or less emphasis according to the project, to entice the partner into joining? to replace SBC's name on iffy projects? who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of the Bell Systems zombies.
Some Asian company apparently decided it needed such a brand recognition flag for its consumer electronics and began using the name DuMont. We had a DuMont TV. It was one of their last models. They never made it to the color era. I'm assuming they snatched the name because it's trademark had expired and never did a lot of research on the matter. Brand "recognition" would only apply to hobbyists and historians of early electronics and people well over 50 years old.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
I like this: http://www.rackable.com/sgi/sgi_logo_guidelines6.pdf ...extremely specific usage and typesetting guidelines for the new logo which are then comprehensively broken by the last page of the same document :)
As best I understood, the SGI that was bought out hasn't made any new systems with MIPS chips for some time. If SGI is no longer innovating in CPUs then they are just a name in the industry. The last time I checked the SGI web site every new system available was using an Intel CPU of some sort.
I don't know that we need to maintain high-dollar names in that field anymore...
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
There was that 3d filesystem navigator that was used in the Jurassic Park movie.
That was fsn, which has been cloned.
How about open sourcing Irix?
CDE open sourced! https://sourceforge.net/projects/cdesktopenv/
Seriously. That's all we really want. Chrome cube on a purple case.
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
I am an IRIX user...my daily driver (at home) is an Octane2 and you'll have to pry it from my cold dead hand. But yes, there aren't many of us left. IRIX is a rock solid operating system and I don't plan on abandoning it anytime soon...
That might get peoples attention.
I was very disappointed to see that this wasn't a story about Stargate.
Was I the only one who got my hopes up that this was going to be a Stargate post?
As I understand it, it was Intel who really got screwed on IA64.
Digital -> Compaq -> HPQ got essentially several billion $$$s in free R&D from Intel to give them a new platform to which VMS could be ported.
Which, in turn, means that all those legacy VMS systems can [at least in theory] be ported to a modern architecture.
Bottom line being that I don't think that Compaq [much less Digital] had several billion $$$s lying around to build a new Alpha fab.
Way back in the late 1990's I met I guy who was a VP from SGI and he had the only real chrome metal cube paperweight I've ever seen in person. He said they were handmade, never mass-produced, only a small number of them were ever made, and they were given as awards to a select few senior management folks at SGI. It was about 3 inches square, and was kinda heavy, maybe weighed a quarter of a pound.
I always thought it was a shame they never mass-produced a cheaper version of the cubes to sell or give away as promotional trade-show trinkets.
I'm thinking back to 1993-1994 when SGI had killer workstations that had some nifty innovative features with the best GUI for Unix workstations. Hell, the best GUI for all workstations at the time. We used to manage a few hundred of them along with Suns and Alphas. It's funny looking back that Sun survived and SGI and Alpha didn't. Alpha and SGI were like the BMWs and Mercedes of the workstations and servers, where Sun was like a used Ford. But SGI went to their WNT strategy and took a nosedive. Hard to compete with 2k workstations (at the time) with ones that cost over 10k.